Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed between AGORIA & StandICT.eu 2023

ICT Standardisation Observatory and Support Facility in Europe

Submitted by on 21 January 2022

Read time: 3 mins

PISA – Italy, 24.01.2022 - StandICT.eu 2023 & AGORIA kick-off their collaboration to to join forces and fully uphold European researchers and ICT specialists involved in standardisation.

StandICT.eu 2023 and AGORIA shares the same objective in the context of ICT standardisation, namely to effectively support European ICT standards experts to find their way in the world of standardisation and to better represent EU values, interests, standpoints and know-how in international settings, fora and SDOs. This Memorandum of Understanding marks the reciprocal commitment to concretise and strengthen the synergies between the two organisations, and to pave the way for the establishment of a long-lasting cooperation with the “Belgian Bureau voor Normalisatie – NBN”.

StandICT.eu 2023 is a European initiative supporting the EU engagement in international ICT standardization. It has two key axes; firstly, it will fund 400+ European fellowships in ICT standardisation in a series of 9 Open calls providing a total of 3M€ of funding. Secondly, it operates the European Observatory for ICT Standardisation (EUOS) that is an interactive online ecosystem including an up-to-date standards repository as well as working groups sharing insights about ongoing standardization efforts across different initiatives. StandICT.eu 2023 focuses on horizontal and vertical ICT fields as defined in the Rolling Plan for ICT Standardisation, among the focus areas are Artificial Intelligence (AI), 5G, Smart Cities, Digital Twins, Cloud and Edge Computing, eHealth and Cybersecurity.

Agoria is assigned as a sectoral standardisation operator by the Belgian National Standardisation Body (NBN). In this function, Agoria hold the secretariat for a multitude of national mirror committees within the ICT Standardisation domain.

We are very happy that StandICT.eu is teaming up with Agoria in Belgium. We want to be able to focus our attention in the next 18 months on seeing how ICT Standards are helping European companies, consumers, or the public authorities to aim for improved international competitiveness, we know that this is NBN’s drive so this makes for a perfect collaboration to kick start these activities in 2022.

– says Silvana Muscella, CEO at Trust-IT Services and StandICT.eu 2023 Coordinator.

Participation for Belgian companies to ICT standardization activities is often a challenge, but nevertheless extremely important for their competitivity in the long term. Agoria welcomes the StandICT project, with its goal to strengthen European presence on ICT standardization activities. There are already multiple Belgian professionals who participate to standardization activities through StandICT grants, and we would like to see even more people and companies finding their way towards this initiative. Agoria engages itself to further strengthen its collaboration with this important initiative, by signing this Memorandum of Understanding and working together closely in the following years.

– says Dominique Du Tré, Director Services Agoria.

mou-signature
Dominique Du Tré, Director Services Agoria & Silvana Muscella, CEO Trust IT-Services