The Digital Regulation Cooperation Forum, established in 2020, is a regulatory innovation that is somewhat unique to the UK. The forum emerges from a recognition that regulatory challenges we currently face spill over traditional regulatory remits. For example, an online app store can present privacy, consumer protection, market competition as well as IP challenges, all in the same digital service. Therefore, the DRCF describes its purpose as bringing “coherence to resolve potential tensions between our members’ regulatory regimes; collaboration to work together on complex challenges; and capabilities for the future, with the right people, skills and critical functions to navigate the rapidly developing digital economy.” This cross-cutting orientation mirrors in some ways the interdisciplinary and mixed-methods empirical approach taken by CREATe, making it an intriguing site for further study.
As part of CREATe’s Political Economy of Regulation theme, integral to the relaunch of CREATe as the Centre for Regulation of the Creative Economy in 2024 (with UKRI infrastructure funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, AHRC), Martin Kretschmer and Philip Schlesinger have started a long-term project on evolving modes of digital regulation exemplified by the Digital Regulation Cooperation Forum (DRCF). This new working paper is intended to be read as an introduction to this research.
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The Digital Regulation Cooperation Forum: A Research Note on Work in Progress
Martin Kretschmer and Philip Schlesinger
CREATe Working Paper 2025/5
Abstract
This paper introduces a research engagement with the Digital Regulation Cooperation Forum (DRCF), based on a review of published outputs, 20 interviews and a roundtable discussion with senior DRCF staff. The DRCF was established in 2020 by the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) and media and communications regulator Ofcom, with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) joining in 2021. We trace the origins of the DRCF as a non-legislative initiative in the British tradition of concurrent regulation, offer a taxonomy of seven activities undertaken by the DRCF and interpret these activities from the perspective of the DRCF as a brokerage agent. We point to future challenges and opportunities for a flexible, risk-based and innovation-focused approach to digital regulation, especially in the context of AI.
Related CREATe work on the UK regulatory landscape:
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).
A write-up of the Regulators’ Roundtable of 11 March 2024 can be found here: https://www.create.ac.uk/blog/2024/04/08/regulators-roundtable-2024/
Proceedings of an international symposium with the University of Sydney (29/30 March 2023), on ‘Policy Futures for the Digital Creative Economy’ – which included a Regulators’ Roundtable – can be accessed here: https://www.create.ac.uk/blog/2023/03/29/policy-futures-for-the-digital-creative-economy-international-symposium/
A platform regulation event held in London at the British Institute of International and Comparative Law (BIICL) is documented here (26 February 2020): https://www.create.ac.uk/platform-regulation-resource-page/