ICT

ETSI/TC on Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS)

In October 2009, the European Commission issued a standardisation mandate on Intelligent Transport System to the European standardisation organisations, notably to ensure interoperability of European standards on ITS. The mandate has been accepted by CEN and ETSI, which are sharing the standardisation work.

The scope of the ETSI TC ITS is the following:

.          Development and maintenance of Standards, Specifications and other deliverables to support the development and implementation of ITS Service provision across the network, for transport networks, vehicles and transport users, including interface aspects and multiple modes of transport and interoperability between systems.

.          Scope includes communication media, and associated physical layer, transport layer, network layer, security, lawful intercept and the provision of generic web services.

SMEs are assessed to represent a share of the mechatronic sector similar to the share of SMEs in fine mechanics, which is more than 90%. Furthermore, not only transportation is a particularly vast sector, which has a strong influence on almost all sectors; standardisation of ITS will also affect SMEs as services providers if the commercial prospects of the platforms of ITS are not open.

Overall, standardisation of ITS have a very far reaching potential. ITS will affect many aspects of our society, as schematized on the ETSI illustration below.

SMEs will need transparency in relation to Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) in ITS standards; furthermore, ITS technologies will provide a platform that should remain open in order not to lock out SMEs as service providers.

NORMAPME expert and member of the ETSI Board, Mr Johann Steszgal, is representing SME interests in the ETSI TC ITS.

For further information, or to participate in the NORMAPME mirror committee of this TC, please kindly contact Mr. Rémi Orth, Tel: +32 2 282 0537, r.orth@normapme.com

CEN WS ICT Skills

The creation of standards in the field of ICT skills is horizontal and transversal; standardisation in the field of ICT Skills thus potentially reaches all SMEs in Europe. Not only the ICT skills is a horizontal issue but ICT is still a developing set of emerging technologies that will increasingly affect traditional SMEs, who tend to be slow in adopting them.

Lagging behind competitors in using ICT enabling technologies risks to eliminate in the coming years large numbers of SMEs from the market. Standards are not currently under development in this workshop, rather guides and frameworks for the future creation of standards related to e-skills.

Mr. Fabio Massimo, as NORMAPME expert, is voicing SME considerations within this workshop.

For more information please contact Mr Rémi Orth at r.orth@normapme.com

Other NORMAPME activities in ICT

To most SMEs ICT sounds like another acronym with no real meaning, but when it is explained that ICT standards for Information & Communication Technology the reaction moves from "What is it?" to "We are not involved in this business". It is largely true that SMEs manufacturing telecommunication products are relatively rare, even rarer, if none, are the ones in operating systems. But when we consider the ones involved in the internet or e-Business we find already many more interested. A large number of SMEs are using a switchboard, and all of them use telecommunication products and services like phones and GSM. In the modern society all these mediums fall under ICT. Let's do a bit of telecommunication history: GSM were first developed in USA to answer to the Craft demand.

Being a well informed user of ICT allows aiming for better market visibility and better level of services, at a lower cost. To achieve that is very much related to standards: Trust and safety, Interoperability, defined procedures to use the Internet for electronic commerce, etc. They must follow strict rules to make the operations safe and easy to use. Standardisation is not only relevant to producers, but very much so to users. SMEs are very important users and the market surveys as done by NORMAPME, the European Commission and the German Ministry of Commerce clearly outline the growing importance of this sector. Internet use by SMEs is in many countries now well over 50% and growing to 95% like in the Nordic countries. eProcurement is used by 20% of the European companies in the last eBusiness survey. The effects of the Internet bubble are gone and growth is coming back. Initiatives like the eEurope program show the interest to grow fast. (See Commission website: http://europa.eu.int/comm/enterprise/ict/index.htm )

NORMAPME's presence in the European Commission's consultative bodies, in ICTSB, in CEN and ETSI allows full coverage of ICT issues as far as SMEs are concerned as users. Our activities can be divided in 2 main sectors:

• eBusiness
• Telecommunications

E-Business solutions are the easiest drivers for productivity improvement and the best way to achieve the Lisbon growth agenda for SMEs. They are gradually gaining ground in the everyday operation of SMEs and are becoming a necessity while dealing with large customers. Moreover, governments in many countries actively stimulate their small enterprises to use e-Government and e-Procurement tools. Whether imposed by market pressure or voluntarily selected by SMEs to improve their competitiveness, the move to use eBusiness in SMEs has started and it is a matter of time that it will affect virtually all SMEs.

