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Jadzia Pierce

Jadzia Pierce advises clients developing and deploying technology on a range of regulatory matters, including the intersection of AI governance and data protection. Jadzia draws on her experience in senior in house leadership roles and extensive, hands on engagement with regulators worldwide. Prior to rejoining Covington in 2026, Jadzia served as Global Data Protection Officer at Microsoft, where she oversaw and advised on the company’s GDPR/UK GDPR program and acted as a primary point of contact for supervisory authorities on matters including AI, children’s data, advertising, and data subject rights.

Jadzia previously was Director of Microsoft’s Global Privacy Policy function and served as Associate General Counsel for Cybersecurity at McKinsey & Company. She began her career at Covington, advising Fortune 100 companies on privacy, cybersecurity, incident preparedness and response, investigations, and data driven transactions.

At Covington, Jadzia helps clients operationalize defensible, scalable approaches to AI enabled products and services, aligning privacy and security obligations with rapidly evolving regulatory frameworks across jurisdictions—with a particular focus on anticipating enforcement trends and navigating inter regulator dynamics.

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On 3 June 2026, the European Commission published several legislative and policy measures wrapped up in one “tech sovereignty” package (see our posts summarising the package as a whole here, and diving deeper into the Cloud and AI Development Act here). But the EU’s tech sovereignty drive has a long history, and is by no means limited to this package. In this post, we take a closer look at the current and forthcoming EU legislative measures aimed at increasing the resilience of services provided in the EU against external, malicious influence, a key aspect of tech sovereignty. Relevant legislation falls into two broad categories: (1) laws promoting cyber resilience generally, to prevent malicious actors from disrupting services and critical infrastructure; and (2) laws focused on building supply chain resilience and reducing dependencies on certain external actors by building European industrial capacity in key tech sectors. … Continue Reading Looking beyond the tech sovereignty package: how the EU is moving to ensure tech sector resilience

Since our prior post on Singapore’s Model AI Governance Framework for Agentic AI, Singapore’s Infocomm Media Development Authority (“IMDA”) has published an updated version (Version 1.5) (the “Updated Framework”), incorporating feedback from over 60 organizations.

The Updated Framework, published on May 20, 2026, retains the same four-pillar structure—(1) assess and bound the risks upfront, (2) make humans meaningfully accountable, (3) implement technical controls and processes, and (4) enable end-user responsibility—but expands the guidance in several notable respects. These include a new discussion of multi-agent systemic risks, more granular guidance on technical controls, and real-world case studies illustrating how the Framework can be applied across sectors. We summarize some of the key updates below.

Continue Reading Singapore Updates Model AI Governance Framework for Agentic AI

The UK Government today announced that it intends to ban social media platforms from offering services to children under 16, alongside wider restrictions on certain online functionalities that the Government has identified as harmful to children.

The announcement follows the conclusion of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology’s (“DSIT”) consultation, “Growing up in the online world,” which received more than 116,000 responses (we originally wrote about that consultation here). The Government intends to bring the first regulations to Parliament before the end of the year using powers created by the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act 2026 (“CWSA”), with protections expected to come into force in Spring 2027. Today’s announcement is the latest in a series of significant developments reshaping the UK’s online safety framework. We summarize some of these latest developments below.

Continue Reading Online Safety in the UK: Social Media Ban for Under 16s and Other Recent Developments

Much of the attention on the European Commission’s recent proposal for a Cloud and AI Development Act (“CADA Proposal”) has focused on its proposed cloud sovereignty framework, the implications for cloud service providers and public sector cloud use, and the mechanisms intended to encourage data centre development in the EU (we discuss those aspects of the CADA Proposal in more detail in our post here).

But the CADA Proposal also contains several express references to the development of the EU quantum computing sector, which suggests that quantum computing may be embedded within the EU’s wider cloud, AI, and data centre strategy, and that the Commission may promote the development of the technology in that context (rather than treating it as a separate technology policy issue). That approach is consistent with the Commission’s July 2025 Quantum Strategy and its expected proposal for a Quantum Act later this year, both of which focus on building the industrial base for quantum computers in Europe (we describe the Quantum Strategy and the likely themes of the forthcoming Quantum Act in our prior post here).

