As of 1st of April 2020, CEN and CENELEC will start implementing the ‘Flexible Standards Development Process’, as decided by their Technical Boards. The process applies to Work Items for homegrown CEN and/or CENELEC standards, and CEN standards under Vienna Agreement with CEN lead.
This new process aims to ensure the timely delivery of European standards (following the track ‘enquiry + Formal Vote’) – a key issue especially when responding to Standardization requests from the European Commission - by giving more responsibility and flexibility to Technical Committees (TCs) in their development. In return, TCs will be asked to commit to timely finalise the work and regularly monitor its progresses.
With the new process, the duration of the two stages for TC work becomes flexible - while currently it is rigidly fixed to 34 weeks per each stage - and will be decided per each Work item by the TC according to its needs.
This flexibility is believed to help the TCs better plan their work especially under the current difficulties given by the health crisis due to the spread of COVID-19 in Europe. This is the reason why the start of the implementation is not postponed.
On the CEN and CENELEC website are available for the technical bodies the following information and supporting documents:
I. Full document on principles and operational criteria, as approved by the Technical Boards, available on the CEN and CENELEC BOSS
II. Two dedicated webinars
a. Part 1 - Principles & operational aspects - Play & PDF & Q&A
b. Part 2 - IT tools for planning and monitoring - Play & PDF & Q&A
III. The updated relevant CEN and CENELEC BOSS pages
IV. List of FAQ.
Let’s make this new process a success!
Alberto SIMEONI
asimeoni@cencenelec.eu