Good standards allow SMEs to use this new business medium with confidence. It is thus in those countries that through the legislation and applied standards created a secure and user-friendly environment where the highest uptake of ICT and e-Business in SMEs is foreseen. However, over the past years, the SMEs have not participated very actively in the standardisation in this field. Consequently, most of the European standards were made by large enterprises and governments. So far only NORMAPME has been actively trying to assure that the SME dimension is also considered in standardisation. As at present most of the standards are in the advanced stage of development, NORMAPME will have to spend an increasing amount of time and resources to follow this area in upcoming years.

ICT Steering Committee (ICT/SC)

This group conveys the opinions of the major industry stakeholders in order to provide advice to the Commission on the future European standardisation policy for the ICT sector. NORMAPME represented by Sebastiano Toffaletti has followed the work of this group. His work has focused on some issues that are of particular interest for SMEs involved in the ICT sector, like the definition of the IPR policy in standard and the use of standards in public procurement.

ICT Standards Board (ICSB)

The ICT Standards Board (ICTSB) is an initiative from the three recognized European standards organizations with the participation of specification providers as partners to co-ordinate specification activities in the field of Information and Communications Technologies (ICT). The ICTSB listens to requirements for standards and specifications that are based on concrete market needs and expressed by any competent source. The Board then considers what standards or specifications need to be created, and how the task will be carried out.

ICTSB is dealing with Design for All and Assistive Technologies (DATSCG), Intelligent Transport Systems(ITSSG), SmartHouse Standards (SHSSG), and Network & Information Security (NISSG). It has completed its co-ordination work on Electronic Signature (EESSI) and has contributed to the discussion on ICT standardization (ICTSFG). The ICTSB has started to collect information on "eHealth and standardization" in support of European policies for an improved interoperability across Europe and beyond which involves numerous standards organizations. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is being dealt with by a number of standardization organizations. The ICTSB is collecting information for the purpose of a harmonized standardization approach.

NORMAPME has been invited to participate in the ICTSB as an observer organization and taken advantage of the exchange of information available in this group to inform SMEs on current standardisation activities in the field of ICT.

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Telecommunications – Our principal activities in the Telecommunication sector are in ETSI. We maintained our activities within ETSI in different bodies: the General Assembly, the Board and the User Group (UG), and expanded towards other strategic and technical bodies: IMPACT (promotional activity group - until it was disbanded) and HF (Human factor).

On the Board and in the General assembly we succeeded influencing the ETSI business plan and strategy in supporting and being more open towards users and SMEs. The HLRG (High Level Revision Group) report was approved at the April 2004 ETSI General Assembly and it was decided to form an implementation group (HLRG IG). A staff member of NORMAPME was nominated group leader for user issues. All proposals of the user issue group which affect ETSI directives were adopted during the November 2005 ETSI General Assembly. Others will need to be implemented by the relevant groups.

Normapme made two surveys, on SME needs as IT users and on the level of satisfaction of ETSI user members. With unanimous approval, ETSI User Group endorsed them as ETSI Special Reports during the November 2005 UG meeting.

The GSC*10 user workshop took place in August 2005. The ETSI User Group chairman, a NORMAPME employee, chaired one roundtable and gave two presentations. The User Group is strongly involved in the preparation of this workshop. She was asked to be involved as chairman of the GSC User Group in the GSC 11 preparation. GSC 11 took place in Chicago in May 2006 and in the GSC 12 in Kobe (Japan) in 2007.
*GSC stands for Global Standards Collaboration

The UG sent a liaison to IMPACT to consider some pilot seminars in order to increase user participation in ETSI work, especially as far as SMEs as users are concerned. This project has been approved and took place in the framework of the ETSI road show initiative. Two events were organised with the support of national SME associations in Denmark and in Austria. These events were successful as it helps us to find one of our members, coming from Austria, who wished to run for the ETSI Board in November 2008. He has been elected.

Meanwhile, also in 2008, Karine Iffour has been elected as Vice Chairman of the ETSI General Assembly. It will allow NORMAPME to play an even more strategic role in ETSI.

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