INDIA | JANUARY | Issue 10 | World Standards Day: The Role of Standards in Supporting the SDGs

Message From SESEI

Greeting from Project SESEI!!!
Dear Readers,

I would like to begin by wishing you all a very Happy and safe 2022. I welcome you all to the tenth edition of the “SESEI newsletter - India.” Sharing of information and latest updates is one of key characteristic of the SESEI Project. It allows stakeholders to understand, stay abreast and take informed action based on the news and information shared with our readers. Both India and European Union are focusing alike on sustainability, energy efficiency and deployment of new technologies.

Sustain Development Goals (SDG’s) as popularly known were started by the United Nations in 2015 with an aspiration to achieve environmental sustainability alongside economic growth. The European Commission is ensuring all possible measures to ensure cooperation of the various public and private bodies many public and private partners, and the use of all available tools. In this context, standards, and standardization organizations such as CEN and CENELEC, have an important role to play. Voluntary, consensus-based standards can provide valuable solutions to complex, global challenges. The European Union has also signed three new initiatives to step up joint action in the World Trade Organization, sending a strong political signal on pursuing a strong environmental agenda for trade.

Realizing the important role of standards will play in sustainable development, at the recent COP26, CEN and CENELEC released a policy “Uniting the world to tackle climate change: COP26 and the commitments of European Standards”. The European Commission has adopted Communication on Sustainable Carbon Cycles, to drastically reduce its reliance on fossil carbon, upscale carbon farming to store more carbon in nature, and promote industrial solutions to sustainably and verifiably remove and recycle carbon.

I am also very happy to inform you that Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), national standard development body of India, has published Indian Standard IS 17802-"Accessibility for ICT Products and Services, Part 1: Requirements" which is a technical adoption of European Standard EN 301 549 v3.2.1 as developed by CEN, CENELEC and ETSI.

Vehicle emissions add to the green has gases. Innovation on Alternative fuels and electrical vehicles will be the future. To facilitate the integration of alternative fuels at existing fueling stations and to give guidance to design, authorize and operate new multifuel stations CEN and CENELEC developed the new Guide 38. Through Guide 38, the technical committees involved in the standardization of alternative fuels infrastructure will have a better view on how to ensure the global coherence of the integrated infrastructure when developing their respective standards. Under the European Green Deal the European Commission adopted four proposals that will modernize the EU's transport system, helping the transition towards to cleaner, greener, and smarter mobility.

Akin to EU’s Green deal programme, Digital Europe Programme has been developed overall Digitization of EU and its industries. The European Commission has adopted three work programs for the Digital Europe Programme, outlining the objectives and specific topic areas. The main work program, worth €1.38 billion, will focus on investment in the areas of artificial intelligence (AI), cloud and data spaces, quantum communication infrastructure, advanced digital skills, and the wide use of digital technologies across the economy and society, until the end of 2022.

ETSI EN 303 645, is regarded as the world leading consumer IoT security standard. Test specifications was released by ETSI ETSI TS 103 701, describing how a conformity assessment is performed in a structured and comprehensive way. This will allow supplier organizations such as manufacturers, vendors or distributers to assess the compliance of their devices against ETSI ETSI EN 303 645, in self-assessments or via testing labs. ETSI has also released a world class standard called Consumer Mobile Device Protection Profile, ETSI TS 103 732. The specification identifies key security and privacy risks for user data and provides appropriate protection. It ensures the protection of key user data such as photos, videos, user location, emails, SMS, calls, passwords for web services, and fitness related data. Another first from the ETSI is the ETSI DECT-2020 NR, the world’s first non-cellular 5G technology standard. This standard has been recognized by the WP5D of the International Telecommunication Union’s Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R) and included as part of the 5G standards in IMT-2020 technology recommendation. The standard sets an example of future connectivity: the infrastructure-less and autonomous, decentralized technology is designed for massive IoT networks for enterprises.

The 5Gi standards developed by Telecom Standards Development Society of India (TSDSI), is all set to be formally incorporated in the global 5G standard (3GPP). The DoT has been coordinating with the global players for the incorporation of 5Gi with the 3GPP standard. The new ICT technologies also necessitates the need to have robust cyber security strategy. The National Security Council is working on the National Cybersecurity Strategy, over the last two years and is in the cabinet for the final stamp.

ETSI Industry Specification Group (ISG) for Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) has started working on the next specifications release 5 is expected to drive ETSI NFV’s work into two main directions: consolidating the NFV framework and expanding its applicability and functionality set. Open Source Mano group of ETSI also announced OSM Release ELEVEN. Release ELEVEN includes significant functional extensions in areas such as interoperability with public clouds, interaction with cloud-native environments and integration of network functions of different natures.

As always, we look forward to your comments and suggestions to further improvise it. Happy New Year and happy reading once again.

Hope you will find this Newsletter informative. Happy Reading!!!!

Warm regards,
Dinesh Chand Sharma (Seconded European Standardization Expert in India)
Director – Standards & Public Policy
Mobile: +91 9810079461, Desk: +91 11 3352 1525
E-mail: dinesh.chand.sharma@sesei.eu