Panel minutes for 27 February 2024

Minutes of the Digital Advisory Panel (DAP) meeting

27 February 2024, 10:00 to 11:00.

Virtual meeting via Microsoft Teams.

Panel Members:

• Andy Payne, Chair
• Francine Bennett
• Simo Dragicevic
• Steve Homan
• David Hurst
• Christian McMahon
• Paul Smith
• Alison Pritchard
• Darren Williams.

In Attendance: REDACTED.

Apologies: None.

1. Welcome and introductions, apologies, note of last meeting and declarations of interest

The Chair welcomed attendees to the meeting.

There were no apologies.

There were no new declarations of interest.

The minutes of the meeting held on 17 January 2024 were approved as a true record of the meeting.

2. DAP Chair – extension of term as Chair

The Head of Expert Groups referred to the email he had sent DAP advising that Andy Payne had agreed to remain as the Chair of DAP for the next year, up to May 2025. The Chair commented that he was very pleased to be asked to continue in his role as Chair and was looking forward to the year ahead.

3. Update on data programme

DAP received an update on the data programme:

• capacity building
• on procurement, we have drafted an invitation to tender (ITT) drafted for engagement with suppliers via Crown Commercial Service (CCS).
• recruitment
• an additional data scientist has been recently recruited (we will therefore have 2 data scientists in post by mid-April)
• we will reopen the data engineer role with one agency where we have built a good relationship.
• culture and awareness
• we are looking to obtain budget for training to help build more awareness of data across the Gambling Commission
• the culture and capacity work will be co-ordinated with the launch of the Corporate Strategy.
• pilot projects and other issues
• a range of projects have been discussed and we sense that we have good coverage across the Commission
• REDACTED
• the second analytical project is focusing on streaming sites
• on Facebook ads, we have had promising discussions between our data engineer in digital and the Advertising Standards Agency
• on open banking, the initial analysis is very interesting and can be shared at a future DAP meeting, and there will be a presentation on open banking at the Spring conference
• REDACTED
• Regular Feed of Operator Core Data (ROCD)
• we will not be linking datasets between operators
• REDACTED We have made some compromises in the data spec but nothing that sacrifices the ability to answer core questions
• we are updating the draft data protection impact assessments to resubmit to the Information Commissioner’s Office
• the pitch document to operators has been created and discussed with the DAP subgroup
• we are collating information on a range of datasets we would like to make more use of and to identify risks. In addition, we are looking to have a more strategic conversation with DAP colleagues about ways to solve problems and open up opportunities in a way that manages relevant risks.

The Chair requested to join the other 2 working groups he is not currently involved with, more as an observer, which was agreed.

DAP asked questions and made comments:

• Paul Smith offered to share experience and learning on how to use data and solve issues through market analysis and research
• REDACTED
• REDACTED
• it is worth considering whether there is anyone else in other government departments who have done this work before and to create a mapping document to support conversations
• we have spoken to a variety of other regulators to get points of clarity and transparency but we do not want to go into too much more of the exploration process at the current time
• we need to know what data we are going to require from people before we go out to them otherwise, they might come back to us with what they require, rather than what we require. We do have a prepared spreadsheet with 70 defined data points
• the key is to make the process and stages very clear and to then have an asynchronous document to work with. The Google document sharing is still challenging for the Commission due to its IT controls however, we could use Slack for this purpose as we have previously trialled it out and there are other precedents that we can point to
• there is a lot of ongoing work in the data space and we need to get capacity to keep pushing on at pace.

Commission spring conference

The Head of Public Affairs and Corporate Comms joined the meeting and gave a brief overview of the Commission’s upcoming Spring conference and talked through the agenda for the day:

• this year’s conference is entitled ‘better evidence, better outcomes’, building on last year’s successful conference on setting the evidence agenda
• the idea of pulling together a diverse set of stakeholders last year really worked, which we are continuing to do this year
• we have made real progress since last year and have used feedback to develop the Gambling Survey of Great Britain (GSGB) and have published our three-year evidence gap research last summer, for example
• DAP members Francine Bennett and Simo Dragicevic will be panel members on the day on the AI panel and closing panel, respectively.

DAP asked questions and made comments:

• when we think about better outcomes, we are using that as a focus to move back to our licensing objectives and it is important that we are focusing on better outcomes for everyone – operators, consumers and the Commission
• one of the main purposes of the conference is to showcase that this is not a repeat of last year and we will also be trying to look in some areas on how we make better use of the evidence we have, for example; we have a specific session this year on illegal online gambling and how we are working with others to make progress on that front
• we have ended up with around 150 attendees which has way exceeded the original number of 120 invitees, which underlines the current credibility of the Commission in this space
• post the conference, we are planning to share outputs, including via a post-event round up blog to start with. It was noted it would be beneficial to really showcase all angles and the seriousness of the event by putting out video clips on social media, for example
• the Commission really needs to drive the agenda as the regulator and DAP members would be very keen to see the outputs from the sessions taking place on the day.

Any other business

There was no other business to discuss.

Date of next meeting: 9 April 2024.