Charter for Emerging Technology

Theo Blackwell is London's first Chief Digital Officer and leads on London-wide digital transformation, data and smart city initiatives at City Hall. Read his update below to find out more about the consultation results and what’s next.

The public consultation consisted of a survey and two discussions: on new technology and the charter's key principles. 741 of you took part – a big thank you! Although this is not a representative sample of Londoners — and probably skews towards those with more of an interest in technology — the findings are nevertheless a starting point for further discussions with Londoners as a whole.

Views on technology: you strongly leaned towards technology being a force for good rather than bad and overwhelmingly felt that the impact on individuals themselves over the next 20 years would largely be positive either in major or minor ways.

Impact of technologies: you were broadly split on whether the pace of technology was “overwhelming” and agreed that it changes their lives for the better, and didn’t create more problems than it solved but agreed (82%) with the fairness-related statement “Technology does not have to meet the needs of all people, but it should not unfairly impact one group at the expense of the other.”

Should public services trial new technologies? 88% of you supported trialling of new technologies by London’s public services. It was viewed as more favourable for public services to trial new technology, for example Transport for London or the NHS (net +81%) over large tech companies (net +42%) and landowners (net +39%).

Views of types of emerging technologies: you had very positive views about the future of environmental sensors for air quality, wildlife, and footfall (net +82%) and 5G (net +65%). Other forms of technologies were favoured by smaller margins: Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality (net +18%) Artificial Intelligence & machine learning (net +15%). ‘Computers making decisions with algorithms’ ranked lowest (net -4%).

Support for new measures: you strongly supported a public register for all sensors that collect data in London (89% very important or important) and an Emerging Tech Charter for the city.