Reply To: The National Digital Twin Legal Implications

[James Harris]

@James,
A very astute observation and excellent feedback. Thank you.

You are entirely right that there is a story that needs to be told on how the emergence of an NDT works outside of the technical narrative that we have chosen to lead off with; keeping fairly close to home in recent times, to ensure that the message has the right starting point. There are of course significant areas of impact on areas such as finance and underwriting, where the availability of better decision making and risk visibility mechanisms could do lots for the reduction of WACC/hurdle rates for infrastructure investments, or in reducing project or through-life premiums. The potential impact on financial liquidity, investor confidence, project pipelines and therefore employment and ultimately, national economic output, should be clearer. In fact, the contributors to the roundtable raised this point on several occasions, and we will certainly be expanding our engagement in these areas in the next phase.   

Similarly, the social value of this improved transparency, in terms of how it can create new or improved ecosystems of digital services for the general public, is an interesting angle. How we plan for, and control this secondary market (or whether we should at all) is a multi-headed problem. A necessary one to start talking about though. There are parallels to be drawn in the way the energy sector is beginning to manage the emergence of its own secondary data market, enabled by technology such as the Smart Meters that many of us now have in our homes. We’re working closely with Ofgem and others to learn how their own governance arrangements are maturing, to inform our thinking.

The legal roundtable was the first step to pointing out where we had gaps. You are right that it does address threat rather than opportunity as a priority. We were looking primarily for the big hairy problems which might have caught us by surprise. There were also many areas of opportunity raised that were redolent with potential to explore further, but we chose to focus on the potential blockers this time around.

We’ve yet to solidify our activity plan for the legal sub-stream in the next phase, but I would be highly supportive of your recommendations. 

A long winded response, sorry. 

@Sarah, @Miranda, have I missed anything?

James