US NRC Blog Update: Principles of Good Regulation: Clarity

Principles of Good Regulation: Clarity

Leave a comment Posted by Moderator on February 22, 2017

Regulations should be coherent, logical, and practical. There should be a clear nexus between regulations and agency goals and objectives whether explicitly or implicitly stated. Agency positions should be readily understood and easily applied.
Maureen Conley
Public Affairs Officer
The NRC has a double challenge when it comes to clarity. We are a regulatory agency that derives its authority from a series of laws passed by Congress and we regulate a highly technical industry with many of our experts holding advanced technical degrees.
For those reasons, it can sometimes be challenging to explain what we do and why we do it.
Over the years, the agency has employed a variety of different ways to communicate with clarity. This blog and all our social media platforms are one avenue. Producing less technical executive summaries for otherwise quite complex documents is another way.
We often work with technical experts to help prepare them for public meetings and to ensure their presentations are “user friendly” for the audience expected to attend. The agency’s training center offers many courses to help technical experts present their complex work clearly in a way that is more accessible for both technical and non-technical audiences.
The agency’s website also provides a wealth of information to meet the needs of both technical audiences and the general public. Even our student corner section helps clarify the agency’s mission and activities.
The NRC’s work may involve an abundance of acronyms and technical jargon, but we are always striving to convey what we do and why we do it in the clearest way possible.
This post is the fourth of five that will explore each of the five principles separately. For the history of the Principles of Good Regulation, read this post.