www.sesei.eu | dinesh.chand.sharma@sesei.eu | M: +919810079461 | Tel: +911133521500
Standards

European Commission Launches Standardization Strategy

The European Commission (EC) has published a new Standardization Strategy outlining the EU's approach to standards within the Single Market as well as globally. The Strategy is accompanied by a proposal for an amendment to the Regulation on standardization, a report on its implementation, and the 2022 annual Union work programme for European standardization. This new Strategy aims to strengthen the EU's global competitiveness, enable a resilient, green, and digital economy, and to enshrine democratic values in technology applications. The new Standardization strategy illustrates the EU approach to standards concerning the Single Market and globally proposes five main actions:

  • Anticipate, prioritize and address standardization needs in strategic areas

  • Improve the governance and integrity of the European standardization system

  • Enhance European leadership in global standards

  • Support innovation

  • Enable the next generation of standardization experts

TAGS #standards
Standards

CEN and CENELEC Welcome the New European Standardization Strategy

European Committee for Standardization (CEN) and European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC), two of the three officially recognized European Standardization Organizations, welcome the new European Standardization Strategy which reinforces the common efforts to deliver on the ambitions of the twin transition.

The Strategy, newly released by the European Commission, aims to respond to the need for Europe to strengthen the strategic role standards play in the Single and the Global Market. It sets the pathway to better support Europe’s competitiveness and strategic autonomy, facilitate the dissemination of European innovations and ensure that European and international standards are in line with the EU's interests and values. CEN and CENELEC share the value the Strategy gives to standards as a key tool to contribute to a resilient green and digital transformation of the EU’s industrial ecosystem.

Standards

CEN and CENELEC’s Response to the EC Consultation on Regulation 1025/2012

As part of the European Standardization Package, the Commission presented a proposal for an amendment to Regulation (EU) No 1025/2012 – which sets the principles for how the European Standardization Organizations (ESOs) support European legislation – and subjected it to a consultation process to receive input from interested stakeholders. In particular, the proposed amendment concerns the decisions of ESOs concerning European standards and European standardization deliverables.

Given the relevance of the topic and their commitment to contribute to the reflection on the future of the European Standardization System (ESS), CEN and CENELEC, as two of the officially recognized ESOs, issued a response. In particular, the two organizations welcome the proposed amendment of Regulation 1025/2012 and the fact that it emphasizes the national delegation principle.

Data Protection & privacy

Discover New EN 17529 on Data Protection and Privacy by Design and by Default

Privacy and personal data protection are essential in our current society as our offline and digital experiences are increasingly entwined. To ensure that these essential values are taken into account early on in the development of products and services, newly developed EN 17529 ‘Data protection and privacy by design and by default’ provides manufacturers and service providers with requirements before, or independently of, any specific application integration.


EN 17529 was developed in response to a request from the European Commission and is a perfect example of how European standards can be developed to complement international adoptions to address European values. Under this same mandate, there are also two Technical Reports that are currently being finalized which contain recommendations on how to integrate the principle of ‘data protection and privacy by design’ during the entire lifecycle of biometric access-control products and services, in order to achieve ‘data protection and privacy by default’. EN 17529 was developed by CEN-CLC/JTC 13 ‘Cybersecurity and Data Protection’, the Secretariat of which is currently held by DIN. JTC 13 is currently working on more standards to address similar issues, notably through its Working Group 5 ‘Data Protection, Privacy and Identity Management’.

Security

Standardization Conference Explores EU Cyber- Security Legislation

The European Standards Organizations (ESOs), CEN, CENELEC and ETSI, joined forces with ENISA, the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity, to organize their 6th annual conference. The virtual conference focused on ‘European Standardization in support of the EU cybersecurity legislation’. The event opened with the European Standards Organizations, ENISA and the European Commission giving an overview of the EU cybersecurity standardization landscape. 

 

The purpose of the conference was twofold. First of all, the event presented current developments in the area of cybersecurity standardization. It also fostered a dialogue among policy makers, industry, research, consumer associations, standardization, and certification organizations, including all of those involved in the development of the ICT certification framework in Europe.


The EU Agency for Cybersecurity seizes the opportunity of the standardization conference to issue two new reports on standardization in support of cybersecurity policy. The first is overview of existing standards in relation to risk management describing methodologies & tools used to meet standards’ requirements. The second report focuses on 5G cybersecurity and analyzes standards contributing to the mitigation of technical and organizational risks in the 5G ecosystem. Both reports identify standardization gaps, and provide recommendations to enhance standards coverage in these areas, based on the needs of stakeholders.

