In July 2020 the Mayor of London tasked the new Chief Digital Officer of the Smart London Board to develop a set of criteria to guide emerging technology in London. This Tech Charter aims to ensure that citizens are engaged and listened to in the process of creating new technologies, so their concerns about the impacts of technology on their life. 

The City of London wants the emerging technologies to be transparent, to be designed for the needs of the citizens, and to meet the highest standards for all, including privacy and cyber security. One of the main principles of the Charter is the respect of digital rights and promotion of equality and diversity both in the design and use of emerging technology. Working together with other cities of the Coalition, London supports that human rights principles should be incorporated by design into digital platforms that serve the city.  

London encourages the adoption of established user-design principles and the proactive design of the consequences of technology that can be harmful to the citizens, through the consequence scanning. In addition, public bodies should identify if the technology or service meets the Public Sector equality duty and if the new technology replaces an existing service. Then provision should be made for continued access to this service by people who do not have either the required device or skills to access it by the new route. Finally, London explicitly considers any potential bias and invites other cities to justify the reason why certain groups are excluded from the benefit of emerging technologies.