Five questions the UK IGF must answer in 2025

Setting the scene for UK IGF 2025

As we approach the 2025 UK Internet Governance Forum (IGF), the speed of change in the global governance landscape is outpacing the systems designed to manage it. Geopolitical competition over digital infrastructure, the emergence of frontier AI systems and the strain on long-standing multilateral processes are reshaping how the online world is governed. At the same time, regulatory approaches are diverging sharply across jurisdictions. Brussels, Washington, and capitals across the Indo-Pacific are advancing distinct frameworks for data governance, platform oversight, digital identity, and algorithmic accountability.

In that context, the UK IGF is an opportunity for a range of stakeholders to discuss how the UK should respond to this period of fragmentation, uncertainty, and increasingly competitive digital politics.

The UK enters this discussion with real strengths: a track record of regulatory innovation, the ability to convene across sectors and a globally recognised tech ecosystem. But these strengths exist alongside a more challenging global backdrop. Tensions between major powers threaten the stability of digital flows, standards diverge rather than converge, and public trust in technology continues to erode.

This article sets out five key questions the UK IGF will need to address if the UK is to move from reacting to digital disruption to shaping the rules of the next phase of the internet.

1. How should the UK respond to rising digital fragmentation?

The idea of the internet as a single, interoperable space is increasingly at odds with reality. Divergent data rules, incompatible AI standards, national security controls, and conflicting approaches to content governance are now part of the daily operating environment for both governments and businesses. This shift is no longer academic, but a core strategic challenge facing global companies. They are attempting to run services across competing regulatory regimes, maintain cross-border operations, and design digital products that can survive scrutiny in radically different political contexts.

The UK IGF is an opportunity to discuss how the UK will sustain international digital flows, how it will align with partners without importing unnecessary friction, and how it can push back against fragmentation in global standards-setting bodies.

2. What model of trustworthy and ethical AI governance will the UK champion?

Frontier AI has moved from research environments into widespread deployment far faster than policy frameworks anticipated. Governments are now scrambling to catch up, with the EU pursuing a rules-first approach, the US relying more heavily on enforcement and China adopting a state-led alignment model. Across these systems, one theme continually emerges: a genuine demand for clarity, predictability, and a shared understanding of what “good” looks like.

The UK IGF is a space to discuss balancing innovation with meaningful risk management, and which approaches the UK should prefer. Without coherence, AI governance risks fragmenting even more quickly than the technology itself.

3. How can the UK address power imbalances in the digital economy?

Critical layers of the digital stack, from cloud services and high-performance compute to app distribution and algorithmic amplification, are now dominated by a small set of firms. Regulators from the UK Competition and Markets Authority to the European Commission are already probing these dynamics.

At the UK IGF we need to discuss the reality of how AI-driven concentration of compute and data is reshaping the market, what mechanisms might enable fairer access to digital infrastructure and whether SMEs and scale-ups can realistically compete in an environment increasingly shaped by hyperscalers. These issues matter not only for competition policy but for the health of the entire innovation ecosystem.

4. What should a secure and inclusive digital identity ecosystem look like?

Digital identity is rapidly becoming the foundation for how individuals prove who they are, access services, make payments, and move across borders. Yet the models being discussed, from decentralised systems to national digital ID schemes, remain politically sensitive and often poorly understood by the public. The examples that work best internationally tend to strike a balance between security, privacy, user control, and interoperability. They succeed not because they impose identity on people, but because they build trust into the system from the outset.

With digital ID rising up the political agenda, the UK IGF offers a chance to move beyond polarised debates and towards a clearer discussion of what kind of identity ecosystem would genuinely enhance people’s lives while protecting their rights.

5. How will the UK protect children’s rights in AI-mediated environments?

Children’s online experiences is one of the most politically charged areas of digital policy, with new legislation emerging across multiple jurisdictions. AI-enabled personalisation, deepfakes, recommender systems, and targeted advertising introduce new risks that older regulatory models were never built to handle. In supporting companies navigating these rules, we see both the complexity and the importance of designing services that are safe, privacy-preserving, and developmentally appropriate.

For the UK IGF, the central challenge is to define what protections children need in environments increasingly shaped by AI, how enforcement can be made more coherent across borders, and how safety, privacy, and proportionality can be balanced in a way that is effective rather than merely symbolic.

Shaping the next phase of the internet

These five questions run through every major digital policy debate the UK will face in the coming year. They cut across AI governance, data and competition policy, digital identity, and online safety, and they sit at the intersection of domestic politics and the wider global digital environment. At Access Partnership, we see these dynamics play out daily in our work with governments, regulators, and companies around the world, giving us a clear view of both the risks and the opportunities ahead. The UK IGF will not settle every issue, but it can help the UK shift from reacting to events to helping shape the rules that will govern the next phase of the internet. These are the conversations I look forward to advancing.