EURAS Proceedings 2004

Once more, EURAS, the European Academy for Standardization, will be for a few days the heart of the major discussions and research related to standardisation, its process, its actors and partners and the main issues faced in this field, in particular due to the fast moving technologies domains such as ICT (Information and Communication technology), biometrics and others. During the EURAS Workshop 2004 the scientific elements that will be presented will bring some light on the five main issues for the standardisation system to face as recently identified by a group of industry businesses, namely: health of the standardisation system, role of governments, the economics of standardisation, Intellectual Property Rights, and education in standardisation. The first one, that is the key issue concerns the standardisation system itself. Only a healthy standardisation system can result in standards to be the adequate response to the markets needs, into open international standards to be preferred over proprietary solutions and more generally for interoperability be ensured. The issue is then to study what could be the solutions for the standards setting organisations (official and non official: fora, consortia) to get enough resources to provide the necessary quality to the standard process and results. The second issue is “The economics of standardisation”: for a company, how to justify, to organise the standardisation function and activity internally? What are the criteria to participate to such and such organisation? What is the return on investment? The third issue concerns the role of governments in standardisation and here many questions raise. Different governments play different roles in standardisation in the different countries. Do they have to play a role? What are the best practices?…