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What is to be done about the ongoing exodus of workers from public sector positions in the U.S.? How can government offices work to hire, recruit, and retain the talent needed to provide effective public services? We explore this and more in Ascend's first-ever look at workforce planning.
Insight

What is the meaning of regulation? Why does it exist? Who does it affect, and how? We look at the broader issues surrounding regulation and licensing.

What is to be done about the ongoing exodus of workers from public sector positions in the U.S.? How can government offices work to hire, recruit, and retain the talent needed to provide effective public services? We explore this and more in Ascend's first-ever look at workforce planning.
Is AI a good thing or a bad thing? It's a question that's currently top of mind for lawmakers and citizens alike as the development of increasingly powerful AI technologies continues at a rapid pace. As Harry Cayton recently contemplated this question, he decided to ask ChatGPT to see what it had to say.
CLEAR’s recent International Congress in Dublin, Ireland took an in-depth look at common challenges dominating the world of modern regulation. Paul Leavoy shares his insights from the conference, which explored issues like improving continuing education efforts, how marketing tactics can bolster regulatory efforts, and why regulators should start thinking of regulation as a verb instead of a noun.
Governance elections are a vital dimension to healthy self-regulation. But as Ken Osborne explores in this article, they are increasingly under threat from low voter participation and politicization that can cause tension between representative and regulatory functions.
Our series on the history of cryptocurrency regulation in America concludes with a look at the 2022 crypto collapse. One after another, several major crypto firms filed for bankruptcy, causing Bitcoin and Ether to plunge in value. But even as many crypto founders faced criminal charges, the regulatory environment was still characterized by confusion and contradictions.
Just how many interstate licensing agreements are active in the U.S.? And in which professions are regulators looking to further promote license mobility? In our latest Ascend article, we take an in-depth look at the country's largest active and pending multistate licensing agreements.
Facing dire labor shortages in various health professions, legislatures are encouraging, cajoling, or ordering regulators to speed up and simplify the licensing of international professionals. But as Harry Cayton explores in his latest Voices column, there are often unintended consequences to this migration.
Regulatory reform of the legal services sector appears underway in British Columbia as the province considers moving the regulation of lawyers, paralegals, and notaries under a single regulator. Ken Osborne explores the rationale for reform as well as the potential benefits of the single statute, single regulator model.
Part 3 of our series on the history of cryptocurrency regulation in America looks at the 2021 Bull Run. During this period, which culminated in Bitcoin reaching an all-time high of $68,000, disagreements continued over the classification of Ether as a commodity and calls for regulatory clarity grew louder.
Ahpra offers a rare example of transformational change in the world of regulation. Over a decade after its founding, what has the agency taught us about what centralized health care regulation in practice can look like and how it can be implemented? What does centralization look like elsewhere in the world? We investigate this and more in our latest insight piece.
In March 2022, Thentia launched Ascend Magazine to engender education, conversation, and community around regulation and licensure. One year later, Editor-in-Chief Paul Leavoy reflects on the community it has built and its bright future ahead.
Written during World War II, the Simple Sabotage Field Manual instructed civilians living in Nazi-occupied territories on how to disrupt organizations by purposefully sabotaging productivity and progress. In this Voices column, Harry Cayton explores the striking similarities between the manual's advice on how to sabotage meetings and behaviors commonly seen at regulatory board and committee meetings today.
Part 1 of our series on the history of cryptocurrency regulation in America looked at the burgeoning years of cryptocurrency – mainly Bitcoin – and the attempt to regulate it through criminal enforcement actions. In Part 2, GovTech and regulation lawyer Sean Gellis covers the birth of the Ethereum network, the 2017 Bull Run, and the long crypto winter that followed it.
As the magnitude of the devastation wrought by the recent earthquake in Turkey becomes clearer, it’s fair to wonder how something like this could have happened. After a similar earthquake 24 years ago, Turkey implemented stringent building standard regulations. So why did the recent earthquake cause such widespread destruction? Paul Leavoy explores.
Experts like Malcolm Sparrow commonly assert that regulation is about the prevention of harms. But in order to prevent harms, we must understand risk – and this is where it gets complicated for policymakers. In this Voices article, Harry Cayton explores how our perception of risk in many parts of our lives differs from the actual risk of harm, and how this can distort regulatory policy.
In the wake of a tumultuous year for cryptocurrency, governments around the world are making moves to regulate digital currencies. While recent headlines suggest a flurry of scattered efforts to apply rules to govern cryptocurrency and its exchanges, this is a continuation of a regulatory trend.

Crypto’s history with regulators, lawmakers, and enforcement agencies spans a decade, but it can be challenging to make sense of it all. In the first part of this series on the history of cryptocurrency regulation, Ascend contributor Sean Gellis explores how the two have intersected over time, taking us back to the origins of digital currency and a comprehensive timeline of early cryptocurrency regulation in the U.S.

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Ascend Magazine lives at the nexus of regulation, licensing, public policy, and digital government. We share news, insight, and exclusive commentary from leaders in regulation and technology. 

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