I am in the midst of preparing to fly to Seattle next week to be part of the Washington State’s Validation Study Kick Off (NARA WA Validation) meetings in Olympia.  This is a really big deal in early care and education licensing because the state is expanding the use of weighted risk assessment in making licensing decisions.  In the past, weighted risk assessment has been used for making determinations about individual rules or regulations and about the frequency of monitoring visits.  Washington state’s licensing office has always been at the forefront of monitoring innovations in being one of the first states to utilize licensing key indicators which has been part of their overall differential/abbreviated monitoring for many years now.   According to my records, they have the longest running use of licensing key indicators than any other state or province.

Washington has been working with the National Association for Regulatory Administration on their weighted risk assessment project for the past couple of years and the next 1-2 years will be devoted to validating their approaches.  The interested reader can find out more details about Washington’s Research Agenda by going to RIKInstitute.com.  I will also be providing updates over the next couple of weeks during my time in Seattle and Olympia.  This is another major step in moving the regulatory science field forward when it comes to regulatory compliance, licensing measurement, and differential monitoring systems.

An interesting discussion during my time in Washington (RAM1)(NARA WA Validation PPT).