A two-Day Workshop on "Bridging the Standardization Gap (BSG) on Effectiveness in Standardization" is being co- organised on 26th and 27th Feb, 2024 in New Delhi by the National Institute   of   Communication

Finance (NICF) and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Secretariat in Geneva with support of its Area Office for South Asia and Innovation Centre, Delhi.

NICF is an 'Utkrisht' accredited central training institute of Ministry of Communications which caters to the training needs of the Dept. of Telecom and Dept. of Posts.

The ITU Area Office for South Asia and Innovation Centre, Delhi, was established in 2023 in Delhi with focus to bring together governments, industry and academia in the South Asia so as to enable digital technology advancements, bridge the Digital Divide and the Standardization Gap inter alia,

and fostering the innovation to make ICT technologies, services and applications more effective, efficient and affordable.

Member (Finance), Department of Telecommunications, Mr. Manish Sinha and Mr. R Shakaya, Senior Adviser, ITU, jointly inaugurated the 2 days’ BSG workshop. Mr.

Sinha expressed pleasure at NICF and ITU Area Office joining hands for this BSG workshop as a precursor to the ITU Word Telecommunication Standardization Assembly (WTSA-24) and urged the participants to make the most of this rare opportunity. Senior Adviser of the ITU emphasized on the need of having active participation of all the Members States especially Least Developed Countries, and Small Island Developing States. He also shared the benefits of making contributions in the various sectors of ITU to an individual, industry, and global citizen at large.

Elaborating further, Director General, NICF, Ms. Madhavi Das highlighted the need of capacity building of all stakeholders so as to increase voice of Indian government and industry on the global table.

The workshop was participated by senior officers from Department of Telecommunications (DoT), Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), Centre for Development of Telematics (CDoT), Telecom Standards Development Society of India (TSDSI), Telecom Service Providers including Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) and other Private Telecos, manufacturers and others.

The two-day programme had 4 sessions on various aspects of the topic.

In the first session, Mr. Robert Clark from ITU introduced the participants to the various activities of ITU, its structure and functions and process.-. The session helped onboard all participants to the ICT standardization activities in ITU.

The 2nd session on Day 1 was guided by the ITU BSG team online from the headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. The session aimed to expose the participants to the new BSG programme with analytics. There were interactive quizzes on BSG

and human rights, while case studies were given to enlighten the trainees on various dimensions of BSG. The participation aspects and various stages of writing contributions were discussed viz. drafting, submitting, gaining  support  and  finally

approval.

The 1st session on Day 2 was aimed to enlighten the participants on identifying objectives in the standards making process, making interventions in the Study Group meetings, roleplay exercises, simulation sessions and how to become leaders in the standards development process.

The final session aimed at advancing the understanding of the participants on effective contributions writing, negotiating the contributions and roleplays.

The workshop concluded with a brief overview of the WTSA-24. which is being hosted in Delhi from October 14-24, 2024.