Digital SummerSchool 2016 - again a superb programme

One of my personal pet projects is supporting the coordination of the Digital SummerSchool with its offerings of child summer camp courses combining the development of IT technologies with sports and fun.

This is going on in the Rhine-Neckar region in its 8th year this year. And again we have a fantastic programme - and for the first time also a great, stand-alone website.

Check out the Digital SummerSchool on the web.

RAMI everwhere....

I contributed to the DIN SPEC RAMI 4.0 - Reference Architecture Model Industrie 4.0. And isn't it funny that even for the French national football team RAMI 4 plays a leading role....

Picture sources: 
http://bc02.rp-online.de/polopoly_fs/france-s-defender-adil-rami-and-1.6040151.1465592562!httpImage/2199720511.jpg_gen/derivatives/d950x950/2199720511.jpg
http://www.francenationalshop.com/pic/2016soccer_jerseys/nation/france/2016nation_france_182.jpg

Workshop on the results from Cloud Standards Coordination Phase 2

Last week I had the pleasure to speak at the workshop organised by ETSI and the European Commission on the results from the work on Cloud Standards Coordination (CSC) Phase 2.

It was a very good workshop with some good ideas shared. You can find all workshop presentations on the workshop website.

I am also happy to share my presentation here

New EU Rolling Plan for ICT Standardisation published

First of all Happy New Year everyone and to you and yours a healthy, peaceful and prosperous 2016.

Just with the beginning of the new year The European Commission published the new EU Rolling Plan for ICT standardisation. It is available from the Commission website.

This is the third version of the Rolling Plan which gets updated on an annual basis. It is developed in a collaborative process with initial input being provided by the Commission and comprehensive advice coming from all stakeholders in standardisation via the EU Multi-Stakeholder Platform. A process that has become well established by now.

The new version 2016 of the Rolling Plan contains a number of new actions for standardisation where ICT standards are seen to be of high relevance for supporting the implementation of EU policy objectives. It is now up to standards bodies and all stakeholders in general to take up action in response to the Rolling plan and lead technology development providing support to policy makers.

Relevant link of today. Blog post on Industry 4.0 by Erich Clementi, IBM Chairman and Senior Vice President Europe

I know this is advertising my own cause... but it is good and of high relevance. In a blog post on EURACTIV published today, IBM Chairman and Senior Vice President Europe, Erich Clementi, gives a very interesting and motivating and inspiring perspective on Industry 4.0. Definitely worth reading.

Interesting link of today: German student asks government to see exam questions before taking the exam

This is an interesting instance about the right of citizens to request seeing public documents. A student from Northrhine-Westfalia refers to the respective law on freedom of information (Informationsfreiheitsgesetz) by requesting access to the questions that will be asked in his final school exam (Abitur). He now gets a lot of publicitly for this - even his school master congratulates him to this clever move.

See the report in the online edition of the German national newspaper Die Welt: "Bin berechtigt, die Abi-Aufgaben vorab zu sehen".

Very sad news: Klaus Tschira is dead

Klaus Tschira, founder of IBM and great patron in the Rhine-Neckar region, died suddenly and unexpectedly at the age of 74. After his retirement from SAP he became a major patron in the region investing into future technologies. See for instance the local Rhein Neckar Zeitung for a very nice appreciation.

Relevant link of today: Contribution in FAZ about revolutions in the digital economy

There was a very interesting contribution from Shoshana Zuboff in yesterday's FAZ, one of Germany's leading daily newspapers. The article is called Die Vorteile der Nachzügler and encourages Europe to learn from negative results in North America and thus make best use of Europe's situation of lacking behind in some developments. Zuboff takes the theory and thinking of Schumpeter as her reference point and relates it to the current trends in the digital economy. Her main point is that there needs to be a clear balance between the interests of the customer and the new service or technology offered. And that this is often not the case when newcomers overrun the market with their offerings.

It is still available in the online edition of the FAZ and definitely worth reading. The English original called Disruptions Tragic Flaw is also available online.

Relevant link of today: Abhöraktivitäten des BND

In the German magazine Cicero's online edition of this week there is an interesting interview with a Berlin based German lawyer, Niko Härting, who went to sue the German secret service, Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), because of their activities in spying the people and monitoring communication.

What is interesting in this interview is the information provided about the broad scope of activities world wide, also with other EU member states. Definitely worth reading.

Relevant link of today: A rational view on TTIP

In guest comment in the German national newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau (FR) Ulrich Grillo, president of the German Federation of Industry (BDI), gives a guest writer position on the need and the opportunities of TTIP and warns against painting negative pictures and horror stories.

The guest contribution is in German, available on the online edition of the FR under the title: "Schluss mit dem Märchen vom bösen TTIP" (Make an end to the fairy tale of the bad TTIP).

