The need to redefine policy priorities, the roles of stakeholders, and to identify new tools has never been more pressing. Tensions, nevertheless, persist between established and emerging approaches to policy and regulation and new strategies will need to prove themselves.

Five strategies are at hand for policy-makers and regulators to navigate the digital transformation and connect the unconnected.
  1. Build ambidextrous leadership: Policy leadership is built around embracing ambiguity and uncertainty with a growth mindset and out-of-the-box thinking, so when new challenges emerge, policy-makers and regulators can combine the ‘tried-and-tested’ with a new approach, and with equal ease.
  2. Bridge silos and break through insularity: Silos are still common in national institutions and policy implementation. Adopting a whole-of-ecosystem approach to policy inception, design, prototyping and implementation is an issue in many countries – where these issues persist, they hinder digital market development, innovation and value-creation.
  3. Develop a common language: Building a common language across stakeholder groups is essential to avoid policy implementation getting lost in translation. Leveraging stakeholder dialogue and data to guide decisions will co-create more diverse and resilient regulatory solutions.
  4. Reframe and operationalize policy agendas: In the wake of recovery from COVID-19, governments have an opportunity to reframe their policy agendas and mainstream new priorities along with a broad development perspective. The circular economy, digital innovation, and gender empowerment have moved to the forefront of a new systemic approach where new legal instruments will redefine the focus for global action in the face of economic, technological, and climate disruption.
  5. Skill up, and up again: In the “new normal”, the speed of learning provides a competitive edge in business and technology. Problem-solving is impossible without building new skills and competences, formulating strategic thinking around new issues in digital markets and implementing novel regulatory approaches. A focus on emerging skills is key to building adequate institutional capacity and preparing for current and future challenges.

As digital markets grow and move towards everything-as-a-service, an agile and iterative, lean approach to policy and regulation has started to develop. The agency of regulators and policy-makers and their agility will be the keys to making the implementation of digital policies more impactful.