full issue

• Siemens on added value for standards users • New ISO 9000 video

ISO FocusVolume 5, No. 11, November 2008, ISSN 1729-8709

The Magazine of the International Organization for Standardization

e -s tandardization

ISO Focus is published 11 times a year (single issue : July-August). It is available in English.

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Contents1 Comment Elio Bianchi, Chair ISO/ITSIG and

Operating Director, UNI, A new way of working

2 World Scene Highlights of events from around the world

3 ISO SceneHighlights of news and developments from ISO members

4 Guest ViewMarkus J. Reigl, Head of Corporate Standardization at Siemens AG

8 Main Focus

ISO Focus November 2008

• The “ nuts and bolts” of ISO’s collaborative IT applications•Strengthening IT expertise in developing countries •The ITSIG/XML authoring and metadata project•Zooming in on the ISO Concept database •In sight – Value-added information services•Connecting standards •Standards to go – A powerful format for mobile workers •Re-engineering the ISO standards development process•The language of content-creating communities•Bringing the virtual into the formal •Workflow management – UNI’s success story

37 Developments and InitiativesConference on e-business standards •Standardization course for managers •Protecting standards •Future energy management standard

42 New on the shelfNew ISO 9000 video •Release of ISO Survey 2007 • New standard helps travellers plan their trip • New electronic version of Guide to the Expression of Uncertainty in Measurement

45 Coming up

e-standardization

© ISO Focus, www.iso.org/isofocus

CommentA new way of workingA commonly accepted notion in

today’s business environment is that the inadequate manage-

ment of an organization’s information systems can have dire consequences for its efficiency and competitiveness – whether it is a large or small, private or public, non-profit or governmental business or organization.

In fact, Information Technolo-gy (IT) structures are now considered to be fundamental pillars supporting the core business activities of organi-zations. Increasingly, these organiza-tions see in IT one of the most impor-tant tools for enabling the future of their business.

In a global environment character-ized by rapid and continuous changes in state-of-the-art technology – especially true in the field of information technol-ogy – assessment, guidance and control mechanisms are fundamental to assist top managers when adopting the future policies and strategies of their businesses and organizations. This scenario also applies to standard bodies, be they inter-national, regional or national.

Indeed, during the past decades, standards organizations have signifi-cantly invested in their IT systems in order to provide their clients with a better service : whether users of stand-ards or the experts participating in the standards development process. But due to continuously evolving techno-logical developments, these organiza-tions still find themselves today hav-ing to tackle the latest challenges pre-sented by emerging technologies in the field of IT.

It is in this framework and tak-ing these needs into account that the ISO Information Technology Strategy Implementation Group (ITSIG) – an advisory body to the ISO Council – has worked and will continue to work in the years to come.

Indeed, in recent years, ITSIG has been providing assistance on the design and implementation of IT appli-

Elio Bianchi,

Chair ISO/ITSIG ; and Operating Director, UNI Italian Organization for Standardization

“ ITSIG has been actively introducing tools

to support collaborative work amongst

the experts engaged in the standards

development process.”

1 Comment Elio Bianchi, Chair ISO/ITSIG and Operating Director, UNI, A new way of working

2 World Scene Highlights of events from around the world

3 ISO SceneHighlights of news and developments from ISO members

4 Guest ViewMarkus J. Reigl, Head of Corporate Standardization at Siemens AG

8 Main Focus

• The “ nuts and bolts” of ISO’s collaborative IT applications•Strengthening IT expertise in developing countries •The ITSIG/XML authoring and metadata project•Zooming in on the ISO Concept database •In sight – Value-added information services•Connecting standards •Standards to go – A powerful format for mobile workers •Re-engineering the ISO standards development process•The language of content-creating communities•Bringing the virtual into the formal •Workflow management – UNI’s success story

37 Developments and InitiativesConference on e-business standards •Standardization course for managers •Protecting standards •Future energy management standard

42 New on the shelfNew ISO 9000 video •Release of ISO Survey 2007 • New standard helps travellers plan their trip • New electronic version of Guide to the Expression of Uncertainty in Measurement

45 Coming up

cations and services in support of ISO international standardization processes. For instance, to facilitate standards development; the dissemination of doc-uments; data management of users and groups and their respective roles; and electronic balloting – a fairly complex Web-based application due to the par-ticular requirements of the ISO ballot-ing system.

ITSIG has also been actively involved in introducing tools to sup-port collaborative work amongst the experts engaged in the development process of International Standards. These projects were treated with the highest priority and contributed to a substantial improvement in the effi-ciency of the standardization system. Moreover, they are certainly open to further evolution.

In the years to come, the aim is to provide guidance for a harmonized approach to address emerging require-ments from users continuously press-ing for more convenient and flexible access to standards and standardiza-tion at large.

In particular, there is a need to focus on what has been defined as intelligent and interactive standards – a concept that embraces a variety of developments, including the possi-bility to offer thematic access to con-tent (covered by a plurality of publi-cations), mathematical formulas and software tools with user-configurable and interactive features and machine readable database standards, along with many others.

Of particular interest is the design and implementation of new working tools based on the innova-tive technologies which are trans-forming the way Internet is used and the management of content (e.g. Web 2.0, XML).

ISO and ITSIG are thus cur-rently working to actively address these issues. We are open and keen to exchange views, ideas and suggestions from inside the standardization com-munity, as well as from industry and open community representatives. In the following pages you will be able to sample a taste of what has been done and what can be done – enjoy !

ISO Focus November 2008 1


World SceneISO strengthens partnership with WMOISO and the World Meteoro-logical Organization (WMO) have decided to increase their cooperation and avoid duplica-tion in the development of Inter-national Standards related to meteorological and hydrological data, products and services.

ISO Secretary-General Alan Bryden and WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud signed an agreement in September 2008 in Geneva, Switzerland, to for-malize the partnership.

Procedures are now in place for the accelerated adoption by ISO of WMO documents as ISO standards. WMO and ISO will develop, approve and publish common standards based on WMO technical regulations, manuals and guides.

The WMO Secretary-General stated that the new procedures “ would clarify the authority of WMO documents and enhance their international recognition and dissemination. This will be of particular importance to the activities of national hydrological and meteorological services in addressing standard issues.”

Mr. Bryden underlined that the agreement was an illustration of the increasing collaboration between the UN system and ISO.

ISO and WMO have been work-ing in close cooperation since the granting of consultative status to ISO by the WMO Executive Council at its fifth session in 1954. The WMO has liaison status with nearly 30 of ISO’s technical committees developing standards in hydro-metry, air quality, water quality, soil quality, geographic informa-

tion, solar energy, petroleum and gas industry, information technologies, marine technology, quantities and units.

BIC celebrates 75th anniversaryThe Bureau International des Containers et du Transport Intermodal (BIC) celebrated its diamond anniversary with a conference in Malta in October 2008. Over one hundred dele-gates representing carriers, man-ufacturers, operators, lessors and forwarders attended the event.

The conference included thematic panels on the environment, secu-rity authenticity of cargo, infra-structures and investment. Participants had the opportunity to exchange views on ISO stand-ards, including working docu-ments relating to the identification of containers and mechanical and electronic seals, as well as discuss the implementation of the ISO 28000 series on security management systems for the supply chain.

agreements and regulations for the benefit of world markets and economy. Mr. Bryden congratu-lated BIC on 75 years of remarkable accomplishments in support of global trade.

Focusing on next generation standardsThe International Federation of Standards Users (IFAN) held its 35th Members’ Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland in Septem-ber 2008. Some 30 participants from 10 countries attended (photo below), representing national members from standards user organizations and corporate members from both industrial and commercial sectors.

NATO’s reliance on International Standards“ Achieving interoperability through standardization ” was the theme of a conference of the North Atlantic Treaty Organiza-tion (NATO) organized by the United States Department of Defense in Lansdowne, Virginia in September 2008.

World Scene

Over the last several years, NATO’s Standardization Agency has adopted a policy of whenever possible using standards devel-oped by civil standards bodies rather than creating unique military standards. This policy also includes transferring NATO Standardization Agreements to civil standards bodies for maintenance purposes where appropriate.

As part of this strategy, NATO has signed technical cooperation agreements with a number of civil standards bodies, including ISO and the International Elec-trotechnical Commission (IEC).

The NATO Standardization Agency was thus one of the sponsors of the event in Virginia. The conference was attended by some 150 participants from 26 countries, and provided a valuable opportunity to explain this policy and some of the other steps that are being taken to streamline and rationalize NATO’s standardization activities.

Greg Saunders chaired the conference organizing committee, he is also Chair of the NATO Civil Standards Management Working Group.

WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud (left) and ISO Secretary-General Alan Bryden signed an agreement to formalize the partnership between the two organizations.

Michel Hennemand, Bureau Veritas, Chair of BIC and of ISO/TC 104/SC 1, General purpose containers.

In an opening video message, ISO Secretary-General Alan Bryden underlined the excellent collaboration between ISO and BIC which, he added, supported a positive globalization. He recounted how this “ successful partnership ” had started with the creation of the ISO technical committee on freight containers (ISO/TC 104) in 1961.

Since then, ISO and BIC have worked together to meet the needs of the industry, so that today numerous ISO standards are fully referenced in intergovernmental conventions,

The open session included presentations from ISO, the International Electrotechnical Commission and the International Telecommunication Union, giving the highlights of recent developments and strategic plan-ning within their organizations, with a view to the next generation of standards.

Three separate groups participated in a brain-storming session focusing on identifying issues to be put forward to International Standards developing organiza-tions with regard to the next editions of their strategic plans. The results will be input to the development of agreed IFAN proposals.

The 2009 IFAN Members’ Assembly will be held in Berlin, Germany, hosted by the German Committee of Standards Users (ANP). Looking forward to the next triennial IFAN international conference, to be held in 2010 in conjunction with the 37th Members’ Assembly, it was agreed that this would be held in Indonesia, hosted by the national IFAN member, Masyarakat Standardisasi Indonesia, together with Badan Standardisasi Nasional.

2 ISO Focus November 2008


ISO Scene

The meeting was one of the largest ISO standards develop-ment meetings ever held, with 386 experts attending from 76 ISO member countries and 33 liaison organizations. The open-ing ceremony included speeches by the Chilean Minister of Economy, Hugo Lavado; the Minister of Labour, Osvaldo Andrade and Executive Director of INN, Sergio Toro.

The plenary reached consensus on a number of key topics which had emerged from over 5 000 comments received on the latest working draft of the future ISO 26000 standard giving guidance on social responsibility. As a result, a resolution was passed approving the circulation of the document as a committee draft, which is expected to be released within three months.

The progress made in passing this important development stage was seen as an indication of the high level of consensus being built among the multi-stakeholder representation with-in the WG SR. Representatives of six stakeholder groups parti-cipate in the process : industry ; government; labour; consumers ; nongovernmental organizations ; and service, support and research.

For further information: www.iso.org/sr

Kenya invests in quality educationThe launch by the Kenya Bureau of Standards (KEBS) of its new National Quality Insti-tute, recently installed in new premises in Nairobi, was the occasion of a well-attended and publicized workshop on Inter-national Standards in support of development and trade, and also an opportunity to advocate the dissemination of the “ quality culture ” in the country.

ISO Secretary-General Alan Bryden presented recent developments in ISO and met H.E. Henry Kosgey, the Minister for Industrialization, as well as key Kenyan stake-holders. Mr. Bryden also visited the headquarters of the African Regional Standards Organiza-tion, currently chaired by Dr. Mang’eli, Managing Director of KEBS and member of the ISO Council.

Chile and Peru’s increased involvement with ISOINDECOPI, the ISO member for Peru, has recently upgraded its ISO membership. A visit from the ISO Secretary-General in August 2008 provided an opportunity to highlight the benefits of increased participa-tion in ISO to public authorities, industry and the media, at a time when the legislative framework for standardization and accreditation in the country is being refined and strength-ened.

INN, the ISO member for Chile, is already actively involved in ISO, but new opportunities are emerging as it strives to diversify economic activities into innovative fields – currently 80 % of exports are based on copper, timber, agro-food and fish products, which are all areas where ISO standards are available.

In addition to meetings with industry and public authorities, the ISO Secretary-General met the President of the National Council for Innova-tion and Competitiveness, Mr. Bitrán Colodro, to discuss how participation in and anti-cipation of International Standards development can be major assets for promoting new activities with the latest technology, as well as services. He also appreciated the concerted and widespread effort to promote quality management in public services, based on the implementation of the ISO 9000 series.

ISO Secretary-General Alan Bryden meets with the President of INDECOPI, Dr. Jaime Thorne León, and Peruvian Government Officials.

Financial services pay their wayThe 27th annual plenary of ISO/TC 68, Financial services, was held in Helsinki, Finland. Rep-resentatives from 19 participating member countries took part in the event, which included new observer member Brazil attend-ing its first conference. The plenary was followed by a meeting of the ISO 20022 Reg-istration Management Group.

H.E. Henry Kosgey (right), Minister for Industrialization and ISO Secretary- General Alan Bryden unveil the inauguration plaque of the Kenya National Quality Institute.

Whilst in the region, Mr. Bryden took the opportunity to meet with the management of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) at their headquarters in Nairobi to con-sider enhanced collaboration. Before leaving, he gave a lecture at the University of Nairobi on the contribution of ISO to sustainable development.

Consensus moves social responsibility into next levelThe 6th plenary meeting of the ISO working group on social responsibility (WG SR), hosted by the Chilean National Institute for Standardization (INN), took place in Santiago, Chile, in September 2008.

The ISO/TC 68 plenary was held in Helsinki, Finland.

Presentations on the ISO 20022 series of standards on Financial services – UNIversal Financial Industry message scheme, were given by the ISO 20022 Registra-tion Authority, followed by receptions with local bankers and corporations to raise aware-ness of the importance of stand-ards in the financial services industry.

The meetings were sponsored by the Financial Markets and Payments Systems of the Fed-eration of Finnish Financial Services and showcased by the Finnish market, which arranged for standardizers and market players to interact.

Following the success of this experience, ISO/TC 68 decided to include, as part of future plenaries, structured events for interaction between market players in the sponsoring country and standardizers, thus bringing the standards to the users.

The plenary included a presen-tation from the Universal Postal Union (UPU) addressing how, as a facilitator of financial transactions moving away from paper-based systems, it could benefit from ISO/TC 68 membership and standards.

