About Us

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The DPA informs policy and decision-makers to encourage fair competition, inclusivity, sustainability and resilience of technology in the fast-evolving digital world.

WHAT WE DO

The Digital Policy Alliance (DPA), originally founded in 1993 as EURIM, alerts Parliamentarians and policy makers to the potential impacts, implications, and unintended consequences of digital policies on governance, individuals, society, and business.  We collaboratively cut across organisational and cross-sector boundaries to produce informed, representative, and authoritative research and publications. We review government policy, legislation, and regulation both in the UK and internationally.  We research and develop informed policy ideas for decision-makers to encourage fair competition, inclusivity, sustainability, and resilience of technology in the fast-evolving digital world.

WHAT WE ARE

We are an independent, politically neutral, cross-party broad-based policy membership organisation providing a forum for the technology and digital sectors.  To safeguard its independence and financial transparency DPA is a not-for-profit company limited by guarantee.  We are funded solely by our members.

WHO WE ARE

We are governed by an unremunerated experienced Board of Directors, and our Chair, the Earl of Erroll, is an independent cross-bench peer. We are financed by subscriptions from our non-parliamentary members, who include corporate suppliers and users of digital technology, trade organisations, academia, charities and small businesses. We are unique in our network bringing together members and representatives from a wide range of areas including local, regional, and central government, regulators, policy bodies, industry groupings and other membership organisations.  We have a Memorandum of Understanding with the European Internet Forum (EIF) whereby we exchange information about key topics, meetings and offer speakers where appropriate.

HOW WE OPERATE

We have active expert technical working groups producing consensus-driven outputs for Parliamentarians, Ministers, civil servants, and industry members. We distribute our findings to policy decision-makers and influencers through a programme of targeted events and the publication of research, concise briefings, reports and papers.  We focus on digital-related topics such as digital national infrastructure, cyber security and e-crime, data protection, digital skills, internet safety, digital competition, and the development of a smart society.  Working group activity is reviewed on a quarterly basis by the DPA Council, so that in the ever-evolving digital world, the focus remains relevant and timely. All meetings are conducted under the Chatham House Rule.

WHAT WE ARE NOT

We are not a lobbying group. There is no party political prioritisation to our work. We do not get involved in campaigning. We do not advocate positions on behalf of individual members or interest groups. We do not promote specific technologies.

SOME ACHIEVEMENTS

  • We set the agenda for the original European Telecommunication liberalisation programme.
  • We helped establish the priorities for Transformational Government, including the need to address the issues of secure data sharing.
  • We alerted Government to the need for more effective co-ordination and collaboration with industry in the fight against e-crime and helped set the agenda for a number of Government anti e-crime initiatives.
  • We led the DigiChampz project which was an EU Commission-funded project that showcased the European Union's flagship Digital Agenda policies.
  • In April 2018 we successfully launched the Publicly Available Specification (PAS 1296) for age checking.
  • We argued effectively for the inclusion in the Digital Economy Act 2017 of the power for the Regulator to block non-compliant websites world-wide in order to protect children.
  • We hosted an international meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force in the House of Lords in March 2018.
  • We were invited to hold a Smart Society Working Group meeting on "The Barriers to making a City Smart" at the first meeting of the Intelligent Communities Forum Global Summit to be held outside of the USA in June 2018.

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