Regulation of industry
Research Topic
Language: English
This is a research topic created to provide authors with a place to attach new problem publications.
Research problems linked to this topic
- What are the potential unintended consequences of digital technology (5G, ORAN, Fibre, etc) policies and to what extent could the market mitigate them?
- What are the economic costs faced by businesses across different sectors, in relation to conformity assessment?
- How can different mixes of ‘responses’ – such as regulations, taxes (for example polluter pays), subsidies (for example public money for public goods), and spatial planning – impact the delivery of environmental, economic, and social outcomes at different spatial scales?
- What supply and demand side interventions would be appropriate and what could be their impact?
- Are international regulatory frameworks and technical standards currently helping or hindering UK innovators in achieving scale? How do key stakeholders rate our regulatory system compared to international competitors? How active / influential has the UK been in shaping international efforts to establish regulations and standards? Have UK industry and government built new capabilities / coalitions, effective in shaping global technical standards?
- What are the critical emerging technologies on the 5, 10, and 15-year horizon which have the potential to change cyberspace or impact on the UK’s cyber-power and strategic advantage? What novel critical applications of existing technologies could have the potential to transform cyberspace? How should emerging technologies be prioritised for cyber security research?
- How do we ensure that AI adoption in the public sector is safe?
- Evaluate the extent to which the emerging regulatory landscape and the implementation of relevant regulation can be harnessed as a driver to support growth.
- How can connected technologies can be secured when liability and responsibility of product security is unclear, due to convergence of technologies and systems. I.e., taking a system-of-systems approach, how can holistic and robust cyber security be ensured? What is the series of measures required to safeguard the whole system? For example, taxonomy of cyber security risks and threats from the research phase through to product development, deployment and embedding with other technologies and systems. How could the UK produce a world-leading approach to securing emerging technologies through an end-to-end process?
- What research and social experimentation can quantify harms and impacts of harmful online practices with a view to develop best practice principles and regulation?
- In what ways is the UK regulatory environment helping / hindering the plans and activities of innovators? Is it becoming more friendly or less friendly to innovators over time? Methodologically, what is the best way of measuring the health of the UK regulatory environment over time?
- Which interventions can be used to incentivise improvements in water quality in the environment?
- What are the opportunities to influence global digital standards?
- What is the fragmentation impact of disparate data standards and regulations being developed globally?
- How can we better measure interactions of regulations and how they adapt in response to innovation?
- What are the big strategic questions in relation to ‘Pro-Innovation Regulation’ that the government should be focused on? Do regulatory mandates and remits need to change and if so how, as markets and the economy continue to shift? Is sector-focused regulation struggling to cope with changing markets, and how should it interact with horizontal regulation? Should innovation be made an explicit part of regulators’ remit, without diluting their responsibility for consumer safety? How far should regulation be used to create new markets or shape existing ones?
- How can it be ensured, that regulatory reform promotes safe workplace practices and does not introduce or amplify risks?
- What could the government and/or industry do to help improve the cybermedicine of software supply chains?
- What factors can lead to poor building industry compliance within the regulatory regime? And what is effective in motivating industry to comply (including in relation to energy efficiency)?
- Advanced electronics: How will sensors, omics, geographical information systems, internet of things, be used to support regulation and enforcement needs across the agri-envrionmental and food sectors?
- Tackling forced labour in supply chains.
- What is the feasibility, benefits and road safety risks of relaxing driving licence regulation and training qualifications so people can drive certain heavy vehicles with less additional testing or professional development?
- What are the potential risks or unintended consequences of counter-disinformation interventions?
- What are the risks to UK interests if the industry led, multi stakeholder nature of the global internet is weakened in favour of greater state- or multilateral control?
- Given changing TV viewer habits (online vs terrestrial TV), how can the use of the remaining Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) spectrum be optimised? What is the potential of incentivising more spectrally efficient technology (e.g. Digital Video Broadcasting — Second Generation Terrestrial or ‘DVB-T2’) and enabling increased access for mobile services while facilitating a sustainable future for DTT (albeit with a reduced set of channels). Note: this work will need to be coordinated with DCMS and its planned DTT viewing and policy reviews.
- How can we better understand the risks and rewards of various regulatory approaches, such as sandboxes, and design a system that balances the two? What types of data sharing between regulators and businesses would enable greater innovative activity in the UK?
- How would a shift towards interoperable / decentralised social media (aka ‘the fediverse’) alter how disinformation spreads, and the ability to be able to address it?
- What cyber interventions that DSIT or NCSC runs are the most effective at reducing cyber incidents and improving cyber resilience? How effective are the NIS Regulations at securing operators of essential services in the UK? How effective is carrying out each of the 10 Steps to Cyber Security at reducing cyber risk?
- To what extent are the types and trends of harmful online mis/disinformation consistent between larger and smaller platforms?
- What are the current telecoms supply chain/RAN market concentration risks and how are they evolving? What has been/will be the impact of the economic and geopolitical risks on achieving greater market diversity. How could future technological trends affect market concentration risks in telecoms supply chains?
- What regulatory solutions could be efficiently deployed to mitigate harmful practices for digital consumers online? How do we measure their effectiveness?
- Does international regulatory cooperation help reduce regulatory barriers to trade in innovative products and services?
- There are legitimate but competing demands for access to the Upper 6GHz band by proponents of Wi-Fi and mobile services both internationally and in the UK. What are the advantages/disadvantages to the UK of an allocation favouring mobile or Wi-Fi compared to a hybrid option, which enables access but with limitations to both services?
- How can we ensure use of AI is ethical?
- What are the most effective policies and approaches taken by platforms to counter disinformation?
- What cyber interventions that DSIT or NCSC runs are most likely to be adopted and what is the positive impact of these? What drivers exist for the adoption of these? What are the barriers to adoption? Do sectors with more stringent regulatory measures see higher adoption of cyber security principles than non-regulatory driven protocols? What other non-UK government frameworks matter most to organisations?
- What is the most effective method for incentivising responsible technology design, in terms of cyber security? What are the barriers or blockers for using secure by design principles for cyber security of emerging connected technologies? Where have we seen successes in adopting secure by design principles for connected technologies? Is there a gold-standard or case study where security of a product has been considered during early inception? Has led to greater security of the product and fewer breaches?
- What evidence is there for not embedding adequate cyber security in highly commercialised or direct-to-consumer tech? What evidence is there on cybersecurity not being embedded adequately in sectors with lower regulation?
- What risk is there that generative AI evolves such that the content it generates can avoid detection faster than tools can be developed to detect it? How can international and industry collaboration limit this risk?
- How can it be ensured that regulatory regimes and interventions are coherent, effective, proportionate, and agile, influencing transparency and understanding to enable effective regulation thus offering confidence to industry to innovate?
- What is the trade-off of cost compared to security that companies are seeing? Could the cost of security cause businesses to minimise or abstain from effective security protocols and codes of practice that are produced by governments, regulators and international organisations/bodies? If so, what could be done to mitigate this risk?
- What are the (aggregate) impacts of current digital regulations implemented by the UK Government? What are the best/potential measures that can evaluate impacts? What could a best practice monitoring and evaluation framework look like?
- Which policies and interventions have the greatest potential to reverse the lack of progress in road casualty reduction since 2010?
- What is the scale, scope and function of the unregulated legal services market in England and Wales?