Better together – how digital regulators are keeping pace in a fast-changing environment

As regulatory responsibilities grow, and markets increasingly turn digital, cooperation and coordination by regulators is more important than ever.

New regulatory and legislative initiatives including the Online Safety Bill, the Digital Markets Unit, and Age Appropriate Design Code mean regulators need to be more switched on than ever to the interactions across their digital regulatory regimes. Regulating ‘digital’ brings new and different challenges: the rapid pace of change, number of interconnected and cross cutting issues, and size and scale of the players requires closer regulatory coordination than ever before.

At the same time, it is incredibly important to deliver an aligned and coherent digital regulatory framework/landscape, which continues to encourage innovation and competition, and protect and benefit businesses and consumers.

The Digital Regulation Cooperation Forum (DRCF) was formed in 2020 and brings together the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the Office of Communications (Ofcom) and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to work together on these issues.

In this session, speakers from the DRCF will set out:

1. Introduction: How regulators are working together to support growth and innovation in digital markets
i. Background to the DRCF and how we work
ii. Priorities for 2022/23

2. In Focus: Algorithmic Processing
i. Building our understanding: the benefits and harms of algorithms
ii. The landscape for algorithmic audits
iii. Looking forward: improving algorithmic transparency and auditing

The event will be held as a virtual presentation, with time for the speakers to take some audience questions at the end of the session.