The Government has published its Digital and Technologies Sector Plan, as one of the eight ‘frontier industries’ identified in its wider modern industrial strategy (which we discussed here).

The Plan provides detail about the steps that the Government intends to take in the years ahead to support digital and technology businesses, setting out ‘action plans’ for six ‘frontier technologies’:

1. Advanced Connectivity Technologies;
2. Artificial Intelligence;
3. Cyber Security;
4. Engineering Biology;
5. Quantum Technologies; and
6. Semiconductors

Like other sector specific plans, a significant amount of focus is placed on measures to boost research and development investment and to increase access to finance. Similarly, there is a range of measures outlined to create a skilled workforce and to ensure that the regulatory environment is “more innovator friendly” by, for example, “commissioning the Regulatory Horizons Council to develop a framework to help regulators take more proportionate risks when regulating technologies and innovation”. In the case of AI, commitments are made to implement the AI Opportunities Action Plan (discussed previously here), as well as to introduce a new Sovereign AI Unit and AI Adoption Fund.

More generally, the Plan also sets out how the Government intends to take advantage of the UK’s “city regions and clusters” to support growth and innovation, and to establish a series of “stakeholder advisory panels and councils in [the] frontier technology areas” so that the Government can ensure that it successfully works with industry to implement the Plan over the next 10 years.

To read the Plan in full, click here.