Project summary

Amid growing geopolitical competition, both Australia and the UK have turned to ‘cyber power’ to assert their interests in cyberspace. This includes building the cyber resilience of industry, enhancing technical skills, conducting offensive cyber operations and, most crucially, developing new policies on privacy, identity, and trust that are aimed at the ‘whole of society’ or ‘whole of nation’.

The ‘whole of society’ approach to privacy, identity and trust promises not only to educate and re-skill populations that are increasingly the victims of cybercrime, but also to support the state more broadly in its strategic interests concerning cyber power.

With this in mind, this project aims to:

1. Examine the tensions within the new political economies generated by this frame upon privacy, identity, and trust in Australia and the UK;

2. Map how different cyber policy communities conceptualise and practice the ‘whole of society’ in these areas;

3. Develop policy recommendations in response to potential blind spots in who contributes to the shaping of cyber power and their implications for privacy, identity, and trust.

There has been minimal empirical research examining the impact of the frame of the ‘whole of society’ within cyber policy communities and its implications across different national contexts. We note how each state’s respective national cyber (security) strategies centre this frame and seek to examine the institutional, political, and cultural differences and its impact on cyber policy for privacy, identity, and trust.

This is collectively guided by three research questions:

• RQ1: How do cyber policy communities in Australia and the UK conceptualise and operationalise the ‘whole of society’ for cyber power?

• RQ2: How are privacy, identity, and trust situated as part of the political economy of cyber power?

• RQ3: What are the opportunities and challenges for policy making for privacy, identity, and trust through the frame of the ‘whole of society’?

To answer these questions, we will conduct two innovative case-based workshops in Australia and the UK, with experts from each country’s cyber policy community, including representatives from foreign ministries, intelligence agencies, militaries, and law enforcement, as well as industry, think tanks, civil society, and academia.

This research will inform the production of a policy report that examines the opportunities and challenges that each country faces in developing more inclusive and effective policy development on, privacy, identity, and trust through the frame of the whole of society. This will be followed by an analysis of the current political economy in a dedicated journal publication targeted to cyber policy communities.