Iosif Aronov, Director of Scientific Research, ITI, and Anna Rybakova, Deputy Head of Trade Barriers Analysis Department, ITI, spoke at the open session Creating the Standardization of the Future. The event took place on October 10 as part of the first National Forum Standardization 2019 on the premises of the Presidential Library named after Boris Yeltsin in St. Petersburg.
The level of standardization dynamically reflects the process of the spread of knowledge. In today’s science, a huge number of studies are focused on AI technologies, while many countries are already developing their national standards concerning the application of AI.
«As AI develops, humans become further and further alienated from the results of work, excluded from the working process. And so, ethical problems arise. A question arises: to what extent can we trust AI? Doesn’t it — and won’t it — violate some ethical aspects? In this regard, the role of verification and validation becomes crucial,» Iosif Aronov pointed out.
Despite the importance of creating new standards in a timely manner, it is still desirable to review the currently existing standards, especially with the aim of measuring their effectiveness. ITI experts have studied the impact of the currently available collection of standards on Russia’s macroeconomic indicators, such as GDP, labor productivity, and the volume of exports between 1998 and 2018.
According to the results of the research, the contribution of national standards to Russia’s GDP is estimated at 0.8%, same as in France, Germany, and Great Britain. The contribution of standards to export growth is roughly 2% (to compare, in Great Britain, it’s 3.2%).
Expanding the standards collection increases labor productivity too. A similar effect is observed in other countries. For example, expanding the standards collection by 1% raises labor productivity by 0.16% in Canada, 0.12% in Russia, and 0.11% in Great Britain.
«Most standardization bodies in the world consider research on their standards an essential instrument and one of their primary functions. This is because applying standardization is both necessary and inevitable in the context of the economic development of the country,» Anna Rybakova commented.
Not only does standardization make a significant contribution to macroeconomic indicators, but it also has a considerable influence on export, which is evidenced by the results of an analysis of the WTO TBT database for 2019 carried out by ITI experts. The study covered 15 countries which account for 49% of Russia’s export. However, countries that aren’t WTO members (Uzbekistan, Iran, and Algeria) were later excluded from the data sample.
From a study of the WTO TBT notifications database, the experts made a judgment about the ways of development of the standardization systems in the countries under analysis. For example, in Egypt, the system of national standards is characterized by a high degree of borrowing. The USA is notable for a very large number of notifications due to the specifics of the notification system of the TBT committee.
Based on the results of the analysis, it can be safely stated that in some areas, it is advisable to review, analyze, and update the currently applied standards in order to predict possible new barriers to Russian export.
«A certain comparative analysis aimed at updating the standards will ensure a steady growth of Russian export of upstream products. So, we can say that standardization has a direct and a clearly defined application in our country’s economy,» Anna Rybakova said.
For speeches of the other participants of the open session Creating the Standardization of the Future, see the official account of the Presidential Library on YouTube.
As it is known, the first national Forum Standardization 2019 took place on October 10-11 in St. Petersburg. The Forum was organized by the Federal State Unitary Enterprise «Russian Scientific-Technical Information Centre for Standardization, Metrology and Conformity Assessment» (STANDARTINFORM) with support from the Ministry of Industry and Trade of Russia (MINPROMTORG) and the Federal Agency on Technical Regulating and Metrology (ROSSTANDART). The event was visited by over 400 guests from 32 regions of the Russian Federation and 17 foreign countries. The participants included representatives of technical committees on standardization, educational and scientific establishments, small and medium-sized businesses, and large manufacturing enterprises. See more about the results of the Forum on the official website of the event in the Results section.