 Hi there, and welcome back to the BSG Primer series. This primer is on the key documents that we use in ITUT study groups. Inputs to the study group and outputs of the study group. Let's get started. Key inputs that are considered during ITUT study group meetings. The first and most important input are contributions from membership. Contributions are written documents that are submitted by member states, sector members, associates, or academia participants in advance of a meeting. They are intended to move the work forward. So it's very important for them to include a clear proposal at the end of the contribution. The contributions are numbered sequentially during the four-year study period within each study group. So you might have a contribution C44 or even C305. The next important input document is the TD. TDs are submitted by a meeting official. That is to say either a member of the study group management team, a rapporteur, an editor, or by the TSB secretariat. These can be posted before and during a meeting. That's very different from contributions. These have to be received at least 12 calendar days before the study group starts. Examples of TDs are agendas, group reports generated during the meeting, the latest draft text for recommendations, or liaison statements. What are liaison statements? Well, liaison statements simply put are communications sent from the study group or to the study group from other bodies. Could be another study group, could be TSAG, or even an external body like another standards development organization. These are called LS, and the LSs always indicate the source of the liaison statement, the question or the body to which it is directed, and the action desired. All of the incoming LS to a particular study group meeting are posted as TDs, as are outgoing liaison statements when they've been agreed by the group. So those are your key input documents. What are the key outputs of ITUT study group meetings? Well, the most important is the ITUT standard, or what we call the ITUT recommendation. Recommendations, ITUT RECs, are international standards that define how telecommunication networks operate and interwork. And usually work on a recommendation starts with the approval within the study group of what is known as a work item, and the development of what we call base texts. Until their final approval. So that's ITUT recommendations. We also have annexes that can be approved separately. These annexes are integral to the recommendation in question, and they contain material that's necessary for us to understand it. So in that respect, an annex to a recommendation is a normative text. It's part of the standard. We also approve at the ITUT, however, non-normative documents. Examples of those are ITUT supplements. A supplement is a document that contains material that is supplementary to a recommendation associated with it, but it's not essential to the completeness of our understanding or implementation of that standard. That's why an ITUT supplement is non-normative and agreement by the study group is sufficient. We don't need to go through the traditional or alternative approval processes. The same thing goes for an appendix. An appendix to a recommendation also contains supplementary material, and it's associated with the subject matter. An appendix always relates to a particular recommendation, whereas a supplement can relate to a series of recommendations. Finally, ITUT technical papers are also an important output of study groups, and these are non-normative, and they provide information on various topics addressed by the study groups. They're free of charge, they involve small editorial overhead, they can cover various areas of study, and some examples of that are accessibility, economic and policy issues as you see here on international mobile roaming, eHealth, mobility, outside plant installation, and so on. So that is a brief primer on the key inputs and outputs of our ITUT study group meetings. Thanks for joining us. This is ITUT, Bridging the Standardization Gap Program.