There is growing acknowledgement in the Americas that ICT products and services should be developed in accordance with relevant international standards, regulations and other specifications, and that their compliance is tested. 

One of the fundamental principles of ITU is to adopt global standards that enable interoperability of products, networks and services so that they can be used anywhere in the world. In this context the ITU assists the developing countries in their capacity building, to carry out conformity assessment of equipment and systems, relevant to their needs.

To this end studies of conformity assessment and interoperability (C&I) are performed at levels Regional and sub-regional, promoting cooperation between existing organizations for the establishment of a common system of C&I. The results of the Study conducted for South American countries will be presented in the Workshop (3 and 4 July). A C&I Training for the whole Americas region will follow.