Historic moment : the resolution to elevate ISO 26000 to committee draft status is approved and greeted enthusiastically at the 6 th plenary of the ISO working group on social responsibility. Photo : Jens Henriksson



Guest View

Markus Reiglarkus J. Reigl is Head of Corporate Stand-

ardization at Siemens AG in Germany. After complet-ing his studies in applied physics and electrical engineering at the German Universities of Darmstadt and Wiesbaden with a Master of Engineering (Dipl.-Ing.) in radio systems and microwave radar technology in 1986, Mr. Reigl joined Siemens AG and began his career in engineering design of military radio and radar systems.

Throughout the 1990s, Mr. Reigl held various positions in the Siemens Defense Electronics Group, leading product and project management departments.

Mr. Reigl joined the Siemens Public Communications Group in 1999 as Business Manager with some EUR 180 million annual turnover in the South-East European region, holding offices in Vienna, Austria, and Munich, Germany.

In 2006, he became Head of Siemens AG Standardization Department on a corporate level. His team of 24 professionals currently manages the strategy and operations of Siemens AG’s standardization work globally throughout its 15 operating divisions. The team coordinates the more than 3 000 Siemens’ individual contributors to standardization committees, which are primarily involved in ISO and the

ISO Focus : What in your view are the advantages of international stand-ardization? How has Sie-mens benefited from the application of Interna-tional Standards, and how does it perceive the ISO system for interna-

tional standardization?

Markus Reigl : For over 100 years, standardization has been a key issue for Sie-mens. The company had its beginnings during the Ger-man industrial revolution. Soon after, in the middle of the 19th century, the compa-ny started exporting electrical machinery to other European countries and overseas.

Harmonized safety, performance and function-al requirements included in International Standards not only benefited the company, but were also of value to other vendors, resellers, independ-ent solution providers, public authorities and, of course, the

individual users. Siemens was thus an ear-ly and dedicated supporter of internation-al standardization.

ISO Focus : Can you tell us more about Siemens’ heavy involvement in some of the technical committees developing International Standards ?

Markus Reigl : Siemens employees hold more than 60 Chairs and Secretariats on various technical committees, subcom-mittees and working groups of interna-tional standardization bodies. Because of Siemens’ focus on electrotechnical products, we substantially participate

“ For over 100 years, standardization has been a key issue for Siemens.”

M

International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), but also in the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) and the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC), together with various national committees and working groups.



Markus Reigl: When the goal is broad international consensus, the success of the standardization effort depends largely on wide involvement, consultation and active participation of as many diverse and interested parties as possible.

Catering to such a vast network of professionals to ensure they can com-municate effectively is a must, but is not an easy objective. ISO’s e-standardiza-tion tools are highly appreciated, as they successfully simplify the sometimes com-plex processes of standard development, thereby reducing effort and cost for par-ticipants.

The use of state-of-the-art infor-mation and communication technology applications such as Web-based collabo-ration tools is increasingly becoming the accepted and preferred means of work-ing. In this domain, ISO has invested in a

Siemens Munich Perlach and the office of Corporate Technology, Munich, Germany.

Siemens power package for hospitals

and offices.

Siemens wind turbines.

in IEC committees. Similarly, we also have manifold expert contributions and Chair/Secretary positions in ISO in a number of non-electrical as well as hori-zontal subjects.

ISO and its sister bodies thus enjoy an excellent reputation for the qual-ity of the International Stand-ards. Their wide international consensus, in particular, is of great value for multinational businesses, a quality which we recognize is not an easy one to achieve !

ISO Focus : This issue of ISO Focus is dedicated to “e-standardization”: what is your perception of the role that ISO’s IT tools have for facilitating participation, promot-ing efficiency and providing resource-saving solutions?

“ ISO e-standardization tools are highly

appreciated, as they successfully simplify

the sometimes complex processes of standard

development.”

Concerning converged technol-ogies and generic subjects, we appre-ciate the readiness of ISO to liaise with other organizations developing Interna-tional Standards. In this way, ISO com-plements core competencies and avoids duplication of efforts in order to maintain global coherence, integrity and quality of deliverables.



number of tools that greatly ease the stand-ards development process. In the future, such tools will ultimately replace more tra-ditional means of collaboration.

ISO Focus : Siemens has introduced an intranet portal which facilitates access to standards. Can you elabo-rate on this initiative and the func-tionalities available to its users ? What was the rationale behind it and what benefits has the system shown ?

Markus Reigl : For a multinational com-pany, any initiative that can help to con-tinuously increase efficiency of collabora-tion ranks high on the priority list. For the Siemens community of more than 15 000 users of standards, we have established a single-source database server which will host the latest standards and related docu-ments – always up to date and available at any time.

Markus Reigl : Knowledge management system (KMS) platforms, such as SharePoint or Livelink, are not only about increasing efficiency of collaboration. One should not underestimate the value these platforms can also deliver in terms of information man-agement, e.g. avoiding multiple versions of a document as when attached in multi-ple e-mails, and no cumbersome manual search, retrieval, clarification and valida-tion of document versions. In other words, information and communication technolo-gy-based knowledge management delivers data quality, ensures its integrity and saves human and machine resources.

A key success factor while rolling out a KMS is user acceptance. Providing ease of use by offering a simple, not too complex and feature-rich man-machine interface will lower the entry barrier and generate not only satisfied, but enthusi-astic users.

ISO Focus : Does Siemens employ other IT tools for its corporate stand-ardization work which could be of interest to our readers ?

Markus Reigl : Well, there are numer-ous additional, mostly Web-based tools both on a corporate level and operated by business divisions. Many of them are interlinked to enable a hierarchical infor-mation structure.

Guest View

Users are charged an internal usage fee, but they are definitely prepared to pay for quality ! The official German distrib-utors and other relevant sources, such as the publishing departments of national committees, are of course being correct-ly compensated for licences to use these centrally-pooled documents.

ISO Focus : Siemens is a large glo-bal user of Livelink, one of the key software platforms currently used by ISO and several national standards bodies. What are the most important aspects of Siemens’ implementation ? Are there functionalities that could be of interest, in your view, to stand-ards developers and users ?

Providing electronics solutions

Siemens AG (Berlin and Munich, Germany) is a global powerhouse in electronics and electrical engi-neering, operating in the indus-try, energy and healthcare sec-tors. The company has around 400 000 employees working to develop and manufacture prod-ucts, design and install complex systems and projects, and tai-lor a wide range of solutions for individual requirements.

For over 160 years, Siemens has stood for technological excel-lence, innovation, quality, reli-ability and internationality. In fiscal 2007, Siemens had rev-enue of EUR 72,4 billion and profit of EUR 3,9 billion (IFRS). Further information is available at : www.siemens.com.

Siemens steam turbines.

Siemens digital manufacturing.



e-standardization

One example is our database on Siemens’ membership in national, region-al and international committees. This ena-bles any Siemens employee worldwide to find the experts for all relevant standardi-zation issues.

Our information platforms are anoth-er example, for instance on market access conditions like technical regulations and referenced standards for key target mar-kets. In particular, we provide consider-able information and know-how on the European Directives, the interpretation

and implementation of these binding reg-ulatory frameworks applicable through-

out Siemens’ product scope.Our regional companies and oper-

ating divisions have also provided their individual knowledge bases, which con-tain specific information, experiences and interpretations. All these initiatives not only contribute to a more efficient require-ments handling but, in addition, ultimately safeguard legal compliance arising from product safety obligations.

ISO Focus : As we move forward into an increasingly interrelated world linked by information and communication technol-ogy (ICT), what tools or processes would Siemens envision as future accomplish-ments for e-standardization?

Markus Reigl : In ICT, it is difficult to say what comes next. Not long ago, I learnt about the success of some aca-demic research which provided practi-cal proof that molecular substances can be transferred at the speed of light from one place to another, using quantum phys-ics. I can now only wonder whether one day ISO will offer a “ beam me up to my committee meeting ” teleportation ser-vice to its members.

“ ICT-based knowledge

management delivers data

quality, ensures its integrity and saves human and machine resources.”

Siemens – from screening to diagnosis.

Siemens Sharepoint Services.



Main Focus

e-standardizationThe “ nuts and bolts ” of ISO’s collaborative IT applications

by Reinhard Weissinger, Group Manager, Project Management and Electronic Services, Standards Department, ISO Central Secretariat

ISO is a highly decentralized organi-zation operating in many sectors of technology and business with, cur-

rently, the participation of 157 nation-al members. To support this large and diverse user community, and to fit the

different national conditions and organi-zational structures, ISO’s IT applications need to be highly flexible.

To give a good picture of the var-ious applications involved, this article highlights the three main applications used in standards development and dis-semination, and gives an overview and summary of all the ISO IT applications (see Table page 10).

Principles of development

ISO’s IT applications are devel-oped through extensive consultation processes operated under its Informa-tion technology strategy implemen-tation group (ITSIG), which reports to the ISO Council. All major ISO IT projects are steered by project teams operating under ITSIG with participa-

tion from many ISO members. Con-sequently, ISO’s IT applications can be adapted to the national specifics of ISO members and at the same time provide the necessary integration and coherence to operate globally harmo-nized processes.

To support the use of its IT appli-cations, ISO operates an extensive train-ing programme with courses targeted to key staff in ISO committees and to ISO members. Information about ISO’s training programme can be found on ISO Online (www.iso.org/training).

“ Consequently, ISO’s IT applications can

be adapted to the national specifics of ISO members.”



e-standardization

About the author

Reinhard Weissinger, Group Manager, Project Manage-ment and Elec-tronic Services, Standards Department, ISO Central Secretariat

Enabling standards development and document sharing – The ISOTC server

The ISOTC server offers a host-ing environment for all ISO technical committees, subcommittees and working groups. Its primary purpose is to pro-vide the secretariats of ISO committees with the tools to autonomously manage their electronic working environment in a decentralized manner.

The environment provided by the ISOTC server is aimed at enabling secretariats of ISO committees to make documents available to their members, send notifications, obtain input from their members and provide links to applica-tions such as balloting, file submission to the ISO Central Secretariat, etc.

The role of the ISO Central Sec-retariat is restricted to maintaining the working environment, including help-desk and backup services. The docu-ments and other content on a commit-tee’s work area are under the complete responsibility of the committee secre-taries and their support staff.

Managing users and roles – The ISO Global Directory

The registration of users, as well as the management of their roles as members of ISO technical com-mittees, subcommittees and working groups, is undertaken through the ISO Global Directory. User registration and role assignment are both organized in a decentralized manner under the respon-sibility of each ISO member body for the

users in its country. Amongst the roles managed via the global directory are those of committee secretaries, chairs, members of committees and working groups, balloters, etc.

Supporting national mirror committees – The ISONMC server

The ISONMC server is an impor-tant new development that provides ISO members with the ability to efficiently manage and control the read-only access of their national mirror committee (NMC) members to working documents in the ISO technical programme.

The service comprises the dis-semination to national stakeholders of all documents under development in ISO committees and working groups, such as project management documentation, reports of meetings and resolutions, ballots and comments, working drafts, committee drafts, draft and final draft International Standards. The ISONMC server is, how-ever, not intended for the dissemination of published ISO Standards, nor for the development of national standards.

To adapt to the requirements of dif-

ferent ISO members, this service is made available in two options (see Figure 1).

Using the server to their advantage

Option 1 offers dissemination through the ISONMC server, maintained by the ISO Central Secretariat (ISO/CS). Choosing the ISO/CS-hosted NMC serv-er is particularly useful for ISO mem-bers having little or no existing national electronic dissemination infrastructure for ISO working documents.

All working documents devel-oped by an ISO committee or working group are automatically copied to the ISONMC server. National users who have been registered by their ISO mem-ber body as a participant in one or more national mirror committees can access the documents of the corresponding ISO committees through the national mirror committees to which they have been assigned. The main function of the ISONMC server is to disseminate the documents developed by ISO com-mittees or working groups to the cor-responding national committees – it does not provide an environment to run specific national standards devel-opment efforts (e.g. developing nation-al standards).

“ To support the use of its IT applications,

ISO operates an extensive training programme.”

Figure 1 – Details of Service options available from the ISONMC server.

ISOTC server

(maintained by ISO/CS)

Two options for the dissemination of ISO documents to National Mirror Committees Other servers

hosting ISO/TCs and SCs

(maintained by MBs or other organizations)

ISONMC server

(maintained by ISO/CS)

National servers

(maintained by member bodies – MBs)

Replication of documents and metadata to the ISOTC server

Upload of documents and metadata to national server

Replication of documents and metadata to the NMC server

Automated download of files and and metadata

Option 1 Option 2



Main Focus

Two steps are required for this service to operate: firstly, national mirror committees must be created in the ISO Global Directory and mapped to corre-sponding ISO committees and working groups. In a second step, national users must be registered and assigned to the national mirror committees.

Making the most of existing infrastructure

Option 2 is for ISO members that wish to disseminate ISO working documents through their own national servers and not via the ISONMC serv-er. To meet this need, ISO/CS provides access to the documents and their meta-data to the ISO members for uploading onto their own national servers.

With this option, there is no need to register national mirror committees and their members in the ISO Global Directory.

New horizonsISO’s IT applications are increas-

ingly integrated into seamless, end-to-end processes. In particular, through the NMC services, ISO documents made available in a committee or work-ing group can be disseminated near-

ly instantaneously to all stakeholders around the world.

At the same time, tools – like the ISO Concept database and the XML-authoring template – are being devel-oped with a view to exploiting con-tent from standards by storing it in a more granular form and in re-usable formats. In addition to providing sup-port for the standards development work, such tools allow standardized content to be integrated into compu-ter applications run at the site of cus-tomers and clients, and will provide the basis for the combination of such content into new products and servic-es derived from standards.

“ ISO’s IT applications are increasingly integrated

into seamless, end-to-end processes.”

Overview of ISO’s IT applications

ISO portal and general information on ISO standards and standardization

ISO Online ISO Online is the portal to all information on ISO’s activities, ISO standards and public project infor-mation, reference documents, policies, news and the ISO Store. All other IT applications can be accessed from ISO Online.

www.iso.orgIn operation since 1994, major upgrade in 2007.

Integrated “ help ” functions

Publicly accessible Information on ISO Online is maintained by the ISO Central Secretariat.

Standards development

ISO’s core business. Standards development involves around 50 000 individuals worldwide, who participate as field experts or in other functions in the global standards development process. A majority of ISO’s IT applications have been developed to support standards development, with continuing emphasis on decentralized and collaborative work.

The process starts with the registration of users to certain roles in ISO committees, working groups and other bodies (see ISO Global Directory). Committees have a collaborative, shared platform for their work (see ISOTC server). Key stages in standards development are the voting stages (see ISO electronic Balloting Portal). A list of all the links to ISO’s IT tools can be found at www.iso.org/eservices.

