Module 2

Finding and reading obligations: from sentences to duties

The raw material of regulatory mapping is the sentence. A regulation does not come with a list of tasks; it comes with articles, sub-paragraphs, definitions, cross-references and exceptions, and someone has to read all of it and write down what the business must now do. This is a skilled job, and most of the mistakes in a compliance programme begin here. One article is read as one duty when it holds five. A recommendation is treated as binding, or a prohibition is read as a permission. A deadline is missed because it was buried in a sub-clause. A word like ‘appropriate’ is left to each team’s guess. This module teaches how to take a sentence apart. You learn the six parts of an obligation, the four kinds of sentence, how to split an article into single duties, how defined terms and undefined standards work, how to rank the sources that bind you and how to write an obligation statement that an owner can act on. The Obligation Extractor does a rough first pass over invented text, so that you can see the structure and then check where it was wrong.

General education on regulatory mapping and compliance analytics, using invented regulations, regulators, companies and figures. It states common practice in simplified form and does not describe any one country's law, which differs and changes; rules on scope, interpretation, reporting, record keeping, monitoring of staff and penalties in particular vary. It is not legal or compliance advice, and it does not replace advice from a qualified lawyer on a real regulatory question.