The new Prime Minister has formed his Cabinet, and the person leading UK technology policy is Dr Peter Kyle, who has been appointed as the UK’s new Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology.
Dr Kyle has a PhD in Community Economic Development and has worked primarily in the areas of social exclusion and youth work. He is a strong believer in apprenticeships and increasing social mobility and is expected to focus on technology skills. He was diagnosed with dyslexia at the age of 30.
Dr Kyle is highly regarded by Chancellor Sir Keir Starmer and he was attached to the Department for Science, Technology and Innovation (DSIT) for 10 months before the election, although this is relatively recent.
Among his remarks Have Among comments about technology, Labour’s David Coleman stood out with comments on social media about MPs being “behind the times”. Saidwill not make the same mistake with AI and will pressure companies to share the results of their technology testing and roadmaps before GA release.
Yet the Labour manifesto barely mentions technology.
“Our industrial strategy, [AI] sector [and] “Removing planning barriers for new data centers” and “[we] Create a national data library to consolidate existing research programs and deliver data-driven public services.”
New “Office of Regulatory Innovation”
Labour has promised to set up a new Regulatory Reform Office to “accelerate approval timelines”. Suggest Existing “regulators are ill-prepared to deal with the dramatic developments in new technology.”
Dr Kyle’s relatively recent arrival in the role means that in analysing the future of his new department and how it will deliver policy under a new Secretary of State, it makes more sense to look at what the department itself has been doing and the overlap with where Labour’s priorities suggest technology might be most important.
Perhaps the two main areas of overlap are national security and energy.
Summary of DSIT
DSIT was formed by combining the former Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and parts of the former Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). Its remit spans research and development, infrastructure (such as broadband), international cooperation, and legislation to improve competition and enable innovation. DSIT states that one of its key mandates is to “put public services at the forefront of innovation.”
One of the departments that carries out this task is the DSIT’s “Government Technology Transfer Office” or GOTT. I focus We help government agencies and the public sector leverage data, intellectual property, skills, etc. (In November 2023, GOTT held its first national conference in London. We are funding over 100 projects, including the introduction of AI tools to analyze documents and deep tech in manufacturing and other industries.)
Like GOTT, much of the work that DSIT’s units do takes place out of the limelight. One such unit is the Geospatial Commission, which delivers the National Subsurface Asset Register, “a digital map of underground pipes and cables that will revolutionise the way we install, maintain, operate and repair our underground infrastructure”. (This ongoing project was born out of a cross-industry sprint at Northumbrian Water Group’s pioneering annual conference.) Innovation Festival.
Opportunities for cross-department collaboration
The Commission’s focus on infrastructure demonstrates DSIT’s ability to tackle projects that cut across the remit of other ministries and agencies, and two areas where DSIT may be called upon to provide expertise are: stack‘s views span national security, particularly border control and the energy transition.
On the former, Labour’s manifesto promised initiatives such as “striving for a new security agreement with the EU, ensuring access to real-time intelligence and enabling police teams to lead joint investigations”.
The new Prime Minister has clearly and regularly highlighted “security” as a policy priority and has promised to establish a new, well-resourced border patrol force, so we can expect significant technology investment upstream of security.
Of course, progress here has been led by the Ministry of the Interior; Simon Bourne, Chief Digital, Data and Technology Officer, has already delivery While some are important, DSIT’s mission to deliver public sector innovation may overlap with the work of the Department of Home Affairs and other ministries.
Technology and Energy Security: Hoping for Investment
Perhaps more importantly, there is potential for technology investment and transformation across the UK’s rapidly evolving energy sector.
Labour’s “Securonomics” focus is on energy security, which is a priority due to its synergy with both economic growth and sustainability.
Labour has pledged to create 650,000 jobs by 2030, “double onshore wind, triple solar and quadruple offshore wind by 2030”, invest in carbon capture and storage, hydrogen and marine energy, and speed up grid connections, which are crucial for the technology sector.
All of this will require significant levels of technology investment and adoption, as Casper Herzberg, CEO of AVEVA, the UK’s largest software company, points out: stack Comment of the week: “Labour expects a rapid increase in renewable energy and digital systems will be essential to support large-scale information sharing and collective insight.”
“This is essential to deliver the systemic innovation and agility needed to drive resilience, efficiency and profitability in the transition to net zero.”
The new administration has existing initiatives it can build on, including a pragmatic Energy Digitalization Task Force for 2022. Recommendations As The Stack reported at the time: hereInteroperability is important.
A digital spine?
Richard Dobson, co-author of the EDiT recommendations, said at the time: “There is simply no way that National Grid ESO or any central authority can ingest all the data about the energy system, synthesize it and produce actionable insights that can be used to operate the whole energy system in real time. This is particularly true because energy moves just as fast as data, if not faster. You can’t ingest all the data, process it, produce insights and operate the system from a central perspective. It needs to be decentralised to some degree to make it work.”
“And at the end of the day, there’s no one with the authority to do that right now…”
From a technology perspective, a key consideration for digitising the UK energy system is standards and guidelines, he stressed at the time. The actual technology already exists: “There’s a lot of existing technology stacks that can be picked up, reused and enhanced. The best approach in this space seems to be for the government to help set up projects, open source projects, to develop them from the ground up, leveraging existing open source technologies.”
(This will be the foundation of the digital spine, “a thin layer of interaction and interoperability between all the players.” [so a] A minimal layer of operationally significant data [can be] It is captured, standardized, and shared in near real time.
DPDI: What’s next for you?
Of course, energy and security are outside the purview of DSIT, but they are likely to be areas where significant technology investments will be made.
It is unclear what exactly Labour and the new DSIT chief intend to do on the regulatory front – for example, the previous government’s Data Protection and Digital Information Bill (DPDI) made it to committee stage in the House of Lords but was unable to be finalised before Parliament was dissolved ahead of the general election on 4 July.
Much will become clear in the coming weeks and months.
However, the new Prime Minister’s recent speech (“[we will] Use public investment to further support and unlock private investment,” in a landmark 2023 paper.Modern Supply Side Programs [pdf]” signals the arrival of investment, and in the modern world, technology will be at the center of much of it.
“Return to a proactive industrial strategy”
The Chancellor said last year: “The UK needs to become more resilient… A return to a proactive industrial strategy is fundamental to a modern supply-side approach. If the UK is to rebuild its productive capacity, we need to forge new and deeper partnerships between the public and private sectors.”
“Our prosperity and growth depend on securing the energy that powers our homes, the chips in our phones, the food we eat and the materials needed to build the buildings we live in. Sometimes, that will mean making more things in the UK. In other areas, it will require closer international cooperation, working with allies to secure supply chains…”
Details and implementation are yet to be revealed, but a close look at the new government’s focus on (economic, energy and national) security, and the new Minister of Technology’s passion for skills and inclusion, give us a rough hint as to the direction and potential investments to take.
Watch this space.