Authentication of users, registration to roles and access management

ISO Global Directory The ISO Global Directory (GD) is a comprehen-sive management system for all users and roles involved in the ISO standards development process, which includes balloting for all ISO technical committees, subcommittees, working groups and other technical bodies.

https://directory.iso.org

In operation since 2005, major extension in 2007.

User guide at : www.iso.org/e-guides

Requires login Data in the GD is maintained jointly by the ISO member bodies and the ISO Central Secretariat.

Collaborative work and document repository for ISO committees and working groups

ISOTC server The ISOTC server hosts all ISO technical commit-tees, subcommittees, working groups, policy devel-opment committees and other bodies involved in standards development. It is the most important site for collaborative standards development.

www.iso.org/isotc

In operation since 1998, major upgrade to be released in early 2009.

User guide at : www.iso.org/e-guides

Publicly accessible with protected areas

Files on the ISOTC server are maintained remotely by committee secretaries, their staff and other authorized contributors.


e-standardization

Support for voting and decision making

ISO Electronic Balloting Portal

ISO has applications to support all instances of balloting in the ISO system. Most of the ballots are operated by the committee secretaries them-selves in a decentralized manner (committee ballots). Other ballots are operated by the ISO Central Secretariat centrally, such as ballots on draft and final draft International Standards (DIS/FDIS).

http://isotc.iso.org/livelink/eb3/home.do

In operation since 2000, major extensions occurred in 2003 and 2007.

User guides at : www.iso.org/e-guides

Requires login Maintained by committee secretaries or their staff and the ISO Central Secretariat.

Project management and process control

ISO Project Portal The project portal provides access to up-to-date information about all ISO projects by project reference, committee, stage, registration dates and other criteria. It provides information about internal process stages in ISO/CS and gives alerts in case of exceeded deadlines.

http://isotc.iso.org/pp

In operation since 2008. User guide at : www.iso.org/e-guides

Requires login Data accessible through the project portal is maintained by the ISO Central Secretariat.

Meeting management

ISO Meeting Management ISO Meeting Management will support committee secretaries and working group convenors in calling meetings, and participants in registering for meet-ings and obtaining relevant working documents.

To be released in 2009.Will require login

Business event communication and alert functions

ISO Business Notifications The business notification application provides a customizable tool for the notification of users on any relevant event occurring in standards devel-opment. Users can customize their notifications ; they can choose to opt out from receiving them or they can choose to access the information through reports.

http://isotc.iso.org/biznotifIn operation since 2007. User guide at:

www.iso.org/e-guidesRequires login The settings of event notifications are

under the control of each user.

Controlled input into the production of draft and final standards

ISO Submission Interface The submission interface (SI) constitutes a central access point for the transmission of draft ISO standards developed inside ISO committees to the ISO Central Secretariat for further processing, e.g. for preparation for balloting or for final publication.

http://isotc.iso.org/livelink/siIn operation since 2006. User guide at:

www.iso.org/e-guidesRequires login Files are loaded into the SI by ISO

committee secretaries and their support staff.

Support for standards writers and standards authoring

Authoring template The authoring template for the drafting of ISO standards (the ISOSTD template) provides a structured method for the writing of ISO standards and other deliverables. All standards need to be prepared with the template.

Note: An XML-based template is under development for release in 2009.

www.iso.org/templates

In operation since 1997, new version to be released in 2009.

Guidance documents are available with the templates.

Publicly accessible

Continued overleaf



Main Focus

Storage, development and re-use of structured content

ISOConcept The ISOConcept will contain a comprehensive collection of terms and definitions, symbols, coding systems, product properties and other concept items managed through a workflow-based database. It will provide search and download services for end users and serve also as a repository for standards writers (see also article page 18).

To be released in 2009.

Content will be maintained by the originating committees.

Dissemination services

Dissemination of standards in the early drafting stages and of other information and documents guarantees that input from many fields and stakeholder groups in various countries can be obtained (see ISONMC server). Dissemination of published standards is key to their use and practical implementation (see ISOSTD server and ISO Store).

To support ISO’s governing and policy bodies, ISO operates a server especially for these groups (see ISODOC server).

Global dissemination of ISO committee documents for wide national stakeholder input

ISONMC server The ISONMC server is used to disseminate documents developed by ISO technical committees, subcommittees and working groups to national stakeholders around the world. The server functions according to mapped relation-ships between ISO committees and corresponding national mirror committees.

https://nmc.iso.orgIn operation since 2008. User guide at:

www.iso.org/e-guidesRequires login Files and metadata on the ISONMC server

are synchronized automatically from the ISOTC server. ISO members can add national metadata to the ISO documents.

Standards distribution to ISO members

ISOSTD server The ISOSTD server hosts all ISO standards and other deliverables as well as their drafts in various electronic formats (revisable, non-revisable, SGML and others).

www.iso.org/isostd

In operation since 1996, last upgrade in 2006.

A user guide is available on the ISOSTD server.

Requires login The ISOSTD server is maintained by the ISO Central Secretariat.

Sales and standards distribution to commercial end users

ISO Store The ISO Store is accessible from ISO Online and allows commercial end users to purchase ISO standards or other deliverables, including draft International Standards, for immediate download as PDF files.

www.iso.org/isostore

In operation since 2000, new version to be released in 2009.

Guidance is available on ISO Online.

Requires registration The ISO Store is maintained by the ISO Central Secretariat.

Support for ISO governing and policy bodies

ISODOC server The ISODOC server hosts documents of the governing bodies of ISO (General Assembly, Council, TMB) as well as of policy development committees (CASCO, COPOLCO, DEVCO) and other strategy groups (such as ITSIG).

www.iso.org/isodoc

In operation since 1996, last upgrade in 2005.

Guidance is available on the ISODOC server.

Requires login The ISODOC server is maintained by the ISO Central Secretariat.



Strengthening IT expertise in developing countries

by Beer Budoo, Director, ISO Development and Training Services, and Graham Kimberley, Information and Related Support Services, ISO Central Secretariat

International standardization has come a long way since ISO began operations over half a century ago.

Not only has the concept itself opened the world to international exchange of goods, knowledge, research, etc., but the methods of developing the standards have also undergone a profound trans-formation thanks to vastly improved means of communication.

While this 21st century commu-nication infrastructure facilitates coop-eration and interaction between all ISO members, whatever their size or location, it also means that accessing and partic-ipating in international standardization requires the ability to use and implement information and communications tech-nologies (ICT).

Virtual tools for effective participation

This need has been recognized in the ISO Action Plan for developing coun-tries 2005-2010 which aims to :

• assist ISO members in developing countries to strengthen their infor-mation and communication technol-ogy infrastructures ;

• encourage the use of the comprehen-sive range of e-services and IT tools developed by ISO and made availa-ble to its members.

More specifically, key objective 4 of the Action Plan states :

“Develop electronic communication and expertise in IT tools to participate in international standardization work,

reach out to stakeholders and make efficient use of ISO e-services.”

To this end, in 2008 the ISO Secretary-General instigated an inter-nal project at the Central Secretariat to review the assistance on IT tools pro-vided to ISO member bodies.

An important part of the project was the review and update of Manual 11: Standards work on the Net which was originally published by ISO in 2001 (revised 2003) as a core component of the Mediterranean 2000 project (see Box overleaf). This manual intends to :

• provide guidance in choosing the min-imum set of ICT tools and connectiv-ity for a national standards body ;

• enhance awareness of the strategic role of ICT in standardization ;

• help identify tasks that can be carried out more efficiently with ICT support and the best procedures for carrying them out ;

• provide guidance on ISO e-services and how to benefit from them.

The revised and updated manu-al will be published before the end of 2008 under the title Standards work on the Web: the ISO solutions. The new title reflects the importance of using the Web as the principal component of working electronically to partici-pate in international standardization. The manual will be freely available for downloading from the ISO Mem-bers’ Portal (www.iso.org/member-sportal) in a new section intended to

March 2006 – Rwanda Bureau of Standards (Copyright photo: Principi)

June 2007 – Barbados National Standards Institution (Copyright photo: Tiedemann)

March 2008 – Agence de Normalisation et de Transfert de Technologies, Gabon (Copyright photo: Egger)

Onsite ICT training missions

e-standardization



Main Focus

“ The ISO Action Plan has proven its effectiveness

to identify the needs of developing countries.”

provide easy access to all the train-ing materials for IT tools available to ISO members.

An important element of the revised manual will be the description of the ISO e-services provided for the benefit of all ISO members. Since use of the ISO Global Directory and the ISO Electronic Balloting application is mandatory, there is a recognized need to train ISO members to use these tools. The ISO training programme there-fore includes specific courses for these e-services (information on ISO training courses can be found at www.iso.org/iso/about/training_at_iso.htm).

Med 2000 and beyond

Starting in 2000-2001, ISO participated in the Mediterranean 2000 (Med 2000) programme financed under the auspices of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). With the overall aim of helping small and medium-sized enterprises to compete in fully-liberalized markets, this three-year capacity-building programme was promoted by the Italian government with a fund of USD 5 million. Five international agencies cooperated in the project.

ISO’s role included working on guidance for developing countries on the use of information and communications technologies for participation in international standardization. A practical manual entitled Standards work on the Net was produced on how to best implement the IT infrastructure of a standards body.

In addition, an assistance package combining equipment (pre-configured computers and software) and onsite support and training services was developed and implemented from 2001 to 2003, with nine beneficiary ISO members from countries in the Mediterranean basin and the horn of Africa.

Targeting developing countries and SMEs

With the end of the Med 2000 project, the ISO ICT programme for ISO members in developing countries has continued to help ISO members through the provision of equipment, onsite assistance and training. In this way, it seeks to ensure their ability to effectively participate in international standardization activities, using the relevant IT tools.

For example, by accessing and retrieving online information on standards sourced by ISO and IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission) and other international standardization bodies, as well as information made available by regional and national standardization bodies (NSBs).

NSBs must also disseminate information on standards and standardization activities to national businesses, including SMEs, and this can be achieved by setting up and maintaining a Web site. For this reason, one of the specific features of the programme has been to provide guidance, training and onsite assistance for the development of an NSB Web site based on a template of basic and recommended elements.

Ultimate goalThe ISO Action Plan has proven

to be a useful and effective basic tool in helping to identify the needs of develop-ing countries, developing relevant solu-tions and monitoring progress towards the ultimate goal of full and effective participation by all ISO members. The Action Plan’s stated aim of defining actions intended to mobilize ISO mem-bers, regional organizations and donor agencies has also borne fruit with con-crete and generous contributions aimed at meeting specific actions of the plan. ISO’s commitment to this process is ongoing.

About the authors

Beer Budoo is Director of the ISO Development and Training Services at the ISO Central Secretariat.

Graham Kimberley is working in the Information and Related Support Services at the ISO Central Secretariat.

Even more assistanceFollowing the publication of

Standards work on the Web: the ISO solutions, it is proposed to increase the number of countries receiving assistance through the ISO ICT programme (see Box). After assessing the current situ-ation with respect to ICT capabilities of ISO members in developing coun-tries, the ISO/CS internal project group identified four ICT packages consist-ing of equipment, software and techni-cal assistance that could be deployed to ISO members as from 2009.

The four ICT packages will be targeted to different groups of member bodies in developing countries and their deployment will meet a specific action of the ISO Action Plan for developing countries aimed at promoting developing

country participation in ISO and build-ing capacity through technical assist-ance programmes.



e-standardization

The ITSIG/XML authoring and metadata project

by Joanna Goodwin, Manager, ISO Standards Production services, and Sebastian Rahtz, Text Encoding Initiative (TEI)

I SO has developed over 17 000 In ternat ional Standards on a wide range

of subjects, and approximate-ly 1 100 new ISO standards are published every year. Each standard represents hours of investment on the part of the experts, industry, the standards bodies, and the ISO Central Secretari-at. ISO and its member bod-ies need to get the best possible return on this investment, i.e. the content of ISO standards.

An example of text in (from top) Word

2007, XML and rendered HTML.

To make the best use of this con-tent, we must capture and manage it in such a way that we can use (and reuse) intelligently the information it con-tains, and deliver it in all sorts of dif-ferent ways.

A solid baseThe ISO community has been

standardizing, talking about, and using document content markup for a number of years. The SGML standard ISO 8879, Infor-mation processing – Text and office sys-

tems – Standard Generalized Markup Lan-guage (SGML), was published in 1986 ; not everyone real-izes that the H y p e r Te x t Markup Lan-guage (HTML) was inspired

“ ISO is aiming to optimize its ROI and to satisfy

simultaneously the needs of its standards developers,

member bodies and customers.”

by SGML tagging. In fact, HTML has been managed as an SGML applica-

tion since version 3 1). The Extensible Markup Language

(XML), published as a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Recommendation in 1998, is essentially a subset or abbre-viated version of SGML, designed for easier implementation and in particular for easier delivery and interoperability over the Web. More recently, ISO has developed the ISO/IEC 19757 family of powerful validation standards, and the office standards ISO/IEC 26300 and ISO/IEC 29500 (see Box overleaf). So the ISO community has plenty of his-tory in this area.

In the mid 1990s, the ISO Informa-tion Technology Strategy Implementation Group (ITSIG) set up the ITSIG SGML project, which agreed on the structure and document definition for standards, and developed and distributed the first ISO template for the preparation of ISO and

ISO/IEC documents. Since that time, several versions of the template have been made available, through to the current version STD 2.1. ISO has also been exchanging project meta-data amongst the member bodies in XML format since early 2000.

1) circa mid 1990s



Main Focus

Ambitious objectivesThe current ITSIG/XML author-

ing and metadata project builds on ISO’s experience gained in previous projects and brings together the document author-ing and metadata worlds under a sin-gle architecture. The objectives of the project are numerous, and include as major deliverables :

• an XML schema that defines the struc-ture of standards and their content ;

• a new template for use with common word-processing software, having a similar look and feel to the current ISO STD template and context-sen-sitive help – a basic version and an automated version are being developed to replace the current versions ;

• services to provide validation of doc-ument structure and content, import and export of document content and metadata, conversion to and from XML, and conversion to and display as HTML.

The ITSIG/XML authoring and metadata project comprises represent-atives from the ISO Central Secretariat and ISO member bodies who are work-ing together to respond to a number of ambitious objectives.

Basic requirements are to be able to import documents created using pre-vious versions of the ISO templates, and to provide for a mechanism for a central updating of any changes in drafting rules and boilerplate texts. Also wanted is the ability to mark up certain parts of the document content (e.g. normative ref-erences, terms and definitions, decimal symbols) that are candidates for reuse elsewhere or for representation in a dif-ferent way for different needs and for different media.

