Annex C
ENGAGEMENT WITH INDUSTRY, REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT
AGENCIES/DEVOLVED ADMINISTRATIONS, AND EUROPE
1. PARTNERSHIP
WITH INDUSTRY
Working in partnership with industry pervades
all of our work to help promote a dynamic Creative Economy in
the UK. Deep enduring partnership between government and industry
works because it produces better formulated policy, clearer, fit
for purpose regulation, and a trusting and collaborative environment.
It is not the role of Government to pick winners but Government
can help to create the climate for success. Part of that is leading
and facilitating the debate to help industry itself identify the
solutions to many of the challenges it faces, ensuring that concerns
are listened to, challenged where necessary and addressed where
possible.
Government adds value when facilitating understanding
and dialogue across value chains and industries, such as on Broadband
through the Broadband Stakeholder Group (BSG), across the digital
content industry through the Digital Content Forum (DCF), across
all sectors of the wider digital economy through Intellect, and
Intellectual Property though the Creative Industries Forum on
Intellectual Property and the IP Crime Group. For example, on
the Forum, the dialogue this has engendered has been very valuable,
leading to a general recognition that new and emerging business
models must benefit everybody in the chain. DCMS intends to involve
a similarly broad cross section in the Creative Economy Programme.
The Government's response to the recommendations of the Creative
Industries Forum on Intellectual Property is a good example of
the sort of activity which has been going on in this area.
2. MUTUAL POLICY
ENGAGEMENT WITH
REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT
AGENCIES AND
DEVOLVED ADMINISTRATIONS
Government is actively engaging with the nine
English Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) and Devolved Administrations
on the Creative Industries agenda through a process of mutual
policy influence. This involves drawing in regional thinking into
national strategy and influencing the Regions/Nations in the development
of their own Economic Strategies. The RDAs have a combined annual
budget of £2.1 billion with responsibility for enterprise,
innovation, productivity and inclusion in their regional economies.
We are asking Ministerial colleagues to work as a team with the
RDAs through the DTI. The point is that the economy needs to be
driven at the regional level but we need joined up thinking to
inform their work.
Many RDAs, as well as the Devolved Administrations
are focusing on Creative Industries as an integral part of their
regeneration agenda to attract inward investment to create new
jobs and wealth. A key driver for partnership is that Government,
the Regions and Nations all recognise that in order to flourish
creative enterprises increasingly need to group together in creative
clusters. There are many examples of thriving Creative Industries
clusters throughout the UK. Pooling together resources into networks
and partnerships to cross-stimulate activities boost creativity
and realise economies of scale. The social and economic potential
of creative clusters are significant and together with other stakeholders
such as the Business Links organisations and industry itself,
Government is working to create an enabling environment for these
clusters to continue growing.
To highlight some of our key work with RDAs
and Devolved Administrations to date: In 2004 a Broadband Content
Business Case—"How Broadband Content can aid the delivery
of Regional and Devolved Administration Economic Strategies"
prepared in partnership between the DTI, the RDAs, the Devolved
Administrations and industry, set out to demonstrate how integral
broadband content and applications are to economic strategies
at all levels. In particular, the paper demonstrated how broadband
content and applications help deliver economic outcomes in four
policy areas—business, learning, public sector and community,
and their contribution to drive up enterprise, innovation, productivity
and inclusion. Embedding broadband content within economic strategies
will, of course, bring benefits right across all industry sectors
but represents a particular opportunity for the Creative Industries.
Over the past two years DTI has held workshops
with the RDAs, Devolved Administrations and industry to support
their efforts, in particular on broadband and the impact on the
digital content industries. And in November 2005, DTI and DCMS
initiated a dialogue with the RDAs, Devolved Administrations and
industry and other interested Government departments to ensure
that activities aimed at growing the computer games industry in
the UK are coordinated and developed strategically.
All these initiatives aim to achieve a balance
between unique regional initiatives and the national agenda. This
engagement is being broadened in 2006.
3. WORKING IN
A EUROPEAN
CONTEXT
The Government is also working with the EU as
part of the Lisbon agenda, which is the driving force behind the
EU's work to achieve higher employment, productivity and sustainable
growth across the European Union. The Lisbon Agenda has as its
ultimate goal to make the EU "the most dynamic and competitive
knowledge based economy in the world" by 2010. The EU has
recently launched the i2010 Strategy—a Strategy for Jobs
and Growth. The i2010 Strategy recognises that we have now reached
a threshold with massive growth in the information society and
media services and that digital convergence requires greater policy
convergence both at EU and national level. This has resulted in
the merger of EU policy for both the media and the traditional
information and communication technology spheres, a basis to create
a fully inclusive and holistic strategy for action in these areas
over the next five years.
The UK has been working hard to take forward
the aims of the i2010 Strategy, and Ministers from the 25 Member
States held a policy debate on the strategy and agreed a set of
specific actions when they met in December 2005. During the course
of 2006, we will be focusing on some of the specific streams of
the i2010 Strategy, not least of which is the future of the Television
without Frontiers Directive and the review of the 2002 Electronic
Communications Framework. The first of these is particularly relevant
in the context of this discussion on the Creative Economy and
both provide us with a timely opportunity to ensure that our regulatory
framework encourages the emergence of the digital economy across
the European Union. We will want to ensure that any changes to
these two legislative proposals enable the development and delivery
of new digital content services; and that they remain light-touch,
so that they do not inhibit, but rather encourage the growth of
new products and services by the Creative Industries.
The UK also influences a range of EU Programmes
aimed at promoting Innovation, eg Framework Programmes, eTEN,
eContentplus that enables organisations to apply for funding
in collaboration with EU partners. Recent examples of competitions
where Creative Industries have participated include search technologies,
e-learning, cultural and scientific heritage.
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