Accessibility

Discover the New CEN and CENELEC Protocol for Accessibility

CEN and CENELEC are fully committed to ensuring that, through their standards, goods and services are equally accessible to all. In this context, they just released the updated CEN-CENELEC Protocol on accessibility following a Design for All approach in standardization”. The protocol outlines the procedure to help technical bodies decide whether accessibility, with a Design for All approach, should be addressed when developing or revising a standardization deliverable. The new version, adopted by CEN/BT/Working Group 213 ‘Strategic Advisory Group on Accessibility’ (SAGA), was made shorter and more simple to use, based on the feedback received on its previous version: in the current format, the protocol is now reduced from 6 to 2 documents.

 

Interested Technical Body officers are invited to start with document 1 – ‘The Protocol Form’, which helps understand if and how accessibility is applicable to projects. Further information and guidance on how to include accessibility to standardization projects can be found under document 2 – ‘Relevance’.

Telecommunication

MEC is Ramping up with Phase 3 Work on Multi-Access Edge Computing

In the last two months, ETSI MEC has updated many Phase 2 reports and specifications. For its Phase 3 work, the ISG MEC recently released the updated MEC Terminology, ETSI GR MEC 001. A major milestone of the group is the ETSI specification on MEC Framework and Reference Architecture, GS MEC 003, introducing the MEC Federation architecture variant. This concept is a key enabler for supporting the requirements coming from GSMA OPG (Operator Platform Group). It enables inter-MEC system communication and allows 5G operators to collaborate among themselves and with service cloud providers and other stakeholders. This architecture also "federates" their edge computing resources by offering their MEC service capabilities for mutual consumption, and for application developers and end customers (e.g. vertical market segments).


MEC Open Area : In addition, the group enhanced its MEC Open Area with drafts of two updated specifications to foster the collaboration with other bodies such as GSMA and 3GPP. These two specifications on Edge Platform Application Enablement (MEC 011) and Federation enablement APIs (MEC 040), are critical for Phase 3 work, especially in the view of MEC Federation. Publicly available, this open area provides visibility to all stakeholders about ISG MEC’s on-going progress on key specifications.

TAGS #standards
Education About Standardization

A New Technical Specification Fosters ICT Education in Europe

To aid in the development of a European Professional ICT workforce, it is important to provide education and training fit to meet the requirements of the ICT professional community. This requires enhanced approaches to address the education of new and existing ICT practitioners and the need for continuous professional development.

Technical Specification CEN/TS 17699 ‘Guidelines for developing ICT Professional Curricula as scoped by EN 16234-1 (e-CF)’ is designed to address ICT professionalism through education. It guides curriculum and learning programme developers through the process of forming ICT practitioner courses and programmes, along a pathway to support the development of a competent, professional European ICT workforce.

 

This Technical Specification provides guidance on the design/redesign, development and maintenance of a curriculum or learning programme to achieve alignment or compliance with EN 16234-1:2019  ‘e-Competence Framework (e-CF)’. The TS provides a methodology deploying the application of educational profiles as a step-by-step approach for verifying the alignment of programme content with the competences articulated in EN 16234-1 (e-CF).

TAGS #ICT
Education About Standardization

ETSI Launches Education Programme for Next Generation of ICT Professionals

ICT standardization plays an important role for interoperability and innovation and its practice remains a topic that is not easily accessible. To try to remedy this situation and prepare the next generation of standards professionals, ETSI has developed comprehensive teaching materials on education about ICT standardization. Written by a team of professors, researchers, and standards professionals, the first edition of the textbook was published in 2018 with the support of the European Commission and the EFTA Secretariat. We are now launching a fully revised and enriched edition of these teaching materials. These are targeted at third-level education, primarily for students of engineering or scientific subjects. The book and the slide set are structured in a modular form so that components can be used in business or law courses, or the whole can be used as a course on standardization in engineering degrees.


Due to the rapid technological advances in ICT, ICT standardization seems to become increasingly restricted to the expert, while remaining mysterious to the non-expert. Thus, the textbook is an attempt to remove the accessibility barriers related to the understanding of ICT standardization. The 1st Edition and the associated slides have already been used by many universities and students throughout Europe. The textbook and a comprehensive set of slides are available from the ETSI website free of charge at https://www.etsi.org/media-library/education

TAGS #ETSI
Energy Efficiency incl. Circular Economy

"Valuation of Energy Related Investments", A Standard Supporting Energy Transition

CEN-CLC/JTC 14 ‘Energy management and energy efficiency in the framework of energy transition (JTC 14)  published new EN 17463 ‘Valuation of Energy related investments (VALERI)’. The standard is an important breakthrough in the developing field of “green finance”, and it was the result of the efforts of many European experts invested in this work during the difficult time of the pandemic. Its unique achievement is that it lays down a clear and comprehensive path towards the economic evaluation of actions to improve energy performance, including multiple benefits and renewable sources, by proposing the use of “Net Present Value” (NPV) calculations.

 The methodology is expected to increase the confidence of financial institutions and investors in energy performance improvement projects because of the material integration of the technical and financial risk assessment.

TAGS #energy