Data-driven regulation, an additional tool for regulators
In this era of unceasing innovation, regulators rely more and more on the collection, utilisation and publication of data to amplify their ability to take action, notably in a supervisory and detection capacity, to empower users to make informed choices and to help steer the market in the right direction.
Data-driven regulation creates the ability to make stakeholders more accountable, increases the regulator’s capacity for analysis and makes more information available to users and civil society.
To formalise their thought processes and deliver an account of the progress they have made in this area, several regulators in France worked together to draft a dedicated memorandum that they are publishing today.
Regular dialogue and sharing mechanisms
On 24 June 2019, several French regulators (the Competition Authority, AMF, Arafer, Arcep, CNIL, CRE and CSA) held a meeting, attended by their chairpersons, directors and general secretaries.
At this meeting, mechanisms were set up for taking joint action between authorities in areas such as public procurement, knowledge management and human resources. Shared training initiatives, supplementary social protection, as well as common codes of conduct between certain authorities were thus put into place. All of these joint initiatives are listed in the annual reports of each of the authorities involved, as required by Act No. 2017-55 of 20 January 2017 on the general status of independent administrative authorities and independent public authorities.
Biannual meetings between authorities, such as the one held on 24 June that took place in Arcep’s offices, serve to steer this common work and to further the regulators’ dialogue on areas of shared interest. The authorities in attendance supported the idea of sharing their report programmes as a way to increase synergies.
In addition to adopting the joint memo being published today, this meeting provided an opportunity to hail the report on voice assistants published jointly by French Broadcasting authority, CSA, and Online distribution and rights protection authority, Hadopi, as an exemplary process that managed to gather a variety of viewpoints on a topic of common interest, notably by incorporating contributions from Arcep, the French Competition Authority and data privacy regulator, CNIL.
