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Citizens Advice response to Ofcom consultation: “Open Communications: Enabling people to share data with innovative services”

Citizens Advice response to Ofcom consultation: “Open Communications: Enabling people to share data with innovative services” 130 KB

In the context of BEIS’s recent response to the Smart Data Review and it’s complementary objectives, we welcome the opportunity to respond to this consultation. As the statutory advocate for the consumer in energy and postal services, and as an independent voice for people in essential markets, we see this as a potentially important piece of work to facilitate better outcomes for consumers across regulated sectors.

Open Communications, as framed in the consultation, are applicable across domestic and microbusiness regulated utility markets, including telecoms, post, energy, water and banking. We encourage the government and Ofcom to actively coordinate across sectors to unlock the breadth of data-sharing opportunities, particularly that of better data sharing to improve data quality about consumers in vulnerable situations. In our response, we outline our rationale for this approach.