I have been invited to attend a conference called EuroCPR: Policies for a digital Europe: lessons learned and challenges. The agenda (pdf) has a session called Policy benchmarking and policy learning which I hope to attend. The basic idea of this session appears to be to learn from each other and to create conceptual and empirical Foundations of Cross-National Benchmarking of policy.

There are already existing benchmarking frameworks for policy in specific domains – for instance i2010 benchmarking framework which includes indicators to benchmark eEurope. The indicators are grouped under nine themes: 1: Developments in broadband, 2: Advanced services, 3: Security, 4: Impact in relation to the overall Lisbon objectives of growth and employment, 5: Investment in ICT research, 6: Adoption of ICT by businesses, 7: Impact of adoption of ICT by Business, 8: Inclusion, 9: Public services.

This made me think of the idea of standards benchmarking. There is not a lot of work done in this space except for the Evaluation of Ten Standard Setting Organizations with Regard to Open Standards (pdf). However, benchmarking of standards may be a domain where more work is needed especially as standards stretch across functional domains (Smart Grid, e-health etc).

Like the Danish government study, we may find that there are not many common ways in which we can compare standards (including Open standards) – but the simple exercise of comparison, learning and benchmarking will lead to more diversity in standards.