Another aim is to create “liv-ing standards” which clearly show the original standard along with any mod-ifications, and in which the reader can trace the origin of each of the changes. To ensure the best return on investment, the member bodies themselves must be able to adapt the XML system to their needs, and to derive another language version directly from a standard (as an aid to the translation process).

Quick referencePublished ISO 8879:1986, Information processing – Text and office systems – Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML)

ISO/IEC 19757, Information technology – Document Schema Definition Language (DSDL) –

Part 2 : Regular-grammar-based validation – RELAX NG (2003)

Part 3 : Rule-based validation – Schematron (2006)

Part 4 : Namespace-based Validation Dispatching Language (NVDL) (2006)

ISO/IEC 26300:2006, Information technology – Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) v1.0

To be published

ISO/IEC 29500, Information technology – Document description and processing languages – Office Open XML File Formats –

Part 1 : Fundamentals and Markup Language Reference

Part 2 : Open Packaging Conventions

Part 3 : Markup Compatibility and Extensibility

Part 4 : Transitional Migration Features

ISO 30042, Systems to manage terminology, knowledge and content – TermBase eXchange (TBX)

Abbreviations

CALS – Continuous Acquisition and Life-cycle Support

HTML – HyperText Markup Language

ITSIG – ISO Information Technology Strategy Implementation Group

RELAX NG – REgular LAnguage for XML Next Generation

ITS – Internationalization Tag Set

MathML – Mathematical Markup Language

PDF – Portable Document Format

ROI – Return On Investment

RSS – Rich Site Summary

SGML – Standard Generalized Markup Language

TEI – Text Encoding Initiative

W3C – World Wide Web Consortium

XML – Extensible Markup Language

XSL – Extensible Stylesheet Language

XSLT – XSL Transformations

A choice fitSo why choose XML to sit behind

all this ? XML gives us :

• markup which is easy to process using off-the-shelf tools ;

• validation of content, from a simple structure to complex business rules ;

• content which is separate from pres-entation ;

• internationalization mechanisms ; and



e-standardization

• easy transformation between vocab-ularies (e.g. RSS or HTML).

In short, it can do everything that is needed by the members of the ITSIG/XML authoring and metadata project.

One of the decisions which needed to be made was whether to develop a new set of markup tags or to build on an exist-ing system. In March 2008, it was agreed to work with a team from the Text Encod-ing Initiative (TEI) Consortium, and to base the markup for ISO on the TEI.

Additional advantage The TEI has been developed since

1987 to provide an international and interdisciplinary standard for the repre-sentation of textual and linguistics data by libraries, museums and publishers. It is hardware and software independent, and is characterized by :

• high-quality guidelines for encoding data, building on other standards (Uni-code, W3C pointers, ISO RELAX NG schemas, etc.) ;

• a rich framework of semantically defined elements and attributes ;

• a modular and extensible architecture that provides the possibility of inte-grating specialist vocabularies such as MathML for mathematics and CALS for tables ;

• reference documentation available in many languages: English, French, Ital-ian, Japanese, Spanish, and Chinese.

For the purposes of the project, the additional advantages of the TEI were that:

• the consortium had already done a lot of work on XSLT scripts for conversion from XML to PDF, HTML, Open Office XML and Microsoft Office XML;

• the TEI has specialized markup for describing XML-based standards ;

• the markup has already been used to write a W3C Recommendation on internation-alization (ITS) and a draft ISO stand-ard on terminology (ISO 30042).

Looking forward to a flexible future

In addition to being able to reuse standards in the current template, stand-ards developers will benefit from the import of XML metadata from project databases, such as project information, extraction of titles and/or validation of normative and informative ISO and ISO/IEC references.

Once a concept database is in pro-duction, they will also be able to import and refer to concepts contained in the concept database, such as terms and def-initions and graphical symbols.

The system being created will offer more flexi-ble standards doc-

uments, but without losing either the high editorial standards (for which ISO is known) or the advantages of print pub-lication.

• Standards writers will have facilities to validate the document structure against the rules provided in the ISO/IEC Directives, Part 2, Rules for the structure and drafting of Internation-al Standards, to get help on drafting, and to have immediate access to the latest forewords and other administra-tive texts.

• The ISO Central Secretariat and mem-ber bodies will be able to extract project information, concepts (e.g. terms and definitions and graphical symbols), graphics files, XML fragments, etc. with no additional investment.

• The member bodies will be able to modify easily marked-up document content such as the decimal and thou-sands symbols, and to extend the tem-plate to their needs as required (mem-ber body project information, addi-tional content and presentation).

• Standards consumers will benefit from the possibility of acquiring “ intelli-gent ” products of ISO’s intellectual property.

First deliverablesThe first phase of the project has

developed the underlying schemas, a com-pletely new template for use with Word 2007, the software to transform between Word (Office Open XML format) and the new ITSIG XML markup, and Web servic-es to manage the process. In the next few months this will be tested by the project team and developed further (to include sup-port for Open Document Format, addition-al markup and additional services), before release to the member bodies.

With the use of the new XML authoring template and related services, ISO is aiming to optimize its ROI and to satisfy simultaneously the needs of its standards developers, member bod-ies and customers.

About the authors

Joanna Goodwin is Manager of the ISO Stan-dards Production services. She is responsible with-in the ISO Central Secretariat for the ISO drafting rules (ISO/IEC Directives, Part 2)

and the ISO standards authoring templates, both past and present. She has a degree in environmental sciences and a career in publishing. Ms. Goodwin recently co-authored the Uniform Resource Name Namespace Identification (URN NID) for ISO.

Sebastian Rahtz is Information Manager at Oxford Universi-ty Computing Services, imple-menting XML-based solutions. He was educated in classics and in archaeology, but

has been working in computer science since 1984, specializing in document mark-up, typesetting and humanities computing. Since 2001, he has been Oxford Universi-ty’s representative on the Board of Direc-tors of the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI), and a member of its Technical Council.



Zooming in on the ISO Concept database

by Reinhard Pohn, co-founder and Managing Director of Paradine, and Reinhard Weissinger, Group Manager, Project Management and Electronic Services, Standards Department, ISO Central Secretariat

Even the smallest error can have enormous consequences. Take for instance the case of the Mars Cli-

mate Orbiter, one of the two spacecrafts of the NASA Mars Surveyor 1998 pro-gramme. Launched from Cape Canaver-al Air Force Station in December 1998, its mission was to study Mars’ climate and resources.

The Mars Climate Orbiter was lost on its approach to Mars before beginning its actual mission. Preliminary findings by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory indicate that a failure to recognize and

The European Union alone, for example, has over 22 different official languages. How can its countries ensure consistency and harmonization when communicating with each other ?

Translation is by no means an easy feat. Take for instance the word “ arm ”. Out of context, an arm could be a weapon, a part of our body, the arm of a chair, a lever, a sleeve, etc. Clear-ly, reliable information on the intended meaning and usage is necessary.

International Standards are sources of terminology and requirements, which provide bridges in an increasingly glo-balizing world. However, to maximize their efficiency they must adapt to the rapid changes in ways of working result-ing from developments in information and communication technology.

ISO has thus given some thought to addressing these challenges so that indus-try can successfully work in a global elec-tronic environment. Its solution takes the form of the ISO Concept database (ISO/CDB), a new state-of-the-art development which plans to release standards in the form of an accessible database.

The traditional and the status quo

Until now, the standardization process has been based mainly on the production of standards in the form of documents. An examination of standards development activities shows that :

• their development takes place within technical committees (TCs), of which the majority are organized vertically based on industry segment and work-ing topic ;

• cooperation between committees can be established in the form of liai-sons ;

• even if one of the basic principles of standardization is to have an industry-wide perspective, work on a standard often has a very specific scope ;

• many TCs have their own subcom-mittees (SCs) for terminology ;

• TCs and SCs develop and use their own databases to support their work ;

correct an error in a transfer of informa-tion between the Mars Climate Orbiter spacecraft team in Colorado and the mis-sion navigation team in California led to the loss of the spacecraft.

Results indicate that one team used Imperial units (e.g. inches, feet and pounds) while the other used met-ric units for a key spacecraft operation. This information was critical to the manoeuvres required to place the space-craft in the proper Mars orbit. The mis-sion costs were a total of 327,6 million US dollars 1).

In industry, an error of this type would cause, in addition to huge finan-cial repercussions, substantial delays in time to market. Ensuring that all players are “ speaking the same language ” is thus a matter of great importance.

What is an arm ?International Standards can help.

Their goal is to promote consistency and harmonization, thus ensuring that stake-holders are on the same page. This is par-ticularly important when dealing with global markets. The international nature of these markets offers great opportuni-ties, but also opens the way for a myriad of challenges.

1) Source: NASA: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msp98/orbiter


Main Focus


e-standardization

• for the most part, standardized code sets like country codes (ISO 3166), language codes (ISO 639) or curren-cy codes (ISO 4217) are published in the form of standards documents ;

• in some areas, like graphical sym-bols, we are seeing the first standards to also be made available in the form of databases ;

• national members of ISO have started to offer collections of terminology of national and international standards (e.g. DIN-Term of the German Insti-tute for Standardization).

Its mandate was to review the grow-ing trends in ISO committees to use

databases for the maintenance and also, increasingly, for the development of cer-tain types of standardized content which can be referred to as “ collections of items ”. Examples of such content include terms and definitions, graphical sym-bols, codes, data sheets and other kinds of structured content, which are either contained in specific types of standards (e.g. vocabulary standards) or constitute part of the content of standards (e.g. a clause containing terms and definitions in addition to other content).

A generic procedure for the devel-opment and maintenance of standards in database format was approved by the TMB in 2007 2). The procedure is intended as the basis for an ISO Concept database (ISO/CDB), which contains terms and defini-tions, graphical symbols, codes and other types of “ collections of items ”. The con-cept database will comprise content from existing ISO standards, but is also intended to provide a platform for the development of new standards as well as the mainte-nance of existing standards.

The new conceptAfter a selection and verification

phase, ISO/CS decided to work with Para-dine3) as partner for the ISO Concept data-base. The project uses Paradine’s eptos software – which has been successfully implemented by several standards devel-oping organizations – and integrates it with software applications developed by ISO. The main functions and expec-tations for the ISO/CDB are :

• to host “ concepts ”, i.e. items which are already standardized or currently subject to standardization. The ISO/CDB will become the repository for such content in ISO ;

• the lack of a single approach makes it very hard for both volunteers devel-oping standards and industry using standards to make efficient use of existing databases and avoid misin-terpretation.

Getting to the coreHowever, releasing standards

as databases constitutes a Herculean task. The major initial difficulty being the lack of a standard on how to han-dle this kind of data, as no process had been defined for developing, maintain-ing and publishing standards data in the form of databases.

To use data in standardization work – or in industry – it must be proven and reliable. Because of a demand for pro-viding such data, some committees had started developing their own solutions, and this had resulted in an increasing and divergent variety of committee databas-es. Furthermore, most of these databas-es were, and are, “ private ” to the com-mittees or organizations involved – they are not designed for wider use by other committees or by industry.

In this context, the ISO Technical Management Board (TMB) established in 2005 the TMB ad hoc group “ Standards as databases ”, which comprised representa-tives from 14 ISO committees as well as from six ISO member bodies.

About the authors

Reinhard Pohn is co-founder and managing director of Para-dine GmbH, Vienna, Austria. He has been a member of sev-eral national and international standardization

committees since 1987. Mr. Pohn received an education in mechanical engineering and marketing, and has 23 years of experience in the software business and mechanical engineering. He has extensive experience in the implementation of metadata dictionaries in standardization bodies, industry associations and corporations.

Reinhard Weissinger is Group Manager for Project Management and Electronic Services in the Standards Department of the ISO Central Secretariat.

Prior to this position he worked for several years for the ISO Technical Management Board. Before joining ISO he worked for several years as a long-term expert for the German Society for Technical Cooperation (GTZ) in Beijing in the intergovernmental project Establishment of a standards information system in the People’s Republic of China.

However,

• in everyday work, there is a lot of redundancy in investigating and defin-ing terms and definitions ;

• different registration and licens-ing schemes, inconsistent usage and unclear intellectual property rights statements often confuse potential users of existing databases ;

“It will be easy to search for terms, definitions or graphical symbols throughout an entire collection of items.”

2) Annex ST (normative) : Procedure for the development and maintenance of standards in database format, of the ISO Supplement : Procedures specific to ISO, to the ISO/IEC Directives, Part 1: Procedures for the technical work (http://www.iso.org/directives)

3) Paradine GmbH, Vienna, Austria (www.paradine.at)



Main Focus

• to give cross-standard and cross-committee visibility of standardized content or content currently under development ;

• to make inconsistencies and overlaps visible and serve as input for harmo-nization ;

• to support a structured development process (e.g. workflows, version con-trol for items, etc.) and allow faster development and maintenance ;

• integration with existing IT infrastruc-ture of ISO (e.g. role bases access control, balloting system, etc.) ;

• end-user access: subscription, down-load and API-access for customers and businesses (with ISO Web store integration).

One stop shopThis functionality will support the

standards development process in a new dimension. The most immediate benefit is that it will be easy to search for terms, definitions, graphical symbols and other concepts throughout the entire collection of items in ISO standards and standards under development. Thus, it becomes a simple matter for technical committees to identify and make use of work already delivered from other TCs.

Deep integration with the exist-ing ISO IT infrastructure and re-use of modules developed for other standards developing organizations will avoid redundant work. User registration and access is controlled by the ISO Global Directory, which is the user management system currently in operation through-out all the ISO committees. Further, use of ISO’s balloting application will ensure look and feel as well as func-tionalities that are already familiar to many users.

The ISO/CDB will serve as a “ one stop shop ” for all types of concepts. In addi-tion to the maintenance, withdrawal and

Figure 2 – ISO/CDB representation of a graphical symbol.

Figure 1 – ISO/CDB representation of a term.

introduce new processes and new forms of collaboration within and between tech-nical committees. The implementation of online standardization processes and online collaboration will benefit smaller ISO members and members with limited travel budgets, as more work can be done via the Web – which simultaneously con-tributes to supporting the environment.

ISO plans to implement a four-layer access model, which will include access to basic information free of charge. Indus-try will be able to purchase commercial licences to use standardized concepts.

In supporting online standardiza-tion processes, implementation of the ISO/CDB will allow for more efficient use of resources and better streamlining in the processes themselves. Industry will ben-efit in getting reliable and easy-to-access concepts faster. And bonus – the online collaboration will contribute to saving our living environment.