Smart Industry - Driving Industrie 4.0 for all of Europe

It is almost two years ago that I published a blog post on Industrie 4.0 seeing it as a major challenge and new area for Europe to be addressed. Since then the topic of Industrie 4.0 got a lot of traction in Germany. There are reports about Industrie 4.0 in the German media almost every day.

Also a lot of excellent work has been done. The German Platform Industrie 4.0, which was initiated and supported by the three main German industry associations for Industrie 4.0, BITKOM, VDMA, and ZVEI, did major pioneering work in defining architecture principles, use cases, producing market insights. All future work in Germany and beyond is well positioned building on this work.

Regarding standardisation,  in Germany the DIN/DKE steering committee on Industrie 4.0 coordinates the ongoing work and gives key guidance. Moreover, globally many activities have started or strengthened in Internet of Things and M2M standardisation.

In the meantime a number of activities are also taking place in other countries in Europe as well as globally. The Industrial Internet Consortium, which was founded in the US and rapidly grew into an influential and highly agile global network, is moving on with high speed creating markets and preparing the ways for technology development and adoption.

The new European Commission has now also taken up the topic and is decided to promote it as a major area of interest for Europe. Following this strategy the topic of Smart Industry was one of the four major selected topic areas under discussion at last week's stakeholder forum DIGITAL4EU organised by DG CONNECT.

I had arrived in time in Brussels to follow the discussion which was excellent and much to the point. There was unanimous agreement in the room about the relevance of the topic for Europe and the need to lead. From my perspective: smart industry is clearly one of the main areas for the next decades for policy makers, industry and society. And will further transform the way we are working and operating in production, manufacturing, automation, down to consumer behaviour and opportunities regarding customisation of products and individual choice.

I am all excited about this to continue. The next step is to get things right: identify needs on the policy level so that industry can flourish and drive things based on identified market requirements. And for standardisation: the environment for successful global standards is available and good work is under way. All promising ... let's jointly work to make it a success for Europe.

New version of EU Rolling Plan for ICT Standardisation available

Since middle of last week the new version of the European Commission's ICT Standardisation Rolling Plan is publicly available on the Commission website.

As the first year's version of the Rolling Plan this second edition was also developed in close collaboration of the European Commission and the ICT Multi-Stakeholder Platform. The result is a document that has much improved from last year's version being more inclusive, more comprehensive, better structured and - perhaps most importantly - being more clear on the proposed actions.

I can only encourage anyone interested or involved in ICT standardisation and in EU policy to take a look. I am sure this Rolling Plan 2015 will be interesting to you and provide major insights on the needs public authorities face regarding standardisation in support of the implementation of policy objectives.

Time to celebrate: 20 years of W3C

We all take it for granted to use the internet and to be sure that everything works and is inter-operable. So today is a perfect day to remind us that there is some smart and hard work behind that all - and a lot is based on global open standards, developed collaboratively and agreed in consensus.

The leading organisation for interoperability standards underlying the world wide web is W3C - the World Wide Web Consortium.

Today, W3C celebrate their 20th anniversary.  This is a great occasion to outline the high contribution of W3C to the digital revolution of the past two decades. Congratulations to W3C and all the best for continuing your great work to the benefit of the internet and the digital age.

Hurrah .......

UK government adopts Open Document Format standard for collaboration on documents

Yesterday the Minister of the Cabinet Office in the UK, Francis Maude, announced that the UK government adopts the Open Document Format (ODF) standard for documents that are presented for collaboration and interaction. Two other standards, PDF/A and HTML, are chosen for viewing government information.

I admire the UK government for this decision. ODF is the established standard for documents. It is used in OpenOffice , in LibreOffice, and also in Microsoft Office. Gone are the days of the battle about OOXML and the debates about ODF versus OOXML. That's the stuff of last decade. The UK government now made the step into the future direction supporting and requiring an open standard for document formats that is widely available and implemented in a number of competing products and solutions.

I wish other governments would be fast in following this example. With increasing online collaboration, with using Cloud technologies, with moving to increased automation, the use of ODF is the right move for promoting interoperability, competition and choice.

I have been using ODF implementations for many years now. I am working with odt, odp and ods files on a daily basis. I am highly satisfied – and I am sure that clear decisions in favour of ODF will push further innovation around ODF.

So great news from the UK. I hope they will spread fast and wide.

Very sad news: Frank Schirrmacher is dead

I am shocked at today's news of the sudden death of Frank Schirrmacher, co-editor of the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, intellectual and a truely free thinker. Germany and Europe will miss Frank Schirrmacher as an always inspiring source for thoughts and ideas driving the public debate and rasing important issues.

