Letter from DSIT Secretary of State to Ofcom: categorisation of services under the Online Safety Act
Published 25 March 2024
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The Rt Hon Michelle Donelan MP
Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology
3rd Floor, 100 Parliament Street
London
SW1A 2BQ
25 March
Further information regarding categorisation for the Online Safety Act
Dear Melanie,
Thank you for your advice and research of 29 February 2024 on the threshold conditions for categorised services under the Online Safety Act (‘the Act’). I appreciate the hard work that you and your team have undertaken to bring this together.
As you will be aware, when making regulations under the Act I am required to consider, for Category 1, the likely impact of the number of users of a service, and its functionalities, on how easily, quickly and widely regulated user-generated content is disseminated by means of a service. I have reviewed this advice in detail, and I am reaching out to request further clarificatory information to help inform my decision. The categorisation process is fundamental to the operation of the Online Safety regime, and I am keen to ensure I have all the relevant information at my disposal to make a robust decision in line with my duties under the Act.
Your advice sets out that you have needed to use regulatory judgement in setting the user number thresholds. I would appreciate it if you could set out how Ofcom made its regulatory judgements in this area, including any sensitivity testing you undertook before making your recommendations.
In addition, I note that your advice makes reference to six functionalities, in addition to a content recommender system, which you considered as contributing to the easy, quick and wide dissemination of content. However, it would be useful to see any more information you can provide about each of the specific functionalities which you decided not to include in the final recommended thresholds. I would be grateful if you could provide any additional information or evidence you have related to these six functionalities, and how you considered them.
I want to thank you again for your advice and research in this area, and for any further information that you can provide. I am proud of the progress we have made to date to deliver the Online Safety regime. The above information will assist me in making the regulations for the categorisation thresholds, as soon as reasonably practicable.
Yours sincerely,
Rt Hon Michelle Donelan MP
Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology