February 2023 

PRESS RELEASE - StandICT.eu continues its journey until 2026!

StandICT.eu, now in its sixth year, held the first physical kick-off meeting in Pisa, from the 8-9th of February 2023, to officially launch activities under the new Grant Agreement, StandICT.eu 2026, with the European Commission for the continuation of this Coordination and Support Action with a new and ambitious Work Programme to take it through to January 2026 in support of the European Standardisation Strategy released in February 2022 and following the creation of the High-Level Forum on European Standardisation, which has brought Standardisation activities to the forefront of the agenda in Europe. Standards, and in particular ICT standards, play a key role in enabling the interoperability of new technologies, which brings significant benefits both to a wide range of industries and also supports an increasing number of domains in non-ICT fields.

The new StandICT.eu initiative is managed by a lean yet strengthened consortium, comprising:  Trust-IT (IT), coordinator of the two predecessor projects - leading communication and dissemination activities and managing the open call programme, together with Dublin City University (IE) - leading the EUOS and the Technical Working Groups and AUSTRALO (ES) - managing the monitoring of the StandICT.eu fellows and seizing their impact towards the EU.  Three new players are joining the field to further reinforce the Consortium and bring fresh expertise: the European Digital SME Alliance - which will deliver SME guidelines and support through a mentoring programme; OpenForum Europe which will address Open Standards and Open Software and bring a vast network in the open source industry; and the  Fraunhofer ISI who (through the role of Knut Blind, Chair of the Cen-Cenelec STAIR Working Group), will place the Consortium in the perfect position to address any matter related to integrating Standardisation with innovation, research and education.

The new project will move beyond the usual topics of its open calls sourced from the ICT Rolling Plan for Standardisation to address arising trends discussed in international Standardisation Committees and fora. In this respect, the StandICT.eu Fellows are expected to play an ever more important role in bringing a European perspective to the international standardisation setting and to contribute to the development of standards in full compliance with European values, policies and regulations.

The activity of the EUOS will continue with the release of new and more comprehensive landscape analysis reports, in key and emerging domains and with a new emphasis on the meaningful analysis of the broad range of knowledge and data gathered through increased involvement of the community network (EPEs, Fellows, PPPs and R&I projects) to guarantee a thorough peer-review.

In this context, StandICT.eu initiative has been funded by the European Commission for an additional 3-year period, with the primary goal of ensuring tangible support to the community of European ICT experts in pursuit of the EU’s interests in the international ICT Standardisation ecosystem. The main goal of StandICT.eu 2026’s remains to strengthen its global reach in the European ICT Standardisation Ecosystem with several supporting actions, which include:

• Launching and managing a robust and efficient facility supporting the Fellowship Programme with € 2,925,000 in funding that will be distributed over  9 Open Calls; 
• Strengthening the EUOS (EU Observatory for ICT Standardisation) and the Technical Working Groups (TWGs) empowering contributions from ICT Standardisation experts;
• Training the next generation of ICT Standardisation experts, engaging with National Standardisation Bodies & PPPs;
• Creating and engaging an influential Forum on EU Strategy for ICT standards to address policy (FOREST), to keep momentum in policy discussions, in-synch with the EC Multi-Stakeholder Platform;
• Supporting and sharing insights with the High-Level Forum on European Standardisation, to which a first set of recommendations was already delivered in January 2023.

“What we have observed with StandICT.eu over the past few years, is the sense of “community” around ICT standards that the project has managed to develop, and this manifests itself through the ever increasing number of fellows who apply to our Open Calls, and the enthusiastic contributions to support the thematic Technical Working Groups. With the dedicated increase in Standards Academy content, this has put us in an excellent position in 2023 to strengthen these key areas and grow not only the community but tailor the project to draw from our experts, more knowledge and share this Standardisation know-how in a more structured way. We look forward to the next 36 months together with our expanded partnership too.” Silvana Muscella, Technical Coordinator of StandICT.eu 2026 & Trust-IT CEO.

 

“The continuation of the StandICT.eu brand into 2026 with an expanded partner network can now deliver on strategy and policy, and experts support and training to provide EU Leadership in International Standardisation. This ecosystem building of the next generation of european standards professionals will increase our leadership potential in emerging technology domains and increase the presence of EU values in international standards development”, Ray Walshe, Financial Coordinator of StandICT.eu 2026 & EUOS Director, from DCU.

 

How to get involved

• Apply to one of our open calls and get funded to support your work in the ICT Standardisation field. We have just closed our 9th (and last) Open call under the remit of StandICT.eu 2023. The first Open Call under StandICT.eu 2026,  will open in May 2023.
• Submit your success story about the impact your work in Standardisation has concretely produced and receive recognition for this across our community.
• Consult our EUOS Standards Repository and contribute to our open discussions.
• Learn more about standards relying on the content of our ICT Standards Academy and the Landscape Analysis Reports prepared by our Technical Working Groups.

Who's behind StandICT.eu 2026

StandICT.eu 2026 Consortium:

Dublin City University (IE) - Financial and Administrative Coordinator, Trust-IT Srl (IT) - Technical Coordinator, OpenForum Europe (BE), AUSTRALO (ES), European Digital SME Alliance (BE), and Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI (DE). 

For more information on StandICT.eu 2026, contact us at info@standict.eu and follow us on our social media channels: Twitter | Linkedin | YouTube

StandICT.eu 2026 has received funding from the EU’s Horizon Europe Programme under Grant Agreement no. 101091933.