D7.7 STANDARDISATION PLAN AND ACTIVITIES

Via four strategically designed pilot use cases coordinated in Bulgaria, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom, PolicyCLOUD is delivering a unique, integrated environment of curated datasets and data manipulation and analysis tools of fundamental importance to stakeholders across Europe. The aim of Policy Cloud is to harness the potential of digitisation, big data, and cloud technologies to improve the modelling, creation, and implementation of policy.

The digitisation of the global economy and society affects all sectors, is at the heart of the EU’s political agenda and is necessary if we are to maintain our competitiveness. Having common ICT standards is one of the measures needed to ensure that European industries are at the forefront of developing and exploiting ICT technologies: they ensure interoperability and guarantee that such technologies work smoothly and reliably together. This will become increasingly important as in the future many more devices will be connected to each other, as defined in the EC Rolling Plan for ICT Standardisation.

The European Commission proposes to focus standard-setting resources and communities on five priority areas: 5G, Internet of Things, cloud computing, cybersecurity, and data technologies, all essential for wider EU competitiveness, as defined in its 2021 Rolling Plan for ICT Standardisation1 PolicyCLOUD has defined a dedicated task on standardisation, contributing to European ICT standardisation.

After a State-of-the-Art Landscape analysis of standardisation in the Context of EU policymaking in the ICT fields related to the PolicyCLOUD project. The document proceeds with the mapping of partners’ use of standards related to their work in PolicyCLOUD, their engagement in relevant Standards Developments Organisations or related initiatives.

This Standardisation Plan and Activities document details the specific activities to be implemented and the stakeholder groups to be targeted to foster the PolicyCLOUD alignment with global standards.

Standards and Open-Source development are both processes widely adopted in the ICT industry to develop innovative technologies and facilitate their adoption in the market. Open Standards can play a critical role in ICT technologies by enabling the achievement of paramount objectives in view of a more digitized and competitive European industry sector. This document investigates the use of and OS technologies in PolicyCLOUD and the contributions of partners to OS communities and OS standards. Overall the full width of all Policy Cloud stardardisation plan and activities are the collaborations between PolicyCLOUD and other players who are relevant for ICT standardisation activities in the fields related to PolicyCLOUD.