2021 highlights from Policy and Insight
Published: Wed 8 Dec 2021
Through the IET’s Insight and Policy team, we seek to inspire technology innovation, develop best practice, provide robust, impartial information to key stakeholders, and influence government policy.
Working with our expert panels, industry, academia, and Government, we continued to provide engineering solutions across many industry sectors.
Through interviews, blog posts, reports, consultations, webinars, and more, we aimed to deliver insight to advance technology and innovation for the benefit of society.
Our highlights span the key sectors covered by the policy and insights team:
Built Environment
Within the Built Environment sector, we identified why supplying structured data is important, how to avoid poor investment decisions, safe ways to share information about products across the supply chain, and more. And we debated the question: is 48VDC the safe and affordable electricity solution we need?
Design and manufacturing
This year Design and manufacturing discussed how the role of manufacturing engineers will evolve in the future years, digital resilience, Horizontal InnovationTM, manufacturing 2040, the net zero imperative, and more.
Digital
Following the fear and misinformation surrounding 5G in 2020, the Digital sector looked at the future of the national wireless infrastructures and opportunities for 6G. We also discussed the benefits and challenges surrounding internet voting.
Energy
The Energy sector presented the benefits of a whole system approach to a high renewable, net zero electricity system and explored technologies that we can use to decarbonise the UK energy system and shift our energy demand from fossil fuels to a low-carbon supply.
Engineering Safety
Our Engineering Safety sector set out the key principles of arc flash risk management using a risk-based approach and highlighted the need for sweeping changes in the construction world to ensure resident safety.
Healthcare
Healthcare set out recommendations to support the acceleration of artificial intelligence for drug discovery and the reduction of attrition rates and heard expert opinions on highly debated hot topic issues with The Evidence Space.
Innovation and skills
Our annual skills survey of engineering employers in the UK produced by the Innovation and skills sector focused on the skills requirements for delivering the UK Government’s net-zero target by 2050, the subsequent impacts of Covid-19 on engineering employers, and more.
Transport
Advancing safety in through automation was a key topic for our Transport sector and we issued a response to the Transport Select Committee on the roll-out and safety of Smart Motorways.
We’d like to thank everyone who engaged with any of our content this year. If you missed anything then be sure to catch up with our highlights.
From us all in the Policy and Insights team, we wish you a joyous festive period and a happy new year. We look forward to seeing you again in 2022.
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For any questions or queries, contact us at policy@theiet.org.