The message from leaders across government, industry and academia is clear: to unlock the full potential of AI and digital innovation, we must stop working in isolation. This is not just a technical challenge it’s a collaborative, user-focused strategy that will define the UK's global competitiveness.

A recent roundtable at the House of Lords underscored that innovation must start with real-world needs. Solutions should be co-designed with users, SMEs and customers, ensuring relevance, trust and adoption. The water sector’s experience with joint data standards and collective risk assessment was highlighted as a model for industry-led collaboration, anchoring trust and accelerating adoption. By focusing on high-value use cases, testbeds can foster cross-sector collaboration and create a commercialisation flywheel, making innovation both demand-driven and sustainable.

Aligning incentives and demonstrating value

Fragmented incentives remain a barrier. For businesses, joining a testbed or sharing data must make commercial sense, with clear value propositions and transparent business cases. Government investment should likewise be justified by demonstrable returns, whether through efficiency gains, data monetisation or broader innovation dividends. Mechanisms such as data marketplaces and innovation royalties can help align these incentives, but government’s role in de-risking and incentivising investment is critical.

Building trust through governance and ethics

Trust is foundational. Robust governance and ethical frameworks must be embedded from the outset, with security, privacy and responsible data stewardship as non-negotiables. The roundtable highlighted the importance of open, consistent and sector-agnostic governance for compliance and public trust. Transparency, clear ethical standards, and mechanisms to address concerns around data sharing and bias are essential, with public trust earned through ongoing engagement and accountability.

Designing for interoperability and scale

Interoperability is a design principle, enabling scale, resilience and seamless integration. The current landscape of siloed systems and inconsistent standards is a major barrier. There was strong support for a federated architecture – where testbeds are open, technically compatible, and interoperable from day one. This approach allows proven solutions and best practices to migrate across sectors and accelerating standards convergence.

Skills, collaboration and national capability

Building a resilient digital future is as much about people as technology. And interoperable testbeds must be viewed as essential national assets for upskilling, acting as the practical environment where advanced, cross-sectoral expertise is developed.

Sustained collaboration across government, industry, academia, SMEs and civil society is essential. By making best practices and solutions shareable, these testbeds ensure the knowledge gained in one sector is reusable in another. This unified approach is key to creating a national talent ecosystem and ensuring all regions participate in, and benefit from, the UK's economic resilience.

Testbed Britain: A national proposition

‘Testbed Britain’ is an ambitious but achievable vision. By connecting testbeds into a unified architecture, the UK can break down silos and enable scalable, cross-sector innovation. This will, harness both traditional strengths and new entrants for future economic and societal benefit.

Recommendations and next steps

 The collective wisdom of the roundtable points to immediate action:

• Establishing a cross-sector orchestration body;
• Accelerating standardisation efforts;
• Investing strategically in public digital infrastructure;
• Supporting data valuation and skills development  programmes;
• Enhancing government coordination.

These steps will help ensure that the UK’s digital future delivers lasting value for everyone. Download the full roundtable report and explore our recommendations in detail.

Interoperable Testbeds for Data and AI Roundtable

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