“ The ISO Concept database will open up a whole new area in

standards development and publication.”

publishing of existing concepts, it will also support the development of new ones.

First releaseThe first phase of implementation,

which includes content and integration-related topics, is in progress. The con-cepts selected to be implemented in this first phase are :

• terms and definitions ;

• graphical symbols ;

• units of measurement ;

• codes (for various types of objects).

The first version of the ISO/CDB is expected to be released to selected TCs in the first quarter of 2009.

All-round benefitsThe ISO Concept database will

open up a whole new era in standards development and publication. Publishing standards in the form of databases will



e-standardization

In sight – Value-added information services

by Claude Merle, Director of AFNOR Publishing, Association française de normalisation

The information industry has under-gone sweeping change in the past ten years. Electronic media, the

Internet and accompanying cutting-edge technology have changed the habits and

service expectations of customers-turned-Internet users.

Standards – conveyors of knowl-edge and tools supporting business and the globalization of markets – are by their very nature vital items of information that should be distributed throughout organizations to all profes-sionals at their workstations. Informa-tion technologies provide standardiza-tion bodies with a real opportunity in their mission to disseminate standards as broadly and effectively as possible. Further, the progressive lowering of technical barriers to finding, accessing and using standards has become a per-manent challenge.

Clearly expressed needs

Internet and information technologies have grown, and continue to grow expo-nentially, paving the way for market inno-vation in standards products and servic-es. In just a few short years, paper cop-ies with limited workplace accessibility have been replaced by electronic docu-ments that can be networked and made immediately available on every PC. The way companies organize themselves has also evolved, as documentation services move steadily towards distributed docu-ment information systems.

Electronic distribution has evolved in such a way that today it provides max-imum flexibility that can meet the needs of both large corporations and small to medium-sized enterprises. The level of distribution can be adapted from a sin-gle standard to packages targeting a spe-cific market niche, through to solutions enabling companies to deploy global document information systems in their spheres of activity.

Companies have clearly expressed their needs for improved search engines, better database descriptions of standards, better quality links between standards and related technical information – reg-ulations, patents, etc. – as well as needs relating to the applicability of standards. Although it alone cannot meet all the expectations for simpler, easier-to-read standards, leading-edge technology does have a role to play here.

Moving towards interactivity

As yet, we have barely scratched the surface of what value-added solutions can provide. Indeed, the solutions on the market are most often still what can only be termed as “ static ” document access systems : online shops and subscription databases that basically offer a means of searching, consulting and tracking doc-ument collections.

AFNOR Publishing is focusing its service efforts on the relevance of search results, for example with seman-tic approaches, and on highly person-alized and advanced tracking systems – all of which entails a major market-



Main Focus

ing and technological investment. But at the same time we are preparing what we believe to be the next generation of Web solutions, moving towards interac-tive systems.

About the author

Claude Merle is the Director of AFNOR Publishing, which covers marketing and development of information products and services, data-base production

and software and business to business sales forces. Prior to taking up this posi-tion in 1998, she was Corporate Director in charge of the coordination of “ Strate-gic marketing and commercial ” of the AFNOR Group. The initial focus of Ms. Merle’s career in AFNOR was quality system management in standard-ization activities, followed by an appointment as Quality Manager.

• Among the mainstream Internet devel-opments that may ultimately, but in a positive manner, “ infect ” the world of standardization, we cannot ignore the need for interactivity and exchange within communities. Here, the stand-ard is the product of a community of players that share a common problem. It inserts itself into the user commu-nities of companies in which inter-active Web technologies, known as “ Web 2.0 ”, provide a real opportu-nity for evolution towards collective acceptance of the standard.

The mission of the standards edi-tor in a standardization system could therefore be oriented towards meeting a growing set of values such as catalogu-ing, access, personalization, interaction and ownership. In other words, the stand-ard must be disseminated, found, worked on, used and integrated into the user’s operational work process. The trends observed among private scientific and technical editors worldwide encourage us in this direction.

Colourful perspectivesOur own experience curve at

AFNOR Publishing, driven by custom-er comments made directly to our sales staff, very closely follows the same set of values. Our next-generation Internet document management products are being shaped by a demand for personalization and adaptation to each company’s pro-fessional rationale and by a need for the appropriation of standards through col-laborative tools.

The wealth of available state-of-the-art technologies also allows us to contemplate new economic models and to engage companies in debate on the choice of services that add value to the raw material of a standards document, so as to move from the sole constraint of purchase to modalities allowing bet-ter use of standards.

We are willing to bet that the per-spectives offered by innovative e-services will be colouring the discussion of mar-keting strategies for ISO and its members for a good few years to come.

A strong imageWe are guided by two main con-

siderations :

• the shift from the standard as a doc-ument to the standard as a working tool. This shift is probably for the near future, thanks to XML technology. If the standards document is broken down into sequences of basic text, marked and linked, both with each other and with external links, an entire library of standards could become a “ network of neurons ”. The image is deliberately strong. But the added value that can be envisaged thanks to this new tech-nology should be clearly differenti-ated from what is currently on offer to the user today.

“ As yet, we have barely scratched the surface of

what value-added solutions can provide.”



e-standardization

Connecting standards – Unlocking value, becoming indispensable

by Vincent Cassidy, Commercial Director, BSI British Standards

Standards have unrealized poten-tial. The key to unleashing it is to seize the possibilities presented by

the virtual world. As globalization inten-sifies, so does the need for Internation-al Standards – bridges in an increasingly complex interrelated world. But standards themselves must carefully avoid becom-ing paradoxically insular, and embrace the interconnectedness that this globaliz-ing world has to offer.

The last 15 years have seen an unprecedented revolution in the field of information. As a wave of information technology swept over society, centuries-old publishing processes and distribution models underwent revolutionary change. This has had a profound impact on many aspects of the information world.

For some, an inability to change has resulted in crisis – look no further than the demise of encyclopaedia publishers. For others, it has offered great opportunities – we have all used online booksellers and search engines.

It is noteworthy that this unpar-alleled revolution has been driven by the users themselves. Users that are hungry for more: more choice, more access and more flexibility in the way that information is provided, integrated and consumed.

Hopping along natural paths

Of course, this is hardly news to anyone who routinely uses the Internet at work or to pursue a hobby, stay in con-tact with friends or keep abreast of world events.

Indeed, the information revolution has touched us all in a myriad of ways – “ Googling ” in search engines, interrogat-ing professional databases or effortlessly

Figure 1 – It is called the World Wide Web for a reason : the mesh of links that are enabled between different documents and resources.

“ hopping ” between documents are just some examples of how we immerse

ourselves in today’s extensive virtual inter-connected information network.

The ability to link between docu-ments in the networked world is a common advantageous practice, whether in news, academic articles, research reports, white papers, books, regulations, public records, patents and more.

Such links allow users to follow natural paths across diverse datasets and multiple information types, making discov-ery a seamless experience. This horizontal connection mirrors the way people work, saves time and critically adds value to infor-mation by presenting it in context.

Clicking away in an interlinked universe

How many times have you clicked today on a link in a document or Web page ? This might take some thinking, as it has now become an almost subcon-scious action. But have you ever done it whilst looking at a standards document ? Why is that ?

As a professional publisher, one of the first things that struck me when I joined BSI British Standards in 2006 was the paradox of the standards world – glo-balization and the increasing importance of the Internet in the workplace makes standards and standardization more crit-



Main Focus

About the author

Vincent Cassidy is Commercial Director at BSI British Stan-dards, where he is responsible for all commercial and customer development. He has a wealth of publishing

experience, having occupied senior man-agement roles in Academic Press, Thomson Scientific and Elsevier Science, and contributed to a number of transformational electronic publishing programmes.

ical than ever to facilitate trade, man-age environmental impact, innovate, manage risk, improve inter-operability and create efficiency. At the same time, compared to other core information, the texts themselves of the various stand-ards are not as interconnected or virtu-ally interlinked.

Failure to harness the power of the new technology can represent for standards a lost opportunity, an inability to seize the moment and create advan-tage over a competitor, and even a fail-ure of obligation. As the flag bearers of standardization, we need to ensure that information is well connected, relevant and useful in context.

Our purpose is not simply to create standards, but to weave them into the fabric of society. This includes being part of the information networks that in today’s world help us organize our work and lives. Our goal is ensur-ing we make indispensable standards that are easy to find, understand, use and assimilate into our work.

The way forward lies within

In the case of standards, the sur-rounding intellectual property landscape can complicate matters. For instance, with “ownership” being federated across a network of national and inter-national organizations, the imperative or responsibility to shape the market is not always clear.

And what of the purely commer-cial supporting network of distributors who may have the vision, skills and resources to drive such a linking initi-ative ? Even with adequate permission, they do not have the ability to reach back along the production process of multi-ple standards developers to implement a linking infrastructure of any meaningful scale. The way forward for the stand-ards community thus lies within. And it is important to realize that the barriers to connection are not merely technical, a change in mind-set is necessary.

As rights holders, we need to appreciate the difference between dis-tribution and access as business mod-els, and appreciate how powerfully an access model resonates with our mis-sion to promote standards and stand-ardization.

On the moveFortunately, the standards com-

munity is already on the move, with a number of initiatives underway. The DOI (Digital Object Identifier), a link-ing protocol commonly used in the information world, has been accept-ed for development as an International Standard within ISO technical committee ISO/TC 46, Information and documen-tation, subcommittee SC 9, Identifica-tion and description. When published, ISO 26324, Information and documen-tation – Digital object identifier system, will create an important benchmark for the standards community.

create a DOI standard for linking stand-ards. The objective of the project team is to present a proposal to ISO/ITSIG in the first quarter 2009.

A rich futureThink of a future where the rich

citation and reference links embedded in standards are enabled, and users move seamlessly between standards, specifi-cations, regulations, news articles, pat-ents and research papers. As standards become increasingly integrated into the fabric of the information world, we will unleash their full potential so that they can be even more relevant and accessi-ble, giving still more benefits to busi-ness and society.

“ Centuries-old publishing processes

and distribution models have undergone unprecedented

and revolutionary change.”

In addition, BSI is leading a project team within ISO’s Information Technology Strategy Implementation Group (ITSIG), in cooperation with the ISO Commercial Policy Steering Group (CPSG) and open to partnership with standards developing organizations from around the world to address both the key technical and business issues required to



e-standardization

New frontiersWithout question,

digital mobile devices are transforming how business gets done and how people connect, collaborate and perform. This mobile technology presents a new fron-tier for standards development organiza-tions – one filled with mobile workers, such as inspectors working in the field, contractors working on location, prod-uct designers and developers in remote locations, equipment installers and plant supervisors, all of whom could benefit from standards on mobile devices.

Recognizing the emerging trend in mobile devices, the Canadian Stand-ards Association (CSA) – a standards development organization accredited by Standards Council of Canada, the ISO member for Canada – conducted a com-prehensive customer survey that revealed that more than half of respondents were using a handheld device as part of their daily work routine. It also showed that 20 % were definitely interested in access-ing standards through that medium.

The survey pointed that the highest request for a device-friendly standard was for the Canadian Electrical Code Part 1 or CE code, a CSA publication referenced in regulation and widely used across Can-ada. It is a complex document with over 600 pages that include 180 tables and dia-grams along with equations that take into account the installation and maintenance of electrical equipment and systems.

Market innovationsCommitted to making standards

work for people and business, CSA her-alded the new developments and mar-ket receptiveness as an opportunity to deliver enhanced technology solutions to help make standards easier to access and apply.

“ Without question, digital mobile devices are transforming how business

gets done.”

Standards to go – A powerful portable format for mobile workers

by Eileen McNally, MBA, Product Manager, Product Development, Canadian Standards Association

In just a few short years, the popular-ity of mobile devices has exploded for both personal and business use.

Shipments of converged devices (smart phones and wireless handheld computers) rose by 60 % to 115 million in 2007 1). In

fact, last year these full-featured devic-es represented about 10 % of the global mobile phone market in units, and ranked among the fastest growing segments of the technology industry.

The driving force behind this growth can be attributed to the challenges faced by business and industry to opti-mize staff resources, increase productivity, build loyalty and provide remote access to workers. What’s more, the unprece-dented technology revolution – including the convergence of voice, data and vid-eo – is packing more performance than ever into smaller and cheaper devices. The result is that today’s market-lead-ing devices offer “ do-anything ” bene-fits, combining the functionality of cell phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), smart phones and pocket PCs, equipped with leading edge applications.

1) Source : Canalys, market data specialists



About the author

Eileen McNally is a product manager with the Canadian Standards Asso-ciation. She has been instrumen-tal in delivering many innova-tive and value-added products

to facilitate greater access to CSA standards and information.

About the author

Standards and technology

The Canadian Standards Association (CSA) is a standards development organization accredited by Standards Council of Canada (SCC), the ISO member for Canada. SCC’s accreditation programmes are based on internationally recognized guides and standards. Internationally, SCC manages Canada’s participation in the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) and in regional standards organizations. It also encourages the adoption and application of International Standards in Canada.

With more than 3 000 standards and related products, CSA offers “smart standards” such as CD versions of standards publications with interactive, customizable features, along with automated tools – and an online subscription service that makes standards and related documents available in PDF through a Web-based portal tailored to the needs of individual customers.

Working with a third party, CSA developed a “mobile device format” (MDF) and software reader for its stand-ards, becoming the first to do so in its field. And naturally, the first CSA stand-ards publication to be made available in MDF was the CE Code.

Working faster and smarter

MDF puts standards information into users’ hands any time and anywhere. The new format delivers advanced fea-tures and capabilities that enable custom-ers to work faster and smarter.

Standards publications are con-verted from PDF to MDF. The user down-loads a software reader which enables the file to be displayed on his/her mobile device. The software reader current-ly operates on the popular Microsoft® Windows Mobile® operating system platform. It provides the customer with a dynamic search function, easy-to-read display and handy history tabs. Unique

software encryption binds the publica-tion to the mobile device and prevents copying or distribution.

The most obvious benefit to users is the convenience of portability and the fact that they can access standards when and where they want – even in places where a cell phone signal may be unre-liable or cell phone use prohibited. Once an MDF file and the software reader are downloaded onto the device, no Internet connection is required for access. This also brings a cost advantage, since the standard can be viewed over and over again without incurring any charges from wireless providers.

“ The most obvious benefit to users is the fact

that they can access standards when and where

they want.”

Combined with their powerful search capabilities and automated tools, publications in MDF format can speed the work of users, enabling employees and organizations to be more agile and competitive.

