Strong foundations: how can digital sovereignty help solve the UK’s growth crisis?

The UK stands to gain hundreds of billions of pounds over the next decade from AI, but our current data infrastructure is acting as a massive structural drag on growth. Right now, the UK operates as a ‘tenant state’, effectively paying rent to private tech vendors just to access and use public data. This fragmented patchwork of closed systems traps vital information in 20th-century silos, levying a ‘friction tax’ on citizens and businesses while stifling innovation.

Transitioning from a tenant to a sovereign owner of our core digital infrastructure - the shared operating system on which both public services and private innovation run - presents a massive economic prize, as evidenced by home-grown and international success stories like Open Banking and India Stack. But what does owning the digital foundations actually require? What has to structurally change to get there? And where are the opportunities for digital public infrastructure to unlock value from what already exists?

Join Nesta at the Labour Party Conference to explore what it will take for government to move from being a mere renter of services to the architect of a new digital realm - with the potential to unlock billions in NHS savings, energy efficiency and industrial growth.

Our expert panel will be chaired by Ravi Gurumurthy, chief executive of Nesta and includes Mallory Durran, Nesta’s applied research and methods director and Laura Gilbert, senior director, AI and innovation at the Tony Blair Institute. The panel will be followed by a drinks reception and the opportunity to experiment with Nesta’s Policy Atlas tool, which helps policymakers rapidly identify effective policies to tackle social issues.