UK government pushing for ODF as preferred standard for document formats

The UK government has moved ahead with their strategy to put stronger focus on open standards in the public sector. One important element here is the decision to select ODF as the preferred standard for document formats. ODF is widely supported, including by big vendors of software for office suits as well as in open source offerings.


There was an interesting article on PCWorld looking at the standards issue and debate underlying the decision of the UK government. Definitely worth reading.

CEN, CENELEC, ETSI hand over white paper on Cyber Security to Commissioner VP Kroes

Earlier this week a delegation of CEN, CENELEC and ETSI headed by MEP Dr. Christian Ehler met with Commissioner VP Kroes for handing over the white paper on cyber security that was developed within the Cyber Security Coordination Group (CSCG) established by the three European Standards Organisations (ESO).

The White Paper is available for download on the CSCG website which is hosted by DIN.

For some pictures of the event see also the respective web site from the Commission. ETSI has also published an announcement with some good links leading a bit further.

At first reading the White Paper is very much high level and spans from generic political recommendations to the actual technology work in standardisation. Certainly a good, broad overview of aspects to consider further.

As ETSI point out in their press release, a lot of work is already ongoing in security standardisation, most notably in ISO/IEC JTC1 SC27 but, of course, also in IETF, W3C and IEEE and others. As I strongly believe in bottom up approaches as it comes to standards developments it will be the chance of the stakeholders in IT security technologies to map the white paper recommendations with their work and take up whatevery makes sense and in whatever organisation has the best expertise for doing the work.

Good EU Conference on EU Rolling Plan for ICT Standardisation

I was speaking at the conference on the EU Rolling Plan on ICT Standardisation yesterday. The conference was organised by the European Commission - all information is available on the Commission website on the conference.

The conference was extremely good, in my opinion. It aimed at presenting the Rolling Plan, which is a planning document for ICT standardisation in support of EU policy priorities, and promoting it as a tool for driving the implementation of technologies. It was opened by Director Didier Herbert, DG ENTR, with a very inspiring speech and chaired by Michel Catinat, Head of Unit E4 dealing with innovation and ICT stanardisation in DG ENTR.

The conference was well attended with a number of key experts both from the European Standards Organisations and from global ICT standards bodies. I had the pleasure to co-facilitate a panel with seven standards bodies present. The topic was "Global Standards supporting EU Policy Priorities". I thought this was an excellent exchange between standards bodies on the usefulness of the Rolling Plan for their work. One major take away from this panel might be that while the effect of the Rolling Plan will be small in organisations that have a clear bottom up approach, yet for the conversation on a managerial level and for positioning global standards bodies as viable platforms to support required standards work the Rolling Plan is extremely useful.

The Commission will soon publish a report of the conference. So watch the space. I also uploaded the slides I was showing in my speech in the morning to slide share.



Final words: Many thanks to the Commission for organising this conference. Very useful and informative.

Cofirmation from Commissioner Šefčovič: EU Commission is set up for using ODF

In a response to a question from the European Parliament Commissioner Šefčovič confirmed that the European Commission is set up to support ODF in external communication for documents if they are open for revision. The ODF standard can be used as well as the OOXML standard.

See the full response on the website of the European Parliament.

EU Rolling Plan on ICT Standardisation

First of all, Happy New Year to you all – above all good health, success and lots of luck.

For ICT standardisation in Europe the New Year starts with great news. Just before Christmas the European Commission published the EU Rolling Plan on ICT Standardisation. This is a work programme focussing on how ICT standards and specifications can support EU policies across all different Commission Directorates.

For the first time such a concise document is available providing advice to the Commission Services on the availability of standards and specifications, including global ICT specifications, and providing a plan for ICT standards bodies of how policy making in Europe can be supported by standardisation. It also provides a high level of transparency to all stakeholders and to the public. This Rolling Plan has the potential to further drive the use and implementation of standards and specifications in policy contexts in Europe – and it may shine beyond the borders of the EU.

The Rolling Plan is part of what had been introduced with Regulation 1025/2012. It was developed by the European Commission in close collaboration with the EU ICT Multi-Stakeholder Platform with the involvement of the Member States, Industry, European and global standards bodies, societal stakeholders. It therefore reflects a broad consensus on needs and opportunities for standardisation. And it is a great result – amongst others – of the productive and forward-looking work of the ICT Multi-Stakeholder Platform.

The Rolling Plan is available for download from the Commission website. It consists of two introductory chapters outlining the strategic thinking behind the Rolling Plan and the opportunities for implementation of standards. The major part of the Rolling Plan is chapter 3 which looks at standardisation in the context of the policy priorities identified by the European Commission. Finally, a chapter 4 also highlights horizontal standards and specifications that are of relevance across many ICT implementations.

Congratulations to the European Commission for developing this Rolling Plan and creating such a valuable level of planning around ICT standardisation in the context of EU policy making.