In this post, we outline the two main mechanisms through which the CADA Proposal would support the development and deployment of quantum computing in Europe, in advance of the Quantum Act.

Continue Reading How the European Commission aims to promote the EU quantum sector through the Cloud and AI Development Act

On 3 June 2026, the European Commission (“Commission“) published its proposal for a Regulation establishing a framework of measures for strengthening Europe’s cloud and AI ecosystem—the Cloud and AI Development Act (“CADA Proposal“). The CADA Proposal sits at the heart of the Commission’s broader Tech Sovereignty Package (which we describe at…

Continue Reading The EU Cloud and AI Development Act in Depth

On 19 May 2026, the European Commission published its long-awaited draft, non-binding guidelines on the classification of high-risk AI systems (“HRAIs”) under the EU AI Act (the “Guidelines”). Across three documents—covering general principles, high-risk classification in the context of regulated products (Annex I), and high-risk use cases (Annex III)—the Commission sets out its approach to one of the AI Act’s central questions: when does an AI system fall within the high-risk regime (and, just as importantly, when does it not)?

Continue Reading EU AI Act Update: The European Commission Publishes Draft Guidelines on HRAIs

On June 3, the European Commission published its Tech Sovereignty Package, a set of legislative and policy initiatives designed to address what the Commission characterizes as Europe’s technological dependencies on non-European suppliers. The Package marks a further step in the evolution of the EU’s technology policy, with initiatives spanning the full tech stack—from chips and infrastructure to software, cloud, and artificial intelligence. Through this “ecosystem” approach, the Commission seeks to reduce supply-side dependencies by strengthening domestic capabilities in Europe and stimulating demand in downstream sectors.

The Package comprises four components: two legislative proposals—(i) the Cloud and AI Development Act (CADA), and (ii) the Chips Act 2.0—as well as two non-legislative initiatives—(iii) the EU Open Source Strategy and (iv) a Strategic Roadmap for Digitalisation and AI in Energy.

This blog post provides an initial, high-level overview of the four initiatives through which the Commission seeks to advance a “European way” to tech sovereignty, with potential implications for industrial ecosystems in Europe and beyond, including cloud, telecoms, automotive, aeronautics, and defense sectors.

Continue Reading EU Tech Sovereignty Package

On 7 May 2026, negotiators from the Council of the European Union, the European Parliament, and the European Commission reached a provisional agreement on the terms of the Digital Omnibus on AI, marking the first set of amendments to the EU AI Act since its adoption in June 2024. The final package of amendments reflects…

Continue Reading EU AI Act Update: Timeline Relief, Targeted Simplification, and New Prohibitions

On May 8, 2026, the European Commission (“Commission”) published draft guidelines (“Guidelines”) on the implementation of the transparency obligations under Article 50 of the EU Artificial Intelligence Act (“AI Act”), opening a targeted consultation that runs until June 3, 2026.

The Guidelines are non-binding, but they are the first Commission instrument to provide interpretive guidance across the full scope of Article 50. They were prepared in parallel with the related, but more narrowly scoped, Code of Practice on Transparency of AI-Generated Content (“Code of Practice” or “Code”), the second draft of which was published on March 5, 2026.

Continue Reading 10 Takeaways: European Commission Draft Guidelines on AI Transparency under the EU AI Act

On March 25, 2026, the UK’s Office of Communications (“Ofcom”) and the Information Commissioner’s Office (“ICO”) published a joint statement setting out their common expectations for age assurance on online services (“Joint Statement”). The Joint Statement is aimed at services likely to be accessed by children that fall within the scope of the Online Safety Act 2023 (“OSA”) and UK data protection legislation, and is designed to help providers comply with both their online safety and data protection obligations when deploying age assurance.

The Joint Statement arrives alongside a broader push from both regulators—including Ofcom’s recent call to action directed at major tech firms, an open letter from the ICO urging platforms to strengthen their age checks, and several enforcement actions by both regulators.

Continue Reading Ofcom and ICO Issue Joint Statement on Age Assurance