Too many laws in Italy! The Italian regulatory maze… and how to get out of it

Too many laws... and even the minister talks about "AI for regulatory simplification"

As can be read on the Rai News website, the hypothesis of exploiting Artificial Intelligence for “regulatory simplification” has reached the government working groups. The quote comes precisely from the Minister for Institutional Reforms and Regulatory Simplification, Maria Elisabetta Alberti Casellati, who was interviewed during the initiative “Le buone leggi, semplificare per far riparare l'Italia” held at the Temple of Hadrian (Rome) about a month ago. Commenting on the complexity of the Italian regulatory landscape, Castellati stated an ongoing verification on the “possibility with a working group to apply Artificial Intelligence for regulatory simplification”. Certainly the concept expressed by the minister is very broad, and includes a reduction of the number of Italian regulations, as well as “cuts in bureaucracy”. However, there’s no need to wait for a reduction of the regulations in force in Italy, since there are already AI tools that can simplify access to regulations and streamline regulatory analysis. In fact, at Aptus.AI, we have been working for years to make the law digitally accessible with our SaaS RegTech, Daitomic. And we’re on the right track, as evidenced by both the recent agreement made with Intesa Sanpaolo and the Chat-EUR-Lex project as part of the European Commission's NGI Search initiative.

An endless maze? In search of the number of Italian laws in force today

But let us take a step back. Minister Castellati's remarks stemmed from an awareness of the quantity and complexity of regulations in force in Italy today. An awareness that, at Aptus.AI, we share and have long reached, especially in reference to highly regulated sectors such as finance. Going back to an accurate analysis by the online magazine Pagella Politica, less than a year ago, it is currently not possible to define exactly how many laws are in force in Italy. At the time, Pagella Politica's article took as its starting point the 250.000 Italian laws cited by Justice Minister Carlo Nordio. In reality, according to the official website of the Ministry for Public Administration (2016), “the overall total of laws currently in force has been reduced to just over 10.000”.  Quite a difference. The minister's count was probably based on Normattiva, an online database active since 2010 and maintained by the Italian State Mint and Polygraphic Institute, which also deals with the digitization of documents and archives (so-called “dematerialization”). Normattiva's numbers speak of 203.068 normative acts of various types that have come into force in Italy through December 2022. Added to these are regional acts, a total of 43.501, of which about 23.000 are in force. Hence the “250.000 laws” mentioned by Nordio. In reality, many of these acts over the years have been repealed or are no longer in force. In short, even the analysis carried out by Pagella Politica, accurate as it was, had to stop when faced with the maze represented by the regulations in force in Italy. But fortunately, as anticipated, compliance professionals and, in general, all those who need to analyze laws will not have to wait for a thinning of the Italian body of law.

Aptus.AI's innovative machine readable format to optimize regulatory analysis

In such an environment, all those who need up-to-date and accurate legal information encounter great difficulties in finding and, even more so, in analyzing regulations in Italy. As we wrote back in the day, however, there is no expectation of a reduction in the number of norms. On the contrary. Constant technological and social innovations, combined with the ongoing climate crisis and global political instability, will likely lead to an increase in regulations, as a consequence of the increase in needs coming from the factors just listed. Needs to which, at Aptus.AI, we are answering with our proprietary Artificial Intelligence technology, capable of generating an innovative machine readable electronic format of financial regulations. In fact, we currently use our AI technology within Daitomic, the RegTech SaaS designed for European financial institutions. But the scalability of this technology makes it extensible to languages, jurisdictions and legal texts of all kinds. And we can now say the effectiveness of this technological response has been validated even by European authorities. Suffice it to say that machine readable regulatory documents are also mentioned within MiCA (Markets in Crypto Assets), which is the European regulatory framework related to crypto assets. Not to mention the presentation of Aptus.AI's machine readable format at the EFIF (European Forum for Innovation Facilitators) assembly and its inclusion in the first Open Call of the Bank of Italy's Fintech Milano Hub.

Exploiting Daitomic's AI, quantity and complexity become effectiveness and accuracy

After the - unsuccessful - attempt to find out how many laws compose in the Italian regulatory maze, it is time to talk in more detail about the Ariadne's thread which can lead us out alive. Indeed, considering the context just described, one question is inevitable: how can Italian controlled entities ensure compliance with so many and so complex laws? Having introduced our machine readable electronic regulations, we can finally explain how, concretely, Daitomic can help all those who need quick, up-to-date and accurate legal information. First and foremost, Daitomic offers constant and timely monitoring of legislation and also allows users to prepare for the entry into force of a regulation, thanks to the regulatory outlook function, which also allows users to analyze legal texts in the stages prior to their official publication. In addition, Daitomic is able to identify risk areas in relation to the internal regulations of financial institutions, sending customizable email notifications - automatically and in real-time - about updates pertaining to regulatory areas of interest. Starting with the email alert, Daitomic then allows users to automatically identify related regulatory obligations and cross-reference them with impacted internal procedures, preparing a real-time regulatory gap analysis and instant impact analysis on impacted internal procedures and policies. Not only that. Daitomic’s AI-powered automated analysis today also includes a Generative AI service that allows users to chat directly with regulations, instantly requesting and obtaining legal information that would have taken hours of regulatory analysis.