“As digital technologies and AI develop at unnerving speed, can regulation keep pace? By inventing a notable innovatory model, the UK’s Digital Regulation Cooperation Forum (DRCF) has shown that statutory agencies can cross boundaries and pool their knowledge. Other states have adopted the forum’s prototype at a time of far‐reaching geopolitical and geoeconomic powerplays and profound domestic crises.”
In our latest article, just published in Policy & Internet, we have drawn on in‐depth interviews and our engagement with the DRCF’s staff. We reflect both on the DRCF’s neo‐regulatory practice and the complexity of doing fieldwork on contemporary regulation.
As digital regulation has developed in many jurisdictions, regulators have sought to keep up with the accelerating complexity of key players’ strategies in respect of the strictures of legislation while shaping markets, disseminating content and influencing consumption.
It is increasingly clear that siloed and sectoral conceptions of regulatory competencies are not fit for purpose. We have analysed the emergent form of neo-regulation as a key adaptation to the challenges of digitalisation and to the galloping pace of AI developments.
The Digital Regulation Cooperation Forum (DRCF) was devised in 2020 to address the emergent need for cross-regulatory collaboration. It is not a free-standing regulator but the collective agent of a quartet of statutory bodies – the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) and the Office of Communications (Ofcom).
Related models have been adopted in Australia, Canada, the Netherlands and the Republic of Ireland. In France, there is a nascent debate about the need for ‘inter-regulation’ and in the vast regulatory apparatus of the European Union, growing awareness of the need for ‘effective regulatory coordination’. Our research therefore considers an exemplar of what might well be an ineluctable trend.
As we show, it is still rare to undertake fieldwork in regulatory bodies. In undertaking our research, we were afforded an unusual measure of access, which is never to be taken for granted. Our relationship with the DRCF built on long-term engagement with regulatory bodies, establishing our informants’ confidence in the ethics of the research process, and exercising due discretion. We document how we gathered evidence. We also discuss our knowledge exchange with the DRCF, which greatly illuminated our analysis.
You are now invited to read the full article:
Click on image to read
, and . 2026. “ Researching Regulatory Innovation: The UK Digital Regulation Cooperation Forum.” Policy & Internet 18: e70047. https://doi.org/10.1002/poi3.70047.
CREATe regularly engages with UK regulators, through responses to consultations, research cooperation and networks, participation in advisory groups and organisation of roundtables (often held under the Chatham House Rule).
Recent discussions have focused on
- the interface between regulators (reflected in the formal and informal coordination of responsibilities between regulators, for example for mergers, algorithmic targeting, AI);
- the emergence of new modes of regulation (e.g., codes of conduct, codes of practice);
- the UK’s geopolitical position in a changing world (including its ‘freedom to operate’ after Brexit).
An earlier working paper (May 2025), documenting our engagement with the DRCF is available here:
https://www.create.ac.uk/blog/2025/05/02/new-working-paper-studying-the-digital-regulation-cooperation-forum-drcf/
CREATe/University of Glasgow is also offering a new Postgraduate Certificate in AI Law & the Creative Economy in partnership the British Institute of International and Comparative Law (BIICL). The PgCert will begin in autumn 2026, delivered as executive-style teaching blocks in Bloomsbury, London (supported by online preparatory learning). The courses can be taken individually and subsequently stacked to an LLM.
- Regulating AI in the Creative Economy – 12-14 November 2026
- Digital Creators, AI and the Law – 25-27 February 2027
- Data and AI in the Creative Economy – 20-22 May 2027
Further information is available here: https://www.gla.ac.uk/postgraduate/taught/ai-law-the-creative-economy/