Legal Status of the Unified Incident Register within the Framework of Digitalization in Regulatory Inspection Activities

This research examines administrative and informational legal relationships arising in the creation and operation of a unified incident register for recording harm-causing events as a missing component of the digital ecosystem for regulatory inspection in the Russian Federation. The article analyzes a fundamental contradiction in the current stage of regulatory inspection reform: despite the normative establishment of a risk-based approach, the legislature has not supported this abstract principle with an instrument for objective and standardized recording of harm-causing incidents. The prevailing situation results in risk management that is often based on fragmentary data or subjective inspector discretion. This, in turn, undermines the effectiveness of "smart" regulatory inspection and leaves its digital infrastructure with an "open loop" that fails to reflect the state of the regulated environment. The research employs formal-legal methodology, systematic analysis of administrative and information law norms, doctrinal approaches to government digitalization, and legal modeling methods. The scientific novelty of the research lies in proposing, for the first time in domestic administrative-legal doctrine, not merely an idea but a comprehensive legal framework for the examined information system. Within the proposed model, the register's legal status is defined, and a multi-channel architecture for its information content is developed, including automated inter-agency interaction, legal obligations for controlled entities to report incidents, and integration with medical institutions and emergency services data. Particular attention is devoted to resolving accompanying legal conflicts: mechanisms for processing personal data and information constituting medical confidentiality are proposed based on existing legislation. Furthermore, the significance of register data as legal facts for initiating regulatory inspection activities and as admissible evidence in administrative-tort proceedings is substantiated. The author concludes that creating a unified incident register is a necessary step for completing the transition from "process-based" to "outcome-based" regulatory inspection.