On Wednesday February 23, 4 pm GMT (8 am Pacific, 11 am Eastern, 5 pm CET, 11 pm Beijing) Talkstandards.com will host an online open forum to discuss the recent EU policy developments related to Standardization and build upon our December 22nd mini-event “European Interoperability Strategy“.

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December saw the release of two important Communications from the European Commission related to e-Government and standardization:

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1- Towards Interoperability for European Public Services

To establish a common approach and ICT policy for Member State’s provision of  public services.

ec.europa.eu/isa/strategy/index_en.htm

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2- Guidelines for the assessment of horizontal cooperation agreements

To promote a standard-setting system that is open and transparent and thereby increases the transparency of licensing costs for IPR in standardization.

ec.europa.eu/competition/antitrust/
legislation/horizontal.html

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These represent two of five related initiatives identified by Commissioner Kroes in a speech in June 2010 as steps in implementing the “Digital Agenda.”

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Issues to be addressed include:

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• The EIFv2 and EIS provide normative guidance on what needs to be done to foster interoperability, particularly across the semantic and organizational layers.  But how can Member State governments meet these objectives in practice?

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• The EIF v2 sets out attributes of “open specification” as well as a comment which appears to give public administrations some discretion to reference specifications that do not meet these openness criteria “if open specifications do not exist or do not meet functional interoperability needs.”( Section 5.2.1)  How does this differ from the language in EIF v1 and what are the practical implications of this difference in language?

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• What are the implications of the endorsement of FRAND licensing within the new guidelines on horizontal cooperation agreements, particularly in the context of standardization?

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I invite you to take part in the discussion, please contact Junior Editor Peter Gray for additional information/feedback.

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Mattias Ganslandt, Editor