Keeping pace with online safety policy: it’s a marathon, and also a sprint!

This week, Andy Burnham dissolved the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), with its functions redistributed across a number of government departments. Online harms will sit within a strengthened Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), returning home to where the Online Safety Act (OSA) started its life.

Whatever your opinion on the end of DSIT, or whether the pace of online safety reform has been too quick or too slow, we can all agree that an awful lot has changed in the last 10 years. The OSA started life as the Internet Safety Strategy in 2017, before beginning its journey through Parliament as primary legislation in March 2022. Since then, we’ve seen updated OSA illegal content duties and new priority offences from Ofcom, new criminal offences around AI-generated deepfakes in the Data (Use and Access) Act, and amendments to the Crime and Policing Act requiring platforms to remove non-consensual intimate imagery. That’s before even considering the powers afforded to the Secretary of State in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act, which provide the regulatory mechanism for the much-tailed social media ban for under-16s.

The passing around of responsibility for online safety is about more than the machinery of government. Public expectation is now the engine driving this agenda, with polling consistently showing support for action, and high-profile cases keeping the issue firmly in the headlines. Whoever is in power, and whatever the parliamentary timetable, the view is that something has to be done.

In short, working in online safety often feels like a balancing act; a simultaneous marathon and a sprint. You are juggling various Bills, on different subjects and from different Departments, all of which shape the overall online safety regime, while keeping an eye on longer-term regulations and wider developments.

Balancing all of these elements, and maintaining an effective influencing strategy, is essential for stakeholders on all sides of the debate, but it can be tricky to do so without a steady hand.

Recess doesn’t mean it’s time for the offseason

Summer recess usually means a welcome breather for Parliamentarians and public affairs professionals alike. But, with Andy Burnham now in Number 10, and a new Cabinet appointed, new priorities could be on the horizon. It’s unlikely that we’ll see a complete pause on online safety, but a change in leadership could shift the emphasis, rather than the destination. As such, this summer looks a little more like a quick hydration break: time to reflect and talk tactics, before diving straight back into an action-packed autumn.

Ofcom’s illegal content and children’s safety codes continue to expand, most recently with hash-matching measures to tackle intimate image abuse, due to enter into force this autumn. Further regulations on the same type of content, promised under the Crime and Policing Act, will sit alongside them. Similarly, almost all of the substance for the social media ban will be set out in secondary legislation rather than a fresh Act of Parliament.

The distinction between primary and secondary legislation matters for anyone trying to influence the outcome. Parliament has settled the big picture on these hot-button issues, and the detail will be drafted and scrutinised through regulations. For the social media ban, these will set out exactly which services are in scope, which activities are restricted, and who is affected.

For those already engaged, this is a vital time to keep the pressure on. For those who haven’t yet kicked off, now is the time to start preparing messaging, making friends and influencing people, especially if those wheels aren’t already in motion.

Spotting opportunities to pick up the pace

If the UK picture looks congested, it’s worth glancing across the Channel. In the EU, proposals for messaging services to scan private communications for certain types of abusive material lapsed in April, only to be revived in July through a procedural manoeuvre, surviving a vote in which more MEPs opposed the measure than backed it. Negotiations on this return in the autumn, and while the specifics differ to the UK context, the tensions are very similar. Any organisation operating in both jurisdictions ultimately has two moving regimes to track at once.

So, you have several distinct, fast-moving conversations, all running to their own clock. That complexity makes it harder, but far from impossible, to hold a single, coherent influencing strategy together, especially when the goalposts move every few weeks, and especially if you’re a small government affairs team.

Every new workstream, from the social media ban, to Ofcom’s codes of practice, is a fresh opportunity for engagement. Miss one window and you can’t replay the match, but there’s always another one to train for.

Deploying the right tactic, at the right time, to get the right outcome

Whichever side of the debate your organisation sits on, there’s always an opportunity to get your message across. VPN providers are weighing up what “highly effective age assurance” means for their networks and their users’ privacy. Safety tech providers are making the case for how their tools can support Government. Civil society groups are pushing Ofcom and government to move faster and go further than what has been promised so far.

Every organisation needs much the same things: early sight of what’s coming, a relationship with those working on it, and evidence ready to submit the minute a window opens, not after the final whistle.

This is the environment Clarity works in every day, across the connectivity, consumer tech, and enterprise technology clients we support, including our role as the secretariat for ISPA, the trade association for the UK’s internet industry. We track these developments minute-by-minute, translating shifting parliamentary and regulatory timetables into clear lines of action, and help organisations get in front of decision makers while there’s still a decision left to influence.

Marathon or sprint, it’s a race we know how to run, and we’d be glad to run it with you.