Training module B: Answers to the practical exercise no. 1

In exercise no. 1 you could explore whether the following countries: Somalia and Namibia are currently covered as a market in the system.

Assignment A: Part 1) Regulatory search: Somalia

Open Digicomply, and go to Search and start typing "Somalia". 

When you start typing 'Somalia' the autocomplete dropdown will show the note within “Somalia Market”: Somalia is not covered nor monitored by SGS Digicomply, however, partial content might be there.

Somalia Market

*Additionally, the name of such market is presented in Italic font, which also indicates that it is not covered, nor monitored. If you go over the market field with the mouse, a tip box opens and once again explains that the market is not covered:

  • Attaining the regulatory horizon of such a market is still possible:

Somalia search by text

Somalia expand

In the image above you can see that there are Search options to look for applicable content in the system for Somalia, e.g. coming from Incidents, Regulatory, Scientific, Social news, or Other.  So this can be utilized in certain cases to explore different types of content available even if there is no country-specific regulatory content.

Assignment A: Part 2) Regulatory search: Namibia

Open Digicomply, and go to Search and start typing "Namibia". 

Namibia, like other covered markets, is in regular font:

In the Data Categories, you will see the number of search results.  Namibia All posts

When you go to Regulations, you will see on the righthand panel a link to any Regulation Guides.

To learn more about Regulations Guides, go to this KB article.

In Regulatory search, you can switch between different options:

  • In Force
  • Not In Force
  • Upcoming 
  • Guidance
Namibia, regulations
Search results are also presented in the overview table where the results are sorted by relevance (by default), but you can edit the sorting based on your requirements. Reg Search tab

Assignment B: Understanding Regulatory Guides

Explore the map to see the regulatory coverage of interest inside available guides
through the EXPLORE OPTION / FOOD GUIDES MAP / choose the Industry Food & Feed

Find what Guides exist for the two countries (if any).

Countries marked in orange are covered, while the ones in grey are currently not covered by a Regulatory Food Guide.

Besides country-specific regulation guides (Food regulation guides - FRGs), a market can have several market-specialized dossiers. Depending on the market, you can find a Regional/Union FRGs, such as EU FRG in cases of EU Member States, but also others as Supplements Dossier (SRG), pet food dossier, etc.

Regulation Market coverage like in the case of Namibia:

Regulation Market partial coverage like in the case of Somalia:

  • Where regulatory information about the market is collected from international sources and is without available dossier at the moment.

  • This means that although there is not an available guide for a certain country, you have access to the regulatory horizon of various news and notifications about the country, by choosing the widest search option ALL POSTS.

EXERCISES ARE COMPLETED

To learn more about Search and Regulatory guides, you can go to our Knowledge Base.

Useful articles about:


A Regulatory Guide exists for a majority of world markets that are monitored by our system. The list of all the total markets that are monitored can be found under the ‘Explore’ tab, ‘Discover Posts’ options of the menu.

Question: If I do not see a particular regulatory guide for a specific country, does that mean you are not monitoring the country

Answer: The majority of the markets we monitor include a corresponding Food Regulatory Guide.  We also have a Guide published for all the countries we monitor for cosmetic, personal care and household regulations.  Finally, there are also a certain number of Guides for food supplements.

How to search Regulatory Articles

In this article, you can learn how easily In this article, you retrieve a specific set of regulatory posts.

How to sort search results by relevancy

In this article, you can learn how to sort your results by relevancy based on the keywords you provide.  You can also sort your results by the most recent.