The availability of MDF publica-tions offers choice and flexibility. Cus-tomers now have one more way to access standards information and can choose the publication format that is suited to their work requirements.

Staying ahead of the technology curve

Going to market with this innova-tion has yielded important learning for CSA, including the need to stay ahead of the fast-changing technology curve – not an easy undertaking, but one that is essential to delivering value to custom-ers and “ making standards work for peo-ple and business.”

In January 2009, CSA will launch MDF for the BlackBerry® operating sys-tem along with an expanded library of mobile publications applicable to a vari-ety of industry sectors. Visit www.csa.ca/mobile for more information.



e-standardization

At that time, ITSIG realized that to reduce the overall development time and the total amount of work, the approach-es to be taken for the two phases had to be somehow different.

In the first phase, the essential concern was to minimize the amount of work needed and to remove any obsta-cles so that the project can progress. The basic assumption was that the “ adminis-trator ” of the process – e.g. the Secretary of a TC/SC or the Secretary/Convenor of a WG – had the most critical role.

Major improvements could thus be achieved by supporting administra-tors in performing the job faster – in par-ticular, by allowing them to reduce the time and amount of work spent in admin-istrative activities involving repetitive and redundant tasks such as reproduc-tion, document circulation, committee/group membership and related user data management, vote management, and re-entering of data, among others.

by Daniele Gerundino, Strategic Advisor to the ISO Secretary-General

In a recent article1) presenting the results of a workshop organized by ISO’s Information Technology Strat-

egies Implementation Group (ITSIG) in Milan, Italy, in May 2008, I underlined that the electronic infrastructure sup-porting the development of International Standards is “ near to completion ”.

Indeed, the deployment of the ISO national mirror committee (ISONMC) server by the entire community of ISO members can be considered as the key final step in a long journey that started about 10 years ago.

Re-engineering the ISO standards development process

A step back – 10 years ago

When the case for computeri-zation of ISO standards’ development was analyzed about 10 years ago, ITSIG observed that the process could be rough-ly divided into two phases 2) :

• the development of the draft stand-ard with all related aspects : cooper-ative work, selection, classification, delivery and exchange of documents, management of meetings, etc. – in this phase, technical committees (TCs), sub-committees (SCs) and working groups (WGs) are the principal players ;

• the completion of the International Standard, including the end of the development process and its produc-tion chain – here national standards bodies (NSBs) and the ISO Central Secretariat (ISO/CS) play the key role.

1) “ ISO IT strategy 2010 and beyond ”, ISO Focus, July/August 2008

2) In terms of the ISO/IEC Directives, setting out procedures for the technical work, the first phase would be equivalent to stage 20 through to stage 40, whilst the second phase would include stage 40 through stage 60.



Main Focus

Structural process bottlenecks

Whilst organizational improve-ments and IT tools have greatly helped to remove obstacles and eliminate or signifi-cantly decrease repetitive tasks, the struc-tural aspects of the ISO standards devel-opment process have not changed.

In particular, some of the issues arising from the current structure are :

• at the working group level, the most productive work model is considered to be the “ teamwork of experts ” – usu-ally relying on close contact between participants of the team. However, this presents problems in the international standardization scene, as experts are often scattered around the world and contact is thus difficult. More often than not, progress takes place mainly at working group meetings when par-ticipants have an opportunity to get together. At this stage, ensuring the quality of the working draft is also key, since badly written or unclear text can lead to failure of the project at later stages ;

• all activities that can be categorized as “ circulation of information ” and “ collection of comments ” tend to introduce a strong sequential bias to the standards development process. By sequential bias, we refer to the fact that some activities that could be carried out in parallel are instead carried out one after the other. This can potentially cause unnecessary delay to the completion of the over-all process.

Key procedural steps such as noti-fications and balloting – including col-lection and management of comments – and the associated monitoring and control activities are already supported by other existing ISO eServices. Full deployment of the ISONMC server is thus currently a top ISO priority.

Another important requirement to complete the ISO computerized infra-structure concerns the systematic use of the committee internal balloting (CIB) application 3) – key to ensure a level of harmonization and efficiency in commit-tee balloting comparable to that achieved with the DIS and FDIS balloting oper-ated by the ISO/CS).

A new eraThrough this fully-computer-

ized infrastructure, all the parties con-cerned 4) will be effectively “wired” and able to :

• access in real time information and documents as soon as they are made available ;

• interact and execute tasks according to the permissions granted by their roles.

For the second phase, the main concern was to minimize the amount of work needed to modify documents (man-ual conversions, editorial revisions, etc.) at any step of the process, and to remove the various obstacles that delay document circulation. Improvement in the ISO/CS production chain and in the ways that documents are created and exchanged between committees and ISO/CS, along with the introduction of DIS (draft Inter-national Standard) and FDIS (final DIS) electronic balloting, were considered key factors of improvement.

Since then, ISO’s main IT devel-opments have been coherently focused on addressing these priorities for both phases. Among the achievements are the ISO templates for authoring standards, the document servers providing access to ISO documents (notably ISOTC and the ISONMC discussed below), the ISO Global Directory (GD) to manage users’ and committees’ data and roles, and the e-balloting applications.

Towards a fully-computerized infrastructure

So why is the deployment of the ISONMC server considered as a key final step of this 10 year journey ? Once the use of the server is fully consolidated, all parties concerned – notably NSB staff and national experts worldwide – will have (almost) real-time access to ISO docu-ments, project data and related informa-tion at all stages of the standards devel-opment process, depending on the per-missions associated with their role.

About the author

Daniele Gerundino is the Strategic Advisor to the ISO Secretary-General.

About the author

“ Major improvements could be achieved by

supporting administrators in performing the job

faster.”

3) In compliance with the TMB requirements.

4) National experts, representatives of NSBs to ISO committees, NSB and ISO/CS support staff.

This is a very different framework from the one in place when the ISO/IEC Directives were originally developed. At that time, the primary means of com-munication were ordinary mail and tel-ephone, which had a significant influ-ence, albeit indirect, on the procedures and ways of working.

Thus, at its workshop of May 2008, ITSIG concluded that the mod-ern ISO computerized infrastructure constitutes a promising framework for supporting the optimization of processes well beyond what has previously been possible.

“ ISO’s computerized infrastructure can support

the optimization of processes well beyond what has been possible

so far.”



e-standardization

• due to the intrinsically distributed nature of the ISO and member bod-ies system, national consultation is essential to ensure the due process of the organization and its transparency. However, national consultation takes place twice : at stages 30 and 40, with a further iteration at stage 50 for FDIS (final draft) approval. The double level of consultation and vot-ing, at stages 30 and 40, is justified by the different nature of the partici-pants (TC/SC members for the one, as opposed to the entire ISO member-ship for the other). It also adds val-ue to the process by providing a fur-ther level of control and helping to reach the widest possible consensus. However, this advantage has a trade-off in terms of the time needed to accomplish these two instances of consultation and voting. Each time a national consultation is need-ed, a number of time-consuming activities are triggered, each one of which lengthens the entire process. Moreover, this is often a cause of mis-alignment, especially when human resources are scarce. For example, some organizations may decide to put more focus on one of the two steps, and ISO members from different coun-tries can make different choices based on their specific cultural, social and economic backgrounds – leading to a duplication of the whole effort for the system.

Further process improvements

To achieve further improvements, ITSIG believes that the time is ripe to address the above issues by re-thinking the standards development process itself, with a view to taking full advantage of ISO’s computerized infrastructure.

In principle, this infrastructure can facilitate the following procedural and technical improvements :

• parallelization of tasks ;

• harmonization of standards’ develop-ment cycles across different sectors and geographies ;

• more extensive use of automated work-flows.

For example, it is possible to con-ceive of the following developments and improvements in the process 5) :

• when a new work item is registered in an existing committee, all the parties concerned, including national experts registered in the GD extension for the ISONMC server, could be immediate-ly notified ;

• all participating parties would have immediate, early access through the ISONMC server to relevant docu-ments and related information, with appropriate comments from TC/SC secretaries, WG convenors and even national secretariats ;

• national consultation and discussion could be immediately activated ;

• contributions and comments would be organized, filtered and channelled through ISO members by maximiz-ing the appropriate use of workflows to support the different phases of the development process ;

• different models of electronic work could be envisaged. Except for the codified formal steps (e.g. DIS vote), the ultimate responsibility of how to organize the electronic work should be left to the chairs and secretaries of the ISO committees, possibly provid-ing basic frameworks for guidance (as templates). In general terms, there could be at least two basic models : – communities/administered fora

supporting informal document development and consensus build-ing, applicable whenever the main objective is to collect information or create rough content ; and

– structured workflows restricted to authorized representatives (WG and member body voters), when formal enquiries and balloting are required.

In principle, such an approach seems to be promising. In particular, it should be noted that :

• by breaking the sequential bias, all dead times and delays related to the distribution of documents and infor-mation would potentially be removed. This may lead to a reconsideration of stage timeframes 6) ;

•structured “ elec-tronic patterns ” to exchange informa-tion, combined with

appropriate tools and services to bet-ter identify priority issues and sim-plify the work (organizing comments, providing more powerful comments editing capabilities, etc.), should increase the productivity of process administrators ;

• in principle, balloting of committee drafts and of draft International Stand-ards could be merged – or, at least, better alignment (i.e. the efforts and focus aimed at strengthening con-tent and verifying possible objections during a standard’s evaluation cycle) could be promoted and achieved.

What the future bringsThe impact of such changes has

to be carefully considered, in terms of both IT support (e.g. tools for organiz-ing structured workflows and support-ing informal collaboration) and of their impact on existing structures at ISO/CS and NSBs.

The adaptation of the process of consensus building to a new process model and technical infrastructure has also to be taken into account.

As indicated after the May 2008 workshop, ITSIG will decide about pro-posing specific initiatives to address these topics in direct collaboration with the oth-er relevant ISO bodies, particularly the ISO Technical Management Board.

However, despite the shape that these might take, it is undeniable that the rapid improvements in technology of the past decade have opened a universe of possibilities, with the potential to sig-nificantly impact the way standards are developed for the better.

5) This simplified brainstorming is intended only to provide “ food for thought”.

6) The typical “commenting” pattern consists of early critical submissions followed by little or no comments for most of the remaining time, and then last minute receipt of the majority of comments (mainly editorial, often marginal) at the deadline.



Main Focus

1) An “ Internet best current practices” document developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), defining tags for identifying languages.

2) People requested new Wikipedias in the belief that once a project existed, editors would come. This worked for some languages, but did not for many others, as can be seen from the List of Wikipedias (see Box).

The language of content-creating communities

by Gerard Meijssen, Wikimedia foundation

I f you are looking for an example of “ content-creating communities ”, you will find many in the Wikimedia Foun-

dation (WMF), which is best known for its English language Wikipedia. Much less known are the other 264 separate language Wikipedias, whose differenc-es in size and quality are profound. In fact, some of these projects are effec-tively dead – like those in Herero and Tokipona, which not only do not have a community, they also do not even have a single article.

When a request for a Wikipedia in a new language is made, a number of prerequisites must be fulfilled. These requirements ensure that new projects will be viable and benefit the readers of these languages. For example, localiza-tion of the most visible messages of the MediaWiki software is necessary to help readers navigate the Wiki. But the first and most important requirement is that the language be indeed a language !

Making life easierThe International Standard ISO

639-3, Codes for the representation of names of languages – Part 3 : Alpha-3 code for comprehensive coverage of lan-guages, is the most comprehensive list of languages. It covers living, extinct, ancient and constructed languages, wheth-er major or minor, written or unwrit-ten. It already includes over 7 000 lan-guages, and the ISO 639-3 registration authority can be requested to consider more linguistic entities as a language, in accordance with the procedures of the standard.

For Wikimedia Foundation’s lan-guage committee, this makes life a lot easier. If it is not registered in accordance with the standard, you can request that your language be included. It becomes essentially an issue that we do not need to address.

However, this approach is not entirely problem-free. Languages new to ISO 639-3 are not recognized in the RFC 4646 1) and consequently, according to the best common practice (BCP), there are no formal codes for publish-ing content in these languag-es on the Internet. Anoth-er issue is that some of the recognized languag-es are little more than dialects.

Originally the Wikipedia Web address was simply http://wikipedia.org. However, when it expanded into multiple languages, a language indicator was added and the English language ver-sion adopted “ en ” as a prefix. Typical-ly the RFC 4646 provided the language codes, but when a project was requested for a language that did not have a code, it had to be made up, which gave us the als.wikipedia.org (German dialects) and the roa-rup.wikipedia.org (Aromanian), among several others 2).

Only one Wikipedia is allowed per language. Although logical, this can create issues with some languages. Chinese, for instance, is written in at least two scripts : the Simplified variant and the Traditional variant (registered respectively as Hans and Hant under ISO 15924, Information and documen-tation – Codes for the representation of names of scripts). This was solved by pro-viding a transcription system. For some languages it can be more complicated – for Kurdish, Krim Tatar, Fiji Hindi and Kazakh, for instance, Wikipedia has user interfaces in multiple scripts.

In the end however, people speaking the same lan-guage in different locales have to work together to compro-mise and accept each

other’s vocabulary and o r thography.

es

tr

en

zh30 ISO Focus November 2008


e-standardizationResources

Wikimedia Foundation : http://wikimediafoundation.org

List of Wikipedias : http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias

Commons : http://commons.wikimedia.org

Dbpedia : http://dbpedia.org

OmegaWiki : http://omegawiki.org

Wikiprofessional : http://www.wikiprofessional.org

Wikisource : http://wikisource.org

Wikiwords : http://www.wikiwords.org

Wiktionary : http://wiktionary.org

This is great from an ideological point of view because it forces people to col-laborate, but unfortunately it sometimes does not work this way.

Eating our own dog food When standards define your

approach, it has consequences for down-stream products. When the language of a text is defined by its metadata, termino-logical support systems need to be aware of these languages and provide support. In the OmegaWiki project, languages have been accepted based on ISO 639-3.

OmegaWiki aims to bring together information from lexical, terminological and ontological resources in all languag-es. As a consequence of “ eating our own dog food ”, we aim to provide informa-tion in the language of the user.

Given that OmegaWiki stores its data in a database, we are able to utilize the data for multiple applications. We have a vocabulary trainer in production and are developing support for a multi-lingual categorization system for Wiki-media Foundation’s Commons project. Commons is a project with some three million freely-licensed images. Cur-rently however, all these images are tagged only in English, which leaves almost 50 % of Wikipedia users with-out a rich image resource accessible in their language.

The problem we are facing now is that ISO 639-3 is concerned only with languages themselves, whilst we also need to be able to recognize linguistic entities like dialects and orthographies.

