JTC 1 Technology Watch Workshop takes place in Nara, Japan

On 11 November 2008 ISO (International Organization for Standardization) and ISO/IEC JTC 1 (Joint Technical Committee on Information Technology) held its annual meeting to summarize the current status and evolution of ICT (Information and Communications Technologies).

The field of ICT is evolving so rapidly and to such an extent that JTC 1, its members and SCs (Subcommittees) need a consolidated assessment to make sound business decisions.

Welcomed by Kazuhito Ohmaki, Director, Tsukuba Advanced Computing Centre, AIST (National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology); François Coallier, Chairman of JTC 1 SWG (Special Working Group) for Technology Watch; and Scott Jameson, Chairman ISO/IEC JTC 1, attendees heard presentations from practitioners, academics, government representatives and other stakeholders on a variety of subjects. These included:

• Green IT (Information Technology), the original expectations and presumed resource saving of ICT, as compared to present trends and energy consumption brought about by the temporal and economic convenience that ICT technologies afford, with the result that ICT can add to the global carbon footprint. Solutions envisaged included power management, cloud computing and de jure standards as replacements for de facto standards
  
  
• The contributions of IT to a sustainable future, both from a technological and an environmental point of view. Cases included data centre management, virtualisation technology, migration of services between machines, as well as between sites, and transportation between countries – the latter showed a tendency towards each having its own particularities. Conclusions showed a present lack of energy-efficient use, whether in consumption or in optimisation and a need for increased discussion and communication between the IEC, ISO, ITU-T (International Telecommunication Union Standardization Sector), IEEE (Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers), ECMA (European Computer Manufacturer’s Association), CEN (European Committee for Standardization) and other fora.
  
  
• Consumer electronics
  
  
• Robot technologies and Open RTM (Robot Technology Middleware)
  
  
• Sensor networks
  
  
• Natural language support where the discussion focussed on the protection of endangered languages and the issue of keyboards and encoding standards
  
  
• e-learning and education
  
  
• Human resource development.