On March 2005, the Telecommunication Standardization Advisory Group (TSAG) set up a Technology Watch Correspondence Group (CG) to identify new subjects for study by ITU-T.

The first topic examined by the CG was radio frequency identification (RFID), later expanded to cover the broader scope of networked identification systems. The CG was very active, worked mainly by electronic means, and held two physical meetings.

The first CG informal meeting, held on 16 February 2006 in Geneva, followed the ITU-T Workshop on "Networked RFID: Systems and Services" held 14-15 February 2006. The Workshop was attended by 123 participants from 25 countries representing entities such as standards bodies, telecoms service providers, vendors and academia. The high level attendance showed that network identification is expected to play an important role in the realization of the Ubiquitous Network Society. This workshop emphasized the importance of RFID as part of a larger vision of future technological ubiquity and asked ITU-T to take RFID into account in its NGN (Next Generation Network) work, to examine network and service architecture, requirements for machine-to-machine communication, security, information service protocols, interoperability, data format, radio frequency spectrum allocation, network performance and quality of service in its technical study groups. The CG meeting reviewed the workshop results from an ITU-T perspective, and contributed to the further development of the correspondence group deliverables. The second CG meeting took place in Seoul (Korea) on 23-24 May 2006. At this meeting attendees tried to focalize on finalization of the CG deliverables and what could be next steps for the group.

The CG produced four reports:

• Standardization issues on NID
• Proposed ITU-T strategy for standardization issues on NID with harmonized standardization cooperation
• Business models and service scenarios for NID
• A collection of terms and definitions related to NID

In addition, the CG has identified a list of NID standardization topics and provided a list of relevant SGs and external bodies mapped into this list of topics. Finally, it concluded that a Joint Coordination Activity was required to coordinate the work on standardization topics identified across the various SGs and recommended that a Focus Group be established in order to deal with the urgent standardization topics.

All achievements of the CG were submitted to the TSAG meeting in July 2006. After discussion, TSAG agreed to the establishment of a Joint Coordination Activity on Network Aspects of Identification Systems (including RFID) (JCA-NID). Mr. Pierre-André Probst (OFCOM, Switzerland) was appointed as the Convenor of this activity, which held its first meeting in Geneva, 19-21 September 2006.

The group’s work is focused on creating a high-level coordination mechanism and tools involving representatives of groups working on relevant standardization of network aspects of identification systems. As first steps the group decided to develop a roadmap outlining the order for standards work in the field, a high level requirements document and a generic architectural model. These will further developed in cooperation with the different ITU-T Study Groups or other technical group (e.g. an ITU-T Focus Group)