The digital economy has become an important impetus of global economic growth. The rapid development of emerging and key technological fields, such as the new generation of information technology and biotechnology, has put forward new requirements for standards development.

However, the traditional mode of standards development relying on paper documents faces problems such as low efficiency, long cycle, and relatively low quality, which fails to meet current demands.

Therefore, major international and regional standards organizations as well as standardization bodies of developed countries have already begun to develop machine-readable standards, promoting the digital transformation of standards in terms of strategic planning, technological research, mechanism building, platform development, and industrial practice.

Learning from advanced practice, the National Standardization Administration of China (SAC) recently announced that China has initiated the research on digital transformation of standards. Led by the China National Institute of Standardization (CNIS), the research on digital transformation of standards in China has kicked off in all respects, covering top-level design, key technologies, full chain of application scenarios, and other projects.

The proposals of 15 national standards were approved in 2024, laying a foundation for providing the common knowledge and general technological rules of the transformation. In 2025, efforts will be made to carry out research on large language models of standards, intelligent standards development, data analysis, and other aspects. The construction of National Library of Standards will be improved to build the world’s leading standards data resource center and standards research and service platform. Based on the newly established national collaboration mechanism of standardization research institutions, it is expected to improve the new mode of sharing and coordinating standard resources, to promote the digital cooperation of standards.