Session Panel: Digital and green transformations and their relation to regulatory cooperation and standardization policies
Background
Quality infrastructure (e.g., accreditation, metrology, standards) promotes trade on a fair market and safe products/services in a sustainable society. The growing transition towards digital technologies poses both opportunities and challenges. Artificial intelligence can help to improve risk assessment and expedite conformity assessment. Enterprise resource planning (ERP) tools can help the management of standardization and accreditation processes. The integration of technologies into products can, however, also complicate the testing and analysis of product conformity and safety. Technologies not based on internationally recognized standards can also potentially create technical barriers to trade.
This panel discussion responds to the proposed theme of the 2023 Commission session on “digital and green transformations for sustainable development in the ECE region”. It is important to ensure that digitalization and sustainability support each other and do not hinder each other.
Objective
This panel discussion will seek to outline how digitalization can contribute to better quality infrastructure and how it can also disrupt it. We will explore the key themes of quality infrastructure and the Working Party on Regulatory Cooperation and Standardization Policies (WP.6) and how digitalization affects these. The panel will close with a period of discussion to articulate how this work can potentially be addressed within WP.6 in the future.
Target audience
The target audience includes all experts of WP.6, member States officials and the general public.
Draft Agenda
Welcome and opening
Session 1: How digitalization can potentially contribute to quality infrastructure
- Improved testing, calibrations, etc. (the technologies which contribute to metrology)
- Improved market surveillance (the technologies which contribute to market surveillance and conformity assessment)
- Improved standardization processes
- Improved risk management (how the technologies can potentially be used to improve risk assessment)
- Improved accreditation (how technologies can help the accreditation process)
Session 2: How digitalization may change the way we work in quality infrastructure (one hour)
- Challenges of conformity assessment of products that integrate digital technologies
- Integrating technologies into product standards
- Technical barriers to trade
- Gender-responsive standards
Session 3: Digitalization in quality infrastructure related to other areas of digitalization
- Digitalization of data exchange
- Digital support to MSMEs
- Digital governance
- Digital customs
- Member State perspective
Table 4: Discussion on how this work can be potentially articulated with WP.6
- Open discussion with experts and invited specialists
- Conclusions