The final months of 2025 are finishing the year with excitement and recognition of JTC 1 experts. Big events, big awards and experiences that are unforgettable. In this quarter one of our subcommittees made another appearance at the Emmy awards, World Standards Day 2025 brought together over 150 participants, and JTC 1 convened in Chengdu, China for its annual November plenary. In addition, we have included news from the community that focusses on Smarter Cities and their next chapter, along with education and training with AR/VR/MR, meeting highlights from the database languages team, and a tribute to a dedicated JTC 1 supporter who is sadly no longer with us.
EMMY Awards
The glitz and glamour is never far away from JTC 1/SC 29 and WG 3, Coding of audio, picture, multimedia and hypermedia information. Congratulations are in order for this group as they are once more the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS) winners of the 76th Annual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards for Standardization of the Common Media Application Format (CMAF). This adds another award to their growing line up of awards stretching back over twenty years.
| Gary Sullivan, the Chair of the SC 29 parent organization of the MPEG and JPEG working groups, commented “This award, now the tenth Emmy received by experts groups in ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 and the sixth for MPEG Systems technology, shows the key role played by SC 29’s experts groups in the development and use of today’s and tomorrow’s digital media technology.” |  |
Gary Sullivan
A new standard on Information modelling for education systems using VR/AR/MR
JTC 1’s subcommittee on computer graphics and image processing have published a new standard ISO/IEC 9234:2025 Information technology — Information modelling for virtual, augmented and mixed reality based education and training systems.
People learning benefit from education and training systems that provide immersive environments, using virtual, augmented, and mixed reality (VR/AR/MR) technologies. This can be enhanced even further with the facility to make information shareable and interchangeable between systems. Through the use of information modelling this opportunity and benefit can be realized.
Read the full article of ISO/IEC 9234 here: Information modelling for education systems
Myeong Won Lee, Jean Stride
Highlights of 2025 World Standards Day
“Navigating the Intersection of Privacy and AI”: Ensuring Consumer Protection in the Age of Intelligent Technologies.
This topic was the focus of two engaging workshop sessions hosted by JTC 1 on October 15 and 16, drawing the attention of 150 participants. Nine presenters took the virtual stage to share their insights and experiences, offering valuable perspectives on various aspects of the discussion.
The following subjects were covered:
- Privacy by design and consumer protection
- Toward a Standard for Privacy Protection for AI
- Privacy Standards – Enabling Convergence, Interoperability and Simplification
- Privacy diet for hungry AI models: Leverage standards for clarity, assurance, and action
- Privacy protection of AI with FHE – Fully Homomorphic Encryption
- AI use cases and impact on privacy
And to conclude the event, was a truly thought-provoking piece by our Spanish presenter from UNE, on “Coordinated Standardization for AI and Data Security in the Era of Generative AI – Three Strategic Proposals for Harmonized Global Standards”. This alone stirred the presenters to suggest follow meetings to discuss in more detail as it had significant beneficial ideas and proposals
Our presenters attended from many nations, some being familiar faces to WSD events: China, France, Germany, Spain United Kingdom and Untied States.
Amanda Suo, Antonio Kung, Christian Reimsbach-Kounatze, Jan Shallaboeck, Jonathan Fox, Martin Saerbeck, Philip Wennblom, Priya Chackraborty, Xianhui Lu
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And we must not forget to say thank you to those additional participants who were willing to put their faces and voices on camera, to record some advertising clips, to help promote the WSD event: Denyette DePierro, Anish Karmarkar, Bill Ash, Liyun Yang and Fernando Gebara Filho. |
World standards day was hosted by AG 1 members, Tony Holland and Muhammad Ali.
All the presenter’s information, presentations, and links to the recorded workshops are available at jtc1info.org/wsd2025 for reference.
JTC 1/AG 1 Communications
JTC 1 plenary highlights, Chengdu, China
| China’s national standards body, CESI went above and beyond to successfully host the 47th JTC 1 plenary in Chengdu, China. Not only did China national body host the event but they hosted it at a wonderful hotel and added various entertainment opportunities during the week, notably with a trip and guided tour around the Chengdu research base for giant pandas. Aside from the fabulous social events the week was filled with work and discussions including:
The reconstitution of the advisory group, 15 on Standards and Regulations, to continue to bridge the knowledge gap between standards makers and policy makers. The reconstitution of the advisory group, 22 on the coordination with the World Economic Forum, continuing to identify gaps and opportunities that are relevant to JTC 1. |
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The JTC 1 emerging technologies group finalised three technology trend reports on:
- Intelligent Uncrewed Systems
- Neuromorphic Computing Systems
- CitiVerse
All of which will now be refined to make available for external viewing.
