The next SIG-EDU meeting, taking place on Tuesday, 15 September in Thessaloniki, Greece, co-located with the Learning Impact Europe Conference 2026. This half-day session focuses on Interoperability and Procurement, following up on the outcomes of our TNC26 SIG-EDU meeting in Helsinki.
This SIG-EDU meeting brings together the NREN and higher education community to explore interoperability and standards in education technology, with a particular focus on procurement & interoperability: what are we procuring, what are we building ourselves, and how do we make sure it's interoperable?
As institutions and NRENs increasingly work with a mix of commercial and open-source tools, ensuring these systems can work together, rather than locking users into a single vendor's ecosystem, has become a pressing challenge. The session will draw on real-world procurement case studies to unpack where interoperability requirements succeed or fall short in practice, and will look at what trust frameworks and "trusted apps" approaches could offer European institutions evaluating new tools.
We'll also explore what a more coordinated, European-level approach to procuring and building educational services could look like and for whom it might add most value. Smaller NRENs often have limited leverage to negotiate favourable terms or influence vendor roadmaps on their own, while larger NRENs bring more scale but not always the same incentive to pool efforts. The discussion will consider what a shared framework or baseline for procurement might contain, how it could accommodate NRENs of different sizes and needs, and where collective European action could deliver more than each NREN negotiating independently, alongside the broader question of digital sovereignty: when to build, adopt open-source, or procure commercially.
This is a great opportunity to connect interoperability efforts across the community and align on where SIG-EDU should focus next. We look forward to seeing you in Thessaloniki.
SIG-EDU participants are also welcome to attend the Learning Impact Europe https://www.1edtech.org/event/europe/2026 conference at a discounted rate.
Select ticket type 1EdTech partner to get €100 off the registration fee.
REGISTRATION - 2026 1EdTech Learning Impact Europe. Online registration by Cvent