ICO to help business with innovation and Privacy by Design

The ICO is keen to provide data privacy expertise to other UK regulators to ensure rules and regulations keep pace with future technologies, and has been awarded a grant of £537,000 by the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

The ICO will set up a Regulators’ Business and Privacy Innovation Hub to support businesses, with other regulators, to comply and understand privacy and data protection – for example by helping them to build privacy in right from the start in innovative products and services.

The money will fund a total of 15 unique projects run by UK regulators that will use new and emerging technologies, including AI and robotics, to drive forward innovation and improve efficiency in the public sector, the ICO says.

Chris Taylor, ICO Head of Assurance, who is leading the hub project said: “Data protection by design has been around for a long time, and although it’s now the law, it is not a barrier to innovation. We are keen for regulators to approach us and see how we can work with them to make sure businesses’ ideas can be developed while ensuring data privacy is considered at the outset and that they get that support alongside other innovations regulators are developing.”

The Hub will work alongside the ICO’s Regulatory Sandbox – an initiative to create a safe space where organisations are supported to develop innovative products and services using personal data in innovative ways.

For further information contact hub@ico.org.uk. See the ICO survey on Regulatory Sandbox.