At the Italian-hosted G20 conference held in Rome leaders of the world’s 20 biggest economies set out their ideas for human progress and called for standards to enable that journey.
The leaders declaration runs to more than 20 pages. That may seem lengthy, but given the scale of the challenges it’s actually quite compact. We’ve summarized some of the key points raised here. Standards were mentioned frequently in a number of contexts. leaders highlighted areas including finance, something and something else as areas where they could have a positive impact. However it is in the area of digital economy, higher education and research that ISO standards really come into their own.
We recognize the role of technology and innovation as key enablers for the global recovery and sustainable development. We recognize the importance of policies to create an enabling, inclusive, open, fair and non-discriminatory digital economy that fosters the application of new technologies, allows businesses and entrepreneurs to thrive, and protects and empowers consumers, while addressing the challenges related to privacy, data protection, intellectual property rights, and security.
Mindful of the need to support a better inclusion of MSMEs in the digital economy, we commit to reinforce our actions and international cooperation towards the digital transformation of production, processes, services and business models, also through the use of consensus based international standards and the improvement of consumer protection, digital skills and literacy.
We welcome the results of the G20 Innovation League, as a platform through which multilateral endeavours can boost partnerships, collaboration, co-creation, and private investments in technologies and applications benefitting humankind, highlighting how trade and digital policies can help strengthen the competitiveness of MSMEs in global markets and address the particular challenges they face.
We have also begun to address the application of distributed ledger technologies such as blockchain networks to protect consumers through increased traceability. We recognize the growing role that Information and Communication Technologies play in our societies. In this context, we emphasize the need to address the increased security challenges in the digital environment, including from ransomware and other forms of cyber crime. With this in mind, we will work to strengthen bilateral and multilateral cooperation to secure our ICT, address shared vulnerabilities and threats, and combat cyber crime.
Source: ISO.ORG