Technically an orthography can be determined with the use of spell check-ers for instance. A spell checker is also a valuable tool to check errors in a doc-ument which has gone through an opti-cal character reader (OCR). However, for these to work, the spell checkers must support the orthography of the docu-ment involved.

Orthographies and dialects should find their place in ISO 639-6, Codes for the representation of names of languag-es – Part 6 : Alpha-4 representation for comprehensive coverage of language variants, currently under development. This next generation iteration of ISO 639 aims to bring together the information of all the ISO 639 standards and provide information on all the linguistic entities in a hierarchical database.

Since Wikipedia is just one project among others within the Wikimedia Foun-dation, you will find that other projects like Wiktionary and Wikisource will also benefit.

• Wiktionary, the “ dictionary and stuff ” project, has information on different orthographies, such as, for example, British and American English, or Ser-bian in Latin and Cyrillic characters. Obviously, the BCP allows for all of these, but the problem is that new entries are only added as requested, and asso-ciated linguistic entities are not con-sidered. Consequently, the author’s

preference would be for an approach that does take all the known entities

into account and that is extendable.

• Wikisource is an online library project where sources in languages are worked on. They can be anything from books, pamphlets and music scores. The works, and therefore the language used, can be really old and dated. A more precise determination of the language would help build a corpus on the Internet in that specif-ic source. As more content becomes available online, any additional sup-port that metadata can offer will help in retrieving the relevant content.

Becoming a way of lifeWith its 2,5 million articles, the

English Wikipedia has become a corpus that includes something about every-thing. As scientists of many disciplines have observed, Wikipedia is where peo-ple invariably go for their initial informa-tion. There have been efforts to improve the domain coverage, with the result that specialized Web sites are linking to Wiki-pedia articles, which themselves often link to related articles in other languages.

Analyses of these links, of the templates and of the text have shown that much information can be gleaned from Wikipedias. This has given rise to other projects, such as Wikiwords – a rich ter-minological resource, Dbpedia – a project to create semantic Web content by data mining the English language Wikipedia,

About the author

Gerard Meijssen has been involved in “Wikis” and communities for a long time. His involvement in lexical content led to his starting the OmegaWiki project. He is a member of the

language committee of the Wikimedia Foundation, has spoken at many confer-ences and advocates the use of standards as a matter of principle.

About the author



Main Focus

and Wikiprofessional – providing semantic support for people using the Wiki.

The continuing evolution of com-munity-created content is potentially with-out limit. As the content grows and more information becomes available under free licence, it will become possible to link into the new information. As translations become available for concepts, it will become possible to find articles in other languages. When Commons is no longer English only, the freely-licensed imag-es that it makes available will be found by school children around the world – members of a generation that will quite possibly grow up accustomed to having access to a wide range of community-created content.

Standards and content-creating communities

One issue often discussed with regard to standards is the question of access to users. Many virtual content-creating communities have adopted open/free content practices and the content they provide is freely available to all comers. In the author’s opinion, applicable stand-ards, too, should be freely available to further drive their adoption.

International Standards provide formal, structured and standardized infor-mation, but their availability at a price can hinder appreciation and adoption of the work involved among some users. This is particularly relevant for users that do not have the same purchasing power as industry, such as content-creating com-munities like those within the Wikime-dia Foundation.

The virtual community is grow-ing at a tremendous rate, expanding into and originating a diversity of innovative projects that are revolutionizing the way information is stored and communicat-ed. As the world moves into this global era, giving rise to inventive transform-ing projects such as those of the Wikime-dia Foundation, International Standards become increasingly relevant to reliably link global differences. However, like the revolutions that are taking place online, we await the developments that will fol-low in the international standardization scene, as this community too must adapt to the changes of this cyber age.

Bringing the virtual into the formal – The next generation of meetings

by John Keith, co-founder, and J. Elise McIntosh, Product Manager, Kavi Corporation

I f meetings are “ the engines that make organizations go ”, then vir-tual meetings – when done well –

are the engines that make organizations “ go most effectively ”. Indeed, face-to-face meetings are becoming increasingly untenable in the current economic cli-mate, which makes virtual meetings a necessity for many organizations whose members could not otherwise afford to participate.

That said, the formal meeting needs of deliberative assemblies, such as organization boards, surpass those of other meetings, and the challenges pre-sented when the group cannot meet face to face are proportionally more complex. The question we seek to answer is : How can a formal group most effectively act as a cohesive deliberative body when they are not embodied together in the same place ?

Geared to the informalMost of the existing virtual meet-

ing solutions are geared toward meet-ing the communication needs of infor-mal or semi-formal organizations. These solutions fall broadly into four catego-ries: basic teleconferencing, Web con-ferencing, video conferencing and vir-tual reality.

Basic teleconferencing solutions typically equate to audio conferencing, in which participants connect to an audio “ bridge ” to join a group conversation.



e-standardization

The bridge connection can be made via standard telephony means or by Voice over IP (VOIP). However, solutions of this type do not provide any direct sup-port for visual sharing, and are best suit-ed for relatively simple meetings.

Web conferencing is the next step beyond basic teleconferencing, allowing participants to share presentations and other documents in real time, and incor-porating audio conferencing, document sharing, group chat, and other features. Web conferencing works well for most informal meetings, such as training and sales meetings, but it does not include support for attendee management, quo-rum calculation, motions, and other fac-ets inherent in formal meetings.

Video conferencing provides the best experience for interactive presenta-tions in lieu of a meeting in which all par-ticipants are physically present. Partici-pants are able to both see and hear pre-senters, resulting in a richer experience and better information exchange. But not only can these solutions be expen-

sive, they are also more concerned with information exchange than with meet-ing formalisms.

Virtual reality is an attempt to combine the virtues of Web conferenc-ing with the power of live interaction in a virtual environment. The central tenet of virtual reality, as it applies to meetings, is that it introduces visual metaphors for common meeting concepts and practic-es, making it easier for participants to interact in a known, meaningful manner. Unfortunately, virtual reality is not quite ready for general use. Nonetheless, this model holds promise for formal meet-ings, since it is perfectly clear who is sitting at the virtual meeting table, who is raising or seconding a motion, which speaker has the floor, and so on.

Mechanics of the formalMeetings conducted in a formal

manner are meant to enable people with different backgrounds and represent-ing different interests to work together. Boards and other formal decision-mak-ing committees establish the rules of conduct by which decisions are made. These same rules apply equally to vir-tual and in-person meetings.

In today’s virtual meeting envi-ronment, the rules are managed manu-ally. A true solution for formal meetings would embed the essential elements of parliamentary procedure into a technical infrastructure for facilitating discussion

and sharing infor-mation online. In the future, delegat-ing the mechanics

of meetings to the machine will allevi-ate undue stress on the meeting facilita-tor, releasing precious meeting time for addressing the real business at hand.

Candidates for delegationFormal meeting rules and mechan-

ics include a number of common elements which could be envisaged for machine processing :

• Identifying participants – In formal organizations, it is important to identi-fy who is attending the meeting and in what capacity. The meeting is facilitated by a chair or presider, and designated representatives are expected to attend. Formal meetings cannot be held unless the attendance is sufficient to meet the organization’s quorum requirements.

Today, a meeting official must manual-ly track attendance on a separate docu-ment. In the future, the meeting software should recognize participants who log in or join a call, track their attendance, and establish a quorum automatically.

About the authors

John T. Keith is the co-founder of Kavi Corpora-tion, a US-based company pro-viding online collaboration services for standards-setting organizations since 1997.

He is also a founder and President of Cloud Four, Portland, Oregon, specializing in Web technologies, and Second Rise, which is developing virtual meeting solutions for organizations.

J. Elise McIntosh has been helping organizations adopt technolo-gy into their business pro-cesses since 1998, most recently in her role as Product

Manager for Kavi Corporation. Ms. McIntosh participates regularly in virtual meetings, and as a non-voting member of ANSI’s National Policy Committee, has experienced first-hand both the benefits and challenges of virtual meetings.

“ The same procedural rules apply equally to virtual

and in-person meetings.”



Main Focus

• Agenda and time management – Whilst establishing an agenda is a best practice for any meeting, formal meetings have controlled agendas that determine what will be discussed. The meeting topics and allotted time are far more closely managed than with informal meetings.

Now imagine Web conferencing where the agenda is available to all, with the current item highlighted. Managing the agenda online would not only speed preparation – it would also make it eas-ier for participants to follow during the meeting, and would provide meeting facilitators with the support they need to run a formal meeting effectively.

• Facilitating discussion – If the busi-ness of a formal meeting is to make and record decisions, discussion is the means by which the group accomplishes this goal. In a formal meeting, it is the chair’s duty to ensure that the discus-sion remains on the topic and is con-ducted in an orderly fashion, regard-less of the technology used to facili-tate the discussion.

Formal meeting software should make it possible for everyone to understand not only who is speaking, but also what interests they represent. For the chair, it would facilitate managing when the floor is open for conversation.

• Support for motions and straw polls – Formal meetings are decision-making meetings, and these decisions must be properly made and recorded. From a meeting facilitation perspective, straw polls 1) provide a means of keeping the discussion flowing by allowing the group to quickly determine if there is general agreement on an issue. Motions, on the other hand, are a formal mech-anism for making decisions that will drive the activities of the organization. Motions put before a group must be recorded in the meeting minutes.

The use of formal motions can be con-fusing for many people, but for a com-puter it is a simple task. Formal meet-ing software should lead people through the proper handling of motions, and straw polls should appear directly on the screen for vote.

• Recording and publishing the min-utes – As the official record of a meet-

ing, minutes are mandatory and must be produced and published according to the organization’s procedural rules. The minutes will minimally include a list of attendees, the meeting agenda and a record of all motions put before the group.

Whilst minute-taking can be more of an art than science at times, there are elements of the meeting that are always included and that software could eas-ily pre-populate. These include the attendance, orders of the day, meet-ing time and end, and the disposition of any motions.

Ripe for revolutionAlthough many organizations uti-

lize current meeting technologies with varying degrees of success, a compre-hensive solution for conducting formal meetings online does not exist today. Happily, all the technical elements are in place. The challenge is no longer one of inventing “ first principles ”, but rath-er how to integrate today’s technologies into a cohesive and informed tool for conducting formal meetings.

The consistently high demand for parliamentary references, such as Rob-ert’s Rules of Order 2), reveals both the ever-present need for people to achieve consensus on difficult topics and their discomfort at the prospect of heading into that territory without an expert’s guidebook at hand. By moving meeting mechanics into software, an online solu-tion will be uniquely suited for guiding all participants through the process, help-ing to make experts of novices.

The time is ripe for revolutioniz-ing the formal meeting and bringing the deliberative body online. Just as MapQuest and Google Maps have forever changed the way we navigate a strange new place, so the technology of today can make it possible for all virtual meeting partici-pants to move confidently through a for-mal deliberative process.

1) On-the-spot non-binding votes

2) Full title: Robert’s Rules of Order: Newly Revised (10th Edition), by Henry Martyn Robert III, published 2000

1) WfMC. Terminology and Glossary, 3rd Edition, Workflow Management Coalition, Winchester (ID), 1999.

Workflow management – UNI’s success story

by Marco Pancotti, Senior Partner of MATE, and Lisa Inversini, Head of Information Technology, UNI.

Workflow management systems coordinate activities, resourc-es and data according to the

formal representation of the process logic, the workflow model 1).

They can help realize efficien-cy potentials through the elimination of transport and wait times between proc-ess activities, and provide a detailed level of control over the assignment of work to participants.

Workflow automation requires the specification of process structures, as well as the definition of resources involved in the execution of these pro-cesses. This is especially true in the con-text of a standards body, where tens of thousands of people work on thousands of interrelated projects.

© David Aeschimann



e-standardization

About the authors

2) Some examples of these criteria are : project stage, project event, treatment, data related to the responsible technical body or to the corresponding UNI mirror technical body, etc.

Figure 1 – National Document Management Workflow

Meeting the challengesEnte Nazionale Italiano di Unificazi-

one (UNI), the Italian standards body, had some challenging workflow management requirements. To meet these, UNI decided to develop a working environment based on the Livelink document management system, complemented with custom appli-cations to reflect the organization’s back-ground and coordinate its activities.

The project, begun in 2005, had the following objectives :

• to import the information coming from ISO and the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) about projects and the structure of technical bodies into an internal relational database ;

• to describe the internal organization mirroring the technical body structures in the Livelink data structures ;

• to manage the actions concerned with the acquisition of documents coming from the CEN/ISO technical bodies into the internal processes and into Livelink ;

• to manage the actions of the internal processes concerned with the adoption or with the production of a standard.

An example of a workflow (see Figure 1) is the National Document Man-agement Workflow. Its goal is to distrib-ute national documents to the relevant working group and, if necessary, to start the related voting procedure. Based on document type, the document is moved to the right folder and an automatic notifi-cation is sent to the group via e-mail.

Key components match the goals

Development of some key appli-cations contributed to the achievement of the project’s objectives.

CEN/ISO importer The CEN/ISO importer applica-

tion is scheduled to run automatically every week. It reads data made availa-ble by ISO and CEN about the structure of technical committees, and feeds the correspondent database used to support the entire workflow.

Thetis Thetis is an interactive applica-

tion used to manage the main steps of a standard’s workflow. The information managed is strictly correlated with the documents coming from CEN and ISO and their metadata.

The most important characteristics of Thetis are :

• the automatic selection of the set of documents that must be processed and, for each selected document, the creation of the correct workflow “ instance ” (or step). The selection process is handled by a rule-based engine and a set of rules. Each rule allocates (or directly discards) one or more documents to the correct work-flow, using the whole set of project metadata as possible selection cri-teria 2). The same rules define, for each document, which data coming from CEN or ISO are made direct-ly visible to the workflow instance, greatly simplifying the complexity

“ The advantages in terms of fluidity,

correctness and timesaving have all been satisfactory.”

Marco Pancotti is a Senior Part-ner of MATE, Milan, Italy (www.mate.it). As the project leader of Tyl (www. tyl-project.it), he coordinates the development

of the custom UNI applications in the workflow area. Mr. Pancotti graduated in business administration at the Bocconi University of Milan and has about 25 years of experience in IT applications. He has been Chief Executive Officer and General Manager of many international companies, and is author of two books concerning information management in the area of logistics.

Lisa Inversini, a graduate in information technology (IT) from the Milan Politecnico, has been working for Ente Nazi-onale Italiano di Unificazione (UNI), the ISO

member for Italy, since 1994. During this time, she has been responsible for the IT support to different functions, including editorial, production, sales and security. She was appointed Head of UNI’s Information Technology Department in 2003. Ms. Inversini is a member of European and international groups concerned with IT in the standardization world.



