Brussels, 09/02/2016 (Agence Europe) - Cyber security is one of the areas requiring common standards if completion of the single digital market is to be achieved. This is revealed in the preliminary results from the public consultation on information and communication technologies (ICT) published by the European Commission on Friday 5 February.
As part of its strategy for a single digital market, the Commission has made a commitment to launch an integrated plan for standards, in an effort to identify and define the major priorities for standards by highlighting the technologies and areas deemed crucial for the single digital market. In this context a broad public consultation took place from 23 September 2015-4 January 2016. This consultation focused on priority standards for the ICT domain, in an effort to help the Commission prepare its plan, which has been announced for April 2016.
The preliminary results from this consultation, in which 168 different contributors participated (a fifth of all contributions came from companies) demonstrate that the majority of respondents agreed on the importance of setting priorities for standardisation. These contributors rate the areas of action proposed by the European Commission in the following way: cyber security (17%); Internet of things (14%); data based services and applications (11%); cloud computing (10%); eHealth (9%); fifth-generation communications (8%); digitalisation of European industry, smart transport systems & smart cities (7%); smart transport systems (6%). The number of respondents suggested additional areas such as media/publishing, digital financial services, online communication and other subdomains. Some respondents also proposed the implementation of other measures as an alternative to setting priority standards, such as the definition of a clear policy framework for competition and the interoperability of digital goods and services, setting out targets (which standards should help to attain) and establishing support for SMEs and research centres that participate in standardisation.
Overall, the respondents consider that the EU should take action according to the following sequence of importance: based on demand, the Rolling Plan for ICT Standardisation and regulatory measures to ensure standardisation bodies respect these priorities. There were only a few contributors who would have liked a communication to be introduced for this area. Some of the action described for the different priority areas proposed by the respondents included “actions for supporting trust, security and privacy, identification of legal barriers, promotion of community building and pilot projects, facilitation of the cooperation between standards bodies… increasing the presence of EU experts in international & global Standard Setting Organisations, and support of open platforms for standardisation, etc.” (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)