CEN and CENELEC held the high-level 1- day Standards + Innovation Conference ‘Boosting Innovation Through Standards’ with the aim of fostering the market uptake of innovation and research outcomes by using standardization as an enabler. Leading experts in innovation and standardization presented their experiences in linking the two worlds and highlighted how each one is benefiting from the other. Know more about the conference and how standards can boost innovation thanks to the new dedicated webpage.

Discover how European standards contribute to the success of research and innovation activities, facilitating market uptake, finding partners (e.g. industry, policy, consumer) for your activities, using existing knowledge, transferring know-how or easing the access to financial resources.

The Indian government is considering beefing up the technical regulation regime in an attempt to curb non-essential imports into the country. BIS, the nodal standards regulator has been tasked by the Commerce ministry to notify at least 5000 technical standards as against the 370 or so that is present currently. The idea is to allow imports of only those products that conform to technical regulation norms that are being drawn up by BIS. Many countries used standards as a non-tariff measure to regulate imports.

To promote electric vehicles (EV), Power Minister approved amendments in guidelines and specifications for charging infrastructure. These revised guidelines and specifications shall supersede the earlier guidelines and standards. To address the range of issues of the EV owners, a phase-wise installation of a network of charging infrastructure throughout the country has been envisaged in the new guidelines to ensure that at least one charging station should be available in a grid of 3 km X 3 km in the cities and one charging station at every 25 km on both sides of highways and roads. Read More

For downloading revised guidelines please click here

• Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) amends MV Rules Mandating Adherence to AIS-155 to Enhance Vehicular Security.
• Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH) has invited suggestions and comments for mandating BS VI level Emission Norms for Quadricycles.

• Ministry of Electronics and Information technology (Meity) has released “Guidelines for Procurement of Cloud Services”
• Consultation Paper on Cloud Services
• Draft Telecommunication Consumer Education and Protection Fund (Fifth Amendment) Regulations, 2019 
• Recommendations on Allotment of spectrum to Indian Railways for Public Safety and Security services 
• The Telecommunication (Broadcasting and Cable) Services Standards of Quality of Service and Consumer Protection (Addressable Systems) (Second Amendment) Regulations, 2019 
• TRAI releases The Standards of Quality of Service of Basic Telephone Service (Wireline) and Cellular Mobile Telephone Service (Seventh Amendment) Regulations, 2019 

India has been identified as one of the key markets by the CEN and CENELEC. To address the India market related issues and to create synergies with the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) and other important Indian standardization bodies, India Task Force was constituted. As a first step towards creating close working relationship with the Bureau of Indian Standards and to understand the commonalities and gaps on standardization strategy and standards development process between India and Europe.  A two-day joint workshop was organized by BIS, CEN CENELEC on 26^th and 27^th November 2019 at New Delhi, India. Presentations made during workshop are available here

To boost exports, Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) has been directed to set standards for export items, which get rejected for non-compliance of global quality norms. The Minister said that the countries like Europe have new standards & parameters and our exporters are not able to comply with them. He has directed BIS to ensure all standards are in line with global standards.  At present, only 50 % of standards are at par with international norms.

India has joined the league of 15 of the world's leading city networks and technology governance organizations for advancing the responsible and ethical use of smart city technologies. The G20 Global Smart Cities Alliance will create global norms and policy standards for the use of connected devices in public spaces, a World Economic Forum (WEF) release said.