Editorial for special issue. BILETA Conference 2022

Abstract

As guest editors of the special issue, we are pleased to introduce to you four papers that were presented at the annual BILETA conference, our first hybrid conference since the pandemic. Held at the University of Exeter, the conference was based around the theme of creativity in legal regulation, and had a large number of presentations about the topic. In her insightful article Coordinating Digital Regulation in the UK: Is the Digital Regulation Cooperation Form (DRCF) up to the task? Dr Aysem Diker Vanberg explores the coordination of digital regulation in the UK and effectiveness or otherwise of the DRCF in achieving such coordination. Aysem argues persuasively that in its current form the DRCF may not achieve the objectives of promoting more coherence and collaboration and concludes that to effectively respond to the challenges posed by digital technologies, coordination between various regulatory authorities must be extended and formalised. Liesa Keunen has written about tax audits and fishing expeditions. Very much a current topic, Liesa outlines that technologies ability to collect, process and extract new knowledge has changed the way information can be gleaned for tax administration. Liesa looks at the issue of fishing expeditions, questioning whether tax authorities might be engaging in these. Liesa comes to a number of conclusions: a) that fishing expeditions are prohibited, b) that they are an intentional investigation with a purpose, and c) that speculation and excessiveness are a distinctive conceptual characteristic of a prohibited fishing expedition. In her engaging article The European approach to damage caused by artificial intelligence enabled by global navigation satellite systems, Ioana Bratu provides us with a description of the legislative proposals issued by the European Commission in 2021 and 2022 in the context of AI systems enabled by GNSS. The article describes the legal bases of liability for damage caused by AI enabled by GNSS and critically evaluates the proposed EU solutions. Lastly, Dr Mehmet Unver assessing healthcare as a socio-technical system, focusing on fiduciary relationships and proposed framework. The article draws a conceptual framework for trust, and considers its relationship with AI and how it is governed under fiduciary law. It takes a socio-technical system perspective, and examines how to govern trust in such an AI driven system. Mehmet argues that a holistic viewpoint can provide a generalisable framework that can enable trust in AI drive socio-technical systems.