On Friday 7 June, the Centre for Science, Technology & Innovation Policy (CSTI) hosted a workshop as part of the Tripartite meeting.

This high-profile meeting has been held annually for 40 years and has provided a platform to discuss standardisation and innovation-related issues. Participants are senior officials responsible for standardisation policy in the British, French and German Government together with directors of the National Standards Body and National Accreditation Body of the three countries and representatives from DG Enterprise in the EU Commission.

The workshop focused on the involvement of public researchers in standardisation activities and how to facilitate this involvement – a topic which is very well aligned with CSTI’s own research agenda. Collectively, CSTI’s research projects are designed to support the evidence needs of Science, Technology & Innovation policymakers, in particular those officials in public research agencies who are responsible for programme design, portfolio management and strategy development. Its agenda is shaped in collaboration with its policy and research agency partners, including the UK Department for Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS). For these reasons, CSTI was deemed the ideal host for this year’s meeting.

In collaboration with BIS, Eoin O’Sullivan and Laure Dodin assisted in designing the workshop agenda and facilitating the session. Participants shared and compared some of their initiatives and effective practices to promote the participation of researchers in standards development at an early stage of the technology lifecycle and to inform academics about standardisation benefits and programmes.