Until it was succeeded in June 2007 the DTI continued to set the energy policy of the United Kingdom.

There were ultimately nine main areas covered by the DTI: From 1999 to 2005 it led the national E-Commerce Awards with InterForum, a not for profit membership organisation that helped British businesses to trade electronically.

It also had responsibility for investigating misconduct by company directors, in which role Private Eye repeatedly lampooned it as "the Department of Timidity and Inaction".

[9] The Small firms' Merit Award for Research and Technology (SMART) was a discretionary business grant scheme run by the UK Department of Trade and Industry for a number of years in the 1980s and 1990s.

The award was made to companies winning an annual competition (organised regionally) based on a judgement of the technical and market viability of research or technology development proposals; in essence the award represented seed-corn funding for innovative developments that had some market potential.