On 19 May 2026, around 100 senior leaders from across the Quality Infrastructure (QI) ecosystem gathered in Brussels for the second edition of the TIC Council QI Roundtable. Representatives of TIC companies, Standards Bodies, Accreditation Bodies and institutional partners from the Americas, Europe, Asia, Oceania and Africa came together for a single purpose: to determine how QI must evolve to remain a trusted partner for industry and policymakers in an era of rapid technological change.
Building on a Shared Reform Agenda
This year's Roundtable picked up where the inaugural edition left off. The first gathering had identified three workstreams for the community: communicating the value of Quality Infrastructure, addressing systemic bottlenecks, and future-proofing the system. The 2026 edition focused squarely on the third of these, dedicating two structured breakout sessions, spread across ten roundtables, to identifying where the system is falling behind and designing what comes next.
Where the System Falls Behind
The first breakout session asked participants to pinpoint speed gaps, divergence gaps and the resulting competitiveness impact. A clear pattern emerged across all ten tables: QI processes, and standards development in particular, are not keeping pace with the speed of technological change, especially artificial intelligence. Several tables pointed to the consensus-based governance model itself as the underlying constraint, calling for a fundamental redesign rather than incremental optimisation.
Alongside the speed gap, participants flagged persistent divergence in accreditation and regulatory requirements across jurisdictions. Gaps in mutual recognition arrangements, inconsistent interpretation of standards, and a lack of harmonisation between conformity assessment and standardisation bodies were repeatedly cited as barriers to market access and a source of competitive disadvantage, particularly in fast-moving sectors such as AI and medical devices.
Designing the Next Generation of QI
Having diagnosed the gaps, the second breakout session shifted the conversation toward solutions. Each table proposed at least one short-term action for the next one to two years and one longer-term structural evolution for the next five to ten.
Five themes recurred throughout the discussion:
- Participants converged on the need for "smart" standards: digitally native, machine-readable and interoperable, with AI-assisted drafting seen as an immediate way to compress development timelines.
- They called for a unified communication effort built around a single message, that QI delivers trust, aimed at industry, regulators and the public alike, not only technical communities.
- Strategic alignment and genuine cross-pillar coordination were named as essential to prevent fragmented strategies from undermining collective impact.
- Several tables also urged QI to begin using AI within its own internal processes now, agreeing on minimal guiding principles rather than waiting for comprehensive governance frameworks to emerge.
- Finally, there was broad agreement on the urgency of building the next generation of QI professionals: practitioners who are both AI-literate and TIC-savvy, equipped to work at the intersection of technology and regulation.
Three Consolidated Priorities
Drawing on the convergent output of all ten tables and the framing offered by the opening and closing speakers, three reform priorities emerged for the QI community to carry forward.
- The first is to speed up and harmonise the system. This means rethinking standards development from the ground up, moving from blank-sheet consensus toward outcome-first, iterative processes; closing accreditation divergence and MRA gaps through structured dialogue between standards, accreditation and conformity assessment bodies; and treating the EU's NLF revision as a concrete opportunity to move toward a single accreditation market.
- The second is to embed AI and digital transformation across QI. The community must work on two fronts at once, developing guidance for AI-related conformity assessment while also adopting AI internally. A shared digital infrastructure should replace fragmented, pillar-by-pillar digitalisation, with smart standards becoming the default format for new standards from 2027, and a rationalisation exercise applied to the hundreds of AI standards currently under development.
- The third is to communicate value, build capacity and lead. A unified narrative, translated for regulators, industry, consumers and policymakers, must position QI as a proactive partner present early in the innovation conversation. This includes actively building the next cohort of QI professionals and amplifying the community's voice through international structures such as the UN and ISO.
Turning Insight into Action
TIC Council is translating these findings into concrete work. The Global QI Infrastructure Campaign, running through 2026 and 2027, will broaden ownership of the communication effort across the wider QI ecosystem so that the sector speaks with one voice to audiences well beyond TIC alone. A second initiative, AI Literacy Training for QI Practitioners, will be developed in collaboration with Accreditation Bodies to equip professionals across all QI pillars to engage with AI as a practical, everyday reality rather than an abstract concept.
The message from the room was unambiguous: Quality Infrastructure has the foundations to remain industry's trusted partner, but only if the community is willing to redesign, not merely refine, the system it has built.
Watch our Global QI Infrastructure Campaign "Foundation of Trust" on Youtube.
Read the full report here.
