Do US Compliance regulations play a part in the UK ?

As a UK vendor of compliance software I get increasingly annoyed at how most news worthy articles I read on the web referring to compliance and regulations constantly refer back to US legislation.

Its almost as if the UK does not have to comply to legislation. Certainly the "does not live here" attitude from many UK Compliance Managers I meet should consider the more subtle British way of introducing change.

I wrote in my blog of 30th September that the onus of responsibility has changed in the UK for Health and Safety issues. Indeed, not only are line managers more accountable for health and safety issues, the concept of innocent until proven guilty in a legal situation appears to have shifted to that of prove you have complied.

Irrespective of the lack of legislation within the UK towards Corporate and Information Governance the trend is toward individual responsibility,but when does responsibility become culpability.

Back in the early 1970's VAT was introduced to the UK. Suddenly, all those business owners who traded over the stated threshold became instant tax collectors and responsible for completing quarterly returns and submitting these along with the tax collected. Anyone to this day who does not carry out this function is liable to receive fines and possibly a custodial sentence if deemed appropriate. Is this a responsibility or culpability?

Fast forward to the changes in the UK licencing regulations in the middle of this decade. Each licensed establishment is now required to assign a designated premises supervisor who holds ultimate responsibility for the running of that premises. This includes health and safety, enforcing anti social behaviour laws and bye laws both within and immediately outside of the designated premises, non smoking rules, stopping under age drinking, stamping out drug abuse, etc.

These are not bad things to try to address but when does the responsible bar owner go from being responsible to culpable.

More importantly for this article when does the law support those responsible rather than use them to apportion blame and liability when it comes to issues involving legislation and Corporate Governance.

How can an organisation and individuals working within those entities ensure they are acting responsibly and endorsing policies and procedures rather than appearing culpable to a wider audience.

The answer lies within the such legislation as Sarbanes Oxley, Basell II, HIPAA and the like all be them US law. All these acts were delivered to help support the use of properly managed processes, probably utilising technology to show good corporate practice within each Acts specified area.

Rather than review such news items that quote US legislation with an attitude of "it does not fit here", personnel operating within UK organisations should consider the shift of emphasis in this country from "innocent until proven guilty" to "proof of compliance".

The use of technology really can make a difference and I am particularly proud to sell jComply our policy and procedure management solution. This application is designed to support all people within an organisation understand, meet and then deliver responsibility be it in health and safety, information security, corporate governance or best practice.

Visit http://www.jcomply.com/

Testing results of jComply beta 1.0

Over the past two months, jComply Beta 1.0 has undergone some rigorous testing schedule. Apart from our ongoing in-house testing, we have worked with industry professionals, consultants, compliance and risk managers from the financial, healthcare and pharmaceutical sectors to carry out detailed functionality testing of our policies and procedures management system. These efforts have resulted in bringing out issues/bugs and a number of recommendations to further improve our product. The issues were logged in our issue management system and are being traced to resolution. The recommendations on the other hand have been absorbed in our development roadmap.

I am therefore thankful to all those who have participated in our testing so far and can’t wait to work with individuals who are scheduled to test our releases in the coming months.

jComply, a policy and procedure management system is expected to be released next month. To learn more about jComply, visit www.tabaqsoftware.com/jcomply

or

to register for a free no-obligation demo, fill up the form at http://www.tabaqsoftware.com/registration.html.

Falling standards in UK healthcare

It is not very encouraging to see that some of the prominent hospitals in UK have shown below par hygiene standards in recent years. NHS body Health Facilities Scotland produced a report last year which showed three of the Scotland’s leading hospitals not meeting the hygiene standards. NHS Watchdog and the Healthcare Commission have produced reports in the past two years highlighting various levels of falling standards.

Where are these falling standards taking us? According to the Patients Association, the general views shared by patients about NHS service are long waiting periods, delayed appointments, fear of filing complaints and confronting the doctor, office hours only, etc. Instead patients ought to be treated as customers and stakeholders.

For once globally renowned and exemplary British NHS service, up to-date and technologically advanced tools are required to give fair judgement to the assessment criteria. In that respect, it was a relief that NHS decided to part with the star rating system for the hospitals which was more synonymous with giving stars to children in schools. For the first time, last year NHS trusts assessed themselves against 44 quality standards of basic competence. According to the health inspection body, only third of the country’s 570 trusts met the standards, which include safety, governance and patient focus.

Thankfully, developments in technology have given us the ability to develop systems that can help the trusts implement these standards across the board and certify themselves. Read more about jComply and how it can help with your compliance process at jcomply.com.