This 1.5 day invitation-only workshop will be held in Washington DC in early 2013, and will address challenges in information sharing and coordination in financial market regulation. Topics to be addressed include the challenges created through the volume and complexity of the data as well as the dynamic relationship between markets, financial instruments, technologies, and institutions involved in the markets and their regulatory processes. Therefore, computational scientists as well as information and social scientists will be included among the participants, and participants from industry, academia, and government will be invited. A workshop report will be published a s a result of this workshop.
The 1.5 day invitation-only workshop, to be held in Washington DC in early 2013, will address challenges in information sharing and coordination in financial market regulation. Topics to be addressed include the challenges created through the volume and complexity of the data as well as the dynamic relationship between markets, financial instruments, technologies, and institutions involved in the market and the regulatory process. Experts in computational science, information science, and social science will be invited from industry, academia, and government. The multi-disciplinary approach will increase the likelihood of impact on future regulatory practices.
Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE Non-systematic and ad-hoc information sharing practices among financial market regulatory agencies are regarded as key contributors to the 2008 financial crisis. Since then researchers and practitioners have worked to understand and mitigate the challenges to routine and systematic information sharing in financial market regulation. In her testimony on the Lehman Brothers Examiner’s Report before the House Financial Services Committee in April 2010, Chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Mary Schapiro called particular attention to the critical role of information sharing and coordination in meeting public expectations, "Effective information sharing by regulators is critical to fulfilling our regulatory obligations, and it is something that the American public has every right to expect. Cooperation and coordination with other financial institution regulators is essential." On November 14, 2013, the Center for Technology in Government (CTG) at the University at Albany, SUNY www.ctg.albany.edu and the Institute for Financial Market Regulation www.albany.edu/ifmr (IFMR), a joint program between the University at Albany www.albany.edu and Albany Law School www.albanylaw.edu, convened a National Science Foundation (NSF) funded expert workshop focused on exactly this problem; striking a balance between innovative trading systems that protect privacy and proprietary interests and systems that provide regulators with the information they need to ensure the safety and stability of our markets. The Information Sharing and Coordination Challenges (ISCC) in Financial Market Regulation (FMR) workshop www.ctg.albany.edu/news/iscc_home focused on identifying and defining the particular challenges to the sharing of financial market data created by today’s fast-moving and complex financial markets. The research agenda setting workshop was highlighted in November by the Obama Administration as a high-impact collaboration promoting Data to Knowledge to Action for growing the economy. Information on this White House initiative can be found at www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/ostp. Richard Ketchum, chairman and chief executive officer of Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), the largest independent securities regulator in the U.S., stated, "Technology and the data it allows us to see is changing the way we regulate the markets. Already, there are a number of technological resources – especially in the areas of data, risk analytics and surveillance – that are changing the way FINRA and other regulators examine firms and oversee the markets." Ketchum added. "We are at the very early stages of this still-new era of big data and cloud computing, but the transformative potential for regulation is very promising." Theresa Pardo, director of CTG and PI on the grant, said, "The use of information and communication technology in financial markets has accelerated while research on the interactions between technology and organizational and behavioral dynamics of financial market regulation has lagged. This workshop brought together leading experts from across the sectors to collaboratively outline a research agenda aimed at filling the gap in what is known about these critical interactions." "Changes in finance, technology, and regulation, especially over the past 20 years, have fundamentally altered financial markets," said David McCaffrey, co-director of IFMR and Co-PI on the grant. "Transactions are more complex, dispersed, and unevenly-regulated. Effective monitoring of the markets requires multiple parties getting the right information and acting on it in coordinated ways. Sometimes these processes are managed effectively and sometimes they are not." Two previous workshops by NSF and others focused on the development of analytic tools and techniques to protect and monitor our financial markets. To complement these more technical efforts, this workshop focused on ISCC and the interdependent nature of organizations and technology. Participants included senior staff from a range of government regulators, private firms and recognized scholars in the relevant academic disciplines as well as those with experience applying their deep disciplinary expertise to problems that require interdisciplinary insights and responses. Plenary remarks from Daniel Gallagher, Commissioner, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Linda Powell, Chief Data Officer, Office of Financial Research (OFR), Department of Treasury, and Dr. Mark Flood, Research Principal, Office of Financial Research (OFR), Department of Treasury set the stage for the discussion. Two multi-sector panels were held to identify issues on how financial and regulatory organizations, individually and as part of a complex system, implement technology and utilize the resulting data movements shaping current and future FMR. The first panel focused on identifying issues related to our ability to manage, model, store, transmit, and validate information on financial market operations. The second panel focused on how organizational factors affect information sharing and coordination in related business processes, risk management, and internal and external supervision and control. Each panel was followed by a moderated small group discussion designed to discuss a prioritized and elaborated list of important questions relating to the panel discussion. The research agenda is scheduled for release in March of 2014. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE
