This event is taking place during the WP.6 34th Annual session

Background

Products are integrating more and more digital aspects. This has the advantage of offering enhanced services to administrations and consumers as well as new functionalities in products. At the same time, member States have committed to global sustainability objectives, necessitating new capabilities and processes in the national trade administration to efficiently address green transformations. WP.6 has already explored the benefits and challenges of digital innovations in products, notably during its thirty-third annual session (see ECE/CTCS/WP.6/2023/2), concentrating specifically on embedded artificial intelligence in products; it also looked at the green and digital transformation from multiple aspects during its third annual forum (see ECE/CTCS/WP.6/2024/3).

As the technological development is extremely fast, there is a further risk that green and digital transformations may exacerbate existing differences between developed and transitional/developing economies (i.e. the digital divide and the green divide could potentially widen).

Objective

This panel discussion will explore the current needs and challenges related to new policy priorities such as green and digital transition related to compliance and technical regulation of industrial goods. It will further invite transitional and developing economies to speak about the challenges that they face with a perspective of identifying areas that require capacity building and technical assistance related to quality infrastructure to address for example, traceability, product marking, circularity, compliance with international standards addressing digital and green transition.

Agenda

Welcome address (10:00-10:20)

• Elisabeth Türk, Director, Economic Cooperation and Trade Division, UNECE [Bio]

• Heidi Lund, National Board of Trade of Sweden; Chair of UNECE WP.6 [Bio]​​​​​​​

Keynote (10:20-10:40)

Empowering developing and transitional economies to address the digital divide through capacity building on quality infrastructure (10:40-13:00)

• Increasing capacity on digitalizing quality infrastructure in Albania
  • Dorina Nati, UNIDO [Bio]​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
  • Kostanca Dedja, Albania [Bio] (tbc)
• Increasing capacity on regulatory cooperation in Namibia
  • Jasmin Saleh, SWEDAC [Bio]
  • Lahya Hambinga, Namibia [Bio]
• Increasing capacity
  • Leslie McDermott, ANSI [Bio]
  • Beneficiary country (tbc)
• Increasing capacity on standardization
  • Nesreen Al-Khammash, ISO [Bio]
• Other capacity building work (tbc)
  • Project lead tbc
  • Beneficiary country (tbc)

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Support mechanisms to help reduce the digital divide (15:00-16:00)

• Metrology
  • Jan Deconinck, Belgian Ministry for Economic Affairs; Chair of WP.6 MARS [Bio] (tbc)
• Education on standardization
  • Zaneta Lacova, Matej Bel University, Slovakia [Bio] (tbc)
• International Regulatory Cooperation
  • (tbc)
• Risk management
  • (tbc)

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Discussion and next steps (16:00-16:30)