The JTC 1 coordination group relating to Metaverse has taken a strategic step forward, and has broadened its previous scope to include much more exploration of external environments, including CitiVerse. It will also collaborate more broadly across ISO and IEC groups and build a bigger picture of current work and how JTC 1’s expertise fits into this growing domain.
JTC 1/WG 11 on Smarter Cities continues strong collaboration with ISO/TC 268 Sustainable Cities and Communities, and the IEC system committee on Smart Cities and is moving ahead with the development of standards on smart city engineering frameworks and ontologies for city indicators. See additional highlight on Smart Cities.
And JTC 1 welcomes the appointment of Ms Laura Lindsay from the US as JTC 1’s chair-elect.
Photo highlights from JTC 1’s plenary can be found at the following link:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/sVSZhx5ChecBywc28
JTC 1/AG 1 Communications
Collaboration with JTC 4 Smart and sustainable Cities
Following the recent approval for the establishment of a new joint ISO and IEC technical committee (JTC 4), JTC 1 now looks to work closely with this new joint technical committee as the coordination of smart cities evolves.
The core objectives of JTC 4’s establishment are to formulate consistent and harmonized standardization outcomes, promote widespread industry adoption, respect the expertise of participating entities, and realize efficient cross-domain expert collaboration.
To ensure the compatibility of urban digital standardization with horizontal information technology standards, JTC 4 will be working closely to collaborate with ISO/IEC JTC 1 (Information Technology), which provides horizontal information technology standard support for JTC 4’s urban digital standardization, avoiding redundant development and ensuring technical compatibility between urban digital standards and horizontal IT standards.
Look out for the separate article.
Heng Qian
Database Languages, December meeting highlights
The international standards working group for Database Languages (ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC32/WG 3) held its December 2025 meeting, virtually from the 9th – 10th of December 2025
The meeting welcomed 19 participants, representing 7 national bodies, 10 organizations, and the SC 32 Committee Manager.
The meeting accepted the following changes for the WG3 informal working drafts:
- Addition of non-positional INSERT INTO clause to SQL
- Addition of GROUP BY <value expression> to SQL
- Bug fixes for SQL
- Bug fixes for GQL
| SC 32/WG3 is working towards publishing new editions of the SQL (9075 Database Language SQL) and GQL (39075 Database Language GQL) standards in 2027. As a result, the group initiated Committee Draft (CD) consultations on SQL and GQL in November 2025.
The next full-length meeting, in March 2026, will be resolving comments from the CD consultations.
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Gerald Venzl
Loss of an Ecma colleague and friend Jan van den Beld
Former Ecma Secretary General from 1992 to 2007, Jan van den Beld passed away on 27 August 2025 in Netherlands, he was 86 years old.
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Jan enjoyed a distinguished career with Ecma International, fostering strong collaboration with numerous JTC 1 groups and building bridges between the two standards organizations. Jan made significant contributions to JTC 1 and work on Coded Character Sets (SC 2), Digitally Recorded Media for Information Interchange and Storage (SC 23), and Document Description and Processing Languages (SC 34). |
Further information here: https://tinyurl.com/EcmaLoss
Samina Husain
Awards 2025
| Congratulations to all the following JTC 1 participants in recognition for being awarded the IEC 1906 award in 2025:
BEN HENDA Mokhtar – France |
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Future Events and workshops – 2026
January
JTC 1 Emerging Technologies foresight workshop – 22 January, Thursday (12:00-15:00 UTC),
https://www.iec.ch/academy/webinars/jtc-1-foresight-workshop-2026
May
UN Cyber workshop featuring JTC 1 SC 27 – 4-8 May
October
World Standards Day – 13 & 15 October
Thank you to all our contributors for making this quarter’s newsletter possible, and a special shout-out to the AG 1 team for pulling it all together!
We’d love to feature your insights in the next edition—submit your articles by emailing us directly or using the online submission form at JTC1info.org. Your voice matters, and we look forward to hearing from you!
Deadline for the contributions to the next newsletter is March 12th 2026.
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