When the licence is the story

For operators of licensed autonomous systems, the regulator’s decision is published at a time of the regulator’s choosing, in the regulator’s words. What the operator says next is the only part it controls.

For a growing number of our clients the most important document in their business is a licence for an autonomous system, and the most dangerous day of the year is the one on which a regulator publishes something about it.

Licensing decisions about autonomous systems are unlike most regulatory events. They are published on the regulator’s timetable, often with little notice; they are written in the regulator’s words, which are precise and sometimes unflattering; and they are public in a way that inspections of factories or audits of accounts usually are not. A decision to suspend or revoke a licence is, in effect, a published finding about whether a system can be trusted.

The operator’s statement

The operator’s first statement after such a decision is read by three audiences who want different things. Customers want to know whether the systems they depend on will keep working. Staff want to know whether their jobs are safe. And the regulator, which will consider the operator’s next application and perhaps its appeal, wants to know whether the operator understands what it found.

The temptation is to write for the first two and against the third. It is a mistake. A statement that disputes the regulator’s findings in public, or describes them as a misunderstanding, will be read by the people who decide the operator’s future, and it will be in the file when they do.

What works

Say what the decision covers and what it does not, precisely, in the regulator’s own terms.
Say what the operator is doing in response, in terms of actions that can be checked.
If the operator intends to appeal, say so, and say that the decision remains in effect while the appeal is heard.
Tell customers directly, before they read about it, and give them a person to call.
Do not use the statement to argue the appeal. That is what the appeal is for.

An operator cannot control what the regulator says. It can control whether its own words, read back a year later, look like those of an organisation that deserved its licence.