Main Focus

of the subsequent human tasks. UNI workflows are very parametric. They are described using an XML file or a graphical tool, and can be easily modified or adapted ;

• strong monitoring of all activities by greatly reducing the possibility of human error and checking the timing of the activities through notifications. Each task is entrusted to a specific group of people and the work is coordinated through a chain of task lists ;

• logging of all activities managed by the workflow that can be overviewed by a manager ;

• no overlapping or duplication of infor-mation between Tyl (see below) and Thetis, as the people and organization units involved are managed only by Tyl ;

• automatic transfer to Livelink of docu-ments classified in Thetis.

At the moment, UNI has identified and activated about 340 rules, expressed as simple regular expressions and main-tained in an external XML/Excel file. These rules are the formal expression of UNI’s “ know-how ” about how an incom-ing document has to be filed, which infor-mation has to be registered and who has to take care of the activity.

Getting to grips with the complexity of relationships

Tyl Tyl is a Web application licensed

under the Open Source Apache 2.0 licence (www.tyl-project.org). UNI adopted and enhanced the application to fit its pur-poses, developing some specific exten-sions focussed on synchronizing the data with Livelink.

Tyl has the responsibility of recording information about the persons and organizations related to a standard’s workflow. The main feature of Tyl is its ability to describe and manage the com-plexity of the relationships that exist inside the organization. People can be members of different technical bodies and can represent different companies. Every technical body can be part of other technical bodies, and can mirror an ISO

or CEN technical body. Within the tech-nical bodies of which they are a member, people can play different roles and estab-lish different types of relationship.

Since all this complexity is cor-rectly managed by Tyl “ out of the box ”, UNI had only to correctly describe its own information and build the commu-nication flow with Livelink.

The main information that UNI introduced in Tyl was :

• organizations, such as technical bod-ies, organizational units, external com-panies, UNI partners, etc. ;

• persons, including members of tech-nical bodies, UNI employees, experts, etc. ;

• roles played by persons and organiza-tions inside the domain like “ member of technical body ” or “ UNI employee ”, or both ;

• relationships between organizations and among persons and organizations, like “ member of a specific technical body ” or “Secretary of a specific work-ing group”, etc. ;

• preferences and optional or mandatory responsibilities of persons and organi-zations ;

• identifiers used to fetch a specific par-ty in multiple ways.

Currently, synchronization of the core data is a major issue. There are many mismatches between the way the technical bodies are described inside CEN and ISO XML files, and the way Livelink describes the same entities. But the most important problems of the moment are the correctness of the data in terms of adherence to the schema and to the implicit referential integrity, the stability of the schema and the formali-zation of a “change” process.

Full control is importantEvery component used in the

UNI workflow management applica-tions (Livelink apart) is, or is based on, an Open Source technology. The backbone is constituted by a set of Java frameworks (Spring, Seam, Hibernate, Jboss, etc.) while the database manager is PostgreSql.

This delivers two important advan-tages. The first is that, with the excep-tion of Livelink, no licence costs have been incurred by UNI. The second, and probably more important, is that UNI has full control of every bit of software used in this critical area.

Positive results and more to come

The experience of these past few years has been very positive. The project has shown that it is possible, with a lim-ited investment, to build a workflow that encompasses all the players, from the international bodies to the single individual who participates in a spe-cific working group. The advantages in terms of fluidity, correctness and time-saving have all been satisfactory – and the planned evolution of the applications will improve the efficiency of the sys-tem even further.

Livelink – the OpenText Document Manager – is continually synchronized with Tyl and Thetis. For example :

• all the technical bodies in Livelink are mirrored in Tyl, maintaining the struc-tural relationships information ;

• every member of a technical body is mirrored in Tyl, where the administra-tive and organizational aspects of his role can be correctly managed ;

• the documents in Livelink are automat-ically inserted and updated by Thetis using, amongst other data, the informa-tion about the correspondence between national and international committees.

“ The planned evolution of the applications will

improve the efficiency of the system even further.”



made the point that today more than 65 % of companies in Europe use e-business applications, thus benefiting from low-er organizational costs and higher pro-ductivity. Companies need and ask for standards in respect of efficiency.

ments and work-in-progress, as well as to address emerging new require-ments ;

• how stakeholders can most effectively identify emerging needs for e-business standards, share in their development and collectively implement the results to deliver the expected benefits.

The public-private partnerships that advance the standards, technical specifications and recommendations associated with e-business are motivated by many specific goals both from with-in and across borders. Key priority areas include national competitiveness, effec-tiveness in regulatory controls, reducing trade barriers, fostering market entry by small and medium-sized enterprises and facilitating growth in developing and transitional economies.

Recent developments also demon-strate an opening-up of new opportunities for accelerating growth in the capabili-ties and benefits of services that impact the public and private sectors as well as their multifaceted interactions.

Learn, interact, look forward

In his opening address, Mr. Howard Mason, Chair of the e-business MoU Man-agement Group (MoUMG), on behalf of Marek Belka, Executive Secretary of the UN/ECE, introduced the partner organi-zations and highlighted the objectives of the workshop. Learn, interact, look for-ward and look to future trends were the main rules to observe during the con-ference.

Chaired by Dr. Stuart Feder, Chair-man UN/CEFACT, the first session, Stand-ards in the e-business world, began with a presentation by Mr. Gérard Richter, Head of information management/e-business practice for Roland Berger Partners.

Speaking on the current market environment, mid-term perspectives and future trends in e-business, Mr. Richter

Developments and InitiativesAdvancing public-private partnership for e-business standardsby Sandrine Tranchard, Communication Officer, ISO Central Secretariat

An international conference on the key role of e-business standards was held in Geneva, Switzerland,

in September. The event was organized by ISO, the International Electrotechni-cal Commission (IEC), the Telecommu-nication Standardization Sector of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU-T), Organization for the Advance-ment of Structured Information Stand-ards (OASIS), United Nations Economic Commission for Europe-United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Elec-tronic Business (UN/ECE-UN/CEFACT) and the Universal Postal Union (UPU) and supported by the e-business Memo-randum of Understanding (MoU).

In the context of e-business (i.e. the use of information and communi-cation technology, or ICT, to support business processes), standardization efforts promote significant opportuni-ties for enhanced efficiency and good practice in the public interest, as well as fostering important private sector developments.

Many specific goalsThe aim of this two-day con-

ference was to foster a better under-standing of public-private partnerships, through which stakeholders collaborate to develop e-business standards, focus-ing attention on :

• strengths and opportunities for enhanc-ing the voluntary consensus model of standards development and implemen-tation ;

• the importance of open, interoperable standards that serve the needs of both public and private sector ;

• steps forward that might be taken to significantly enhance recent achieve-

The standards solutions exposed by Mr. Howard Mason as Chair of the e-business MoUMG, offered an overview of the available International Standards and the main standards programmes of the organizations participating in the MoU on e-business. Mr. Mason high-lighted how the components fit in and support users’ and vendors’ needs and expectations.

“ Recent developments demonstrate an opening-up

of new opportunities.”



of Finance, showed how using standards can substantially reduce the administra-tive burden on businesses in The Nether-lands, Australia and New Zealand (Stand-ard Business reporting), with the example of using a recognized XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language).

On behalf of Commander Tor Arne Irgens, Norwegian Defence Systems Man-agement Division, Mr. Howard Mason gave a presentation on project P2529, implementing product life cycle sup-port for the defence sector. Information management is a key factor in improving military logistics, and the use of stand-ards maintains the quality of information. The project enables joint combined oper-ations: several new procurement projects and a common approach to total weapon systems management.

Implementation of ebXML mes-saging for electronic health (e-Health), by Mr. Pim van der Eijk, Sonnenglanz Consulting, showed deployment of IT systems and services in healthcare in the National Health Service of the Unit-ed Kingdom and in the National Insur-ance Scheme of Norway. A key aspect of the new architecture has been to pro-vide an interface specification based on open standards.

A presentation on implementation of RFID for the retail sector was made by Mr. Henri Barthel of GS1, a not-for-profit organization that develops global identification, automatic data capture and communication standards for the supply chain. The RFID market is growing – the number of RFID tags in Europe in 2007 was 144 million and is estimated to reach 3 220 million by 2012 and 86 700 mil-lion by 2022. In terms of standardization, this means that there is a lot to do, with implications for many areas.

A look to next generations

Dr. Richard Hill, ITU, highlight-ed the role of standards supporting the business case implementations which had been presented, showing how they fit in the standards framework – comprising both existing standards and standards under development. Mr. Pierre-André Probst, Chairman of ITU-T study group 16, Multimedia terminals, systems and applications, gave an insight into work

Mr. Ken Peabody, Director, Con-tent Management, American Nation-al Standards Institute (ANSI) and Mr. Mark Palmer, National Institute of Stand-ards and Technology (NIST) and UN/CEFACT Vice-Chair, spoke on Exploit-ing the investment. Presenting the ANSI-NIST federated standards registry, they gave an overview of the initiative and the benefits that it can deliver in terms of dissemination of information, sup-porting cooperation and avoiding dupli-cation of efforts.

A discussion panel involving all the speakers of the session, coordinated by Mr. Eduardo Gutentag, Sun Microsys-tems, Chairman of OASIS, illustrated how the dynamics of standards must be kept in mind, how important it is for standards developers to think about what stakehold-ers want and ensure that end user require-ments are taken into account.

Supply chain in focusSession two, entitled Open, trans-

national supply chain integration and chaired by Mr. Michel van der Heijen, GS1 (see below), focused on the busi-ness value deriving from the application of e-business standards supporting the global integration of supply chains.

Business cases from various sec-tors provided examples of supply chain integration based on standards imple-mentations, illustrating how the effec-tive use of standards leads to changes in the way business is done, generating significant return on investment.

Mr. Leo Focketyn, Supply Chain Project Manager of the Swatch Group, set the scene in the first presentation of this session, defining the scope and providing an overall perspective of the chosen field by identifying key business issues, as well as business and technol-ogy trends.

Mr. Tahseen Khan, Deputy Direc-tor General, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, India, pre-sented the Indian paperless trade (eTrade) project, which showed how uniformity and simplification of procedures, as well as standards integration, could significantly reduce both the transaction time of servic-es, like licence application, and fraud.

Mr. Harm Jan van Burg, Pro-gramme Manager, Netherlands Ministry

being carried out on next-generation multimedia systems, and looked at the changing use of multimedia.

A special session afforded Dr. Wolfgang von Rüden, Head of IT Divi-sion, CERN, an opportunity to show his organization’s role in open standards. The rationale for using open standards is CERN’s environment of worldwide research collaboration. It would not be feasible to do otherwise since participat-ing institutes are independent collabo-rators, many partners have very restrict-ed budgets, public funding expects or even imposes open solutions, the need to reduce the digital divide and to avoid being locked into one vendor.

Developments and Initiatives

Mr. Chae Sub Lee, Vice-Chairman of ITU-T study group 13, Next genera-tion network (NGN), presented the key features and impacts of NGN. The con-cept takes into consideration new reali-ties in the telecommunication industry, characterized by factors such as the need to converge and optimize the operating networks and the extraordinary expan-sion of digital traffic (i.e. the increasing demand for new multimedia services, for mobility, etc.).

Logistics supportChaired by Mr. Paul Donohoe,

eBusiness Programme Manager, UPU, session three : Efficient movement of goods and services focused on the characteris-tics, trends and future shape of the logis-tics environment and their interaction with supporting standards work.

Business cases from within both the private and public sectors, such as e-trade, defence and retail, provided examples of supply chain implementa-tion of standards and showed how effec-tive use of standards leads to changes in the way business is done, generating sig-nificant return on investment.

Mr. Harry Strover, Director of Enterprise Architecture, DHL Logis-tics, spoke on expectations of e-business

“ Today more than 65 % of companies in Europe use e-business

applications.”



tion to new business models. But there are several obstacles to the development of a truly pan-European e-invoicing system : the time is ripe for a European e-invoic-ing initiative, he concluded.

Mr. Akhilesh Mathur, Programme Manager, Standards and Certification, UPU, discussed standards as a foundation for postal reform and product innovation. Among its activities, UPU harmonizes international postal services, facilitates the global postal supply chain and estab-lishes standards. New standards work items include postal registered electronic mail (PREM), extensible postal product model and language (EPPML), enhanc-

standards at DHL with a view to operat-ing a profitable global business, being able to deliver consistent, effective and innovative solutions, understanding and managing their business better.

Mr. Malcolm McKinnon, CEO of SITPRO Ltd., presented the United King-dom’s implementation of UNeDocs, elec-tronic documents for international trade. UNeDocsUK is a development project that offers an extended form of the UNe-Docs international standards. The United Kingdom repository currently includes data elements from 18 documents tak-en from the UK aligned series of paper documents. She stressed the importance of having standards : they underpin the relationships.

The European electronic invoice, by Mr. Peter Potgieser, European e-Invoic-ing Expert Group, ABN AMRO, explained that e-invoicing links internal processes of companies to payment systems, sim-plifies processes, reduces administrative and financial costs and facilitates transi-

Some of the speakers (from left to right and from top to bottom) : Paul Donohoe, eBusiness Programme Manager , UPU; Richard Hill, Councellor ITU-T; Peter Potgieser, European e-Invoicing Expert Group, ABN AMRO ; Harry Strover, Director of Enterprise Architecture, DHL Logistics ; Akhilesh Mathur, Programme Manager, Standards and Certification, UPU ; Leo Focketyn, Supply chain project manager, Swatch Group ; Daniele Gerundino, Strategic Advisor to the Secretary-General, ISO ; Mark Palmer, NIST, UN/CEFACT Vice-chair ; Stuart Feder, Chairman UN/CEFACT.

ing of existing EDI message standards, and electronic transmission of name and address information.

To highlight the role of standards supporting the business case implemen-tations presented in session three and to show how they fit in the standards framework, Mr. Jamie Clark, OASIS, focused on e-business success stories. Since customers choose the standards that work for them, standards develop-ers must ensure they are designing for the real world.

Summing up – Benefits and key actions

The concluding session, entitled The way forward, was chaired by Mr. Eduardo Gutentag from Sun Microsys-tems, Chairman of OASIS.

Mr. Geoffrey Hamilton, UNECE, stressed the importance of promoting good governance in successful public–private partnerships (PPPs), in the context of private investment in public infrastruc-ture. The aim of such PPPs is to finance, design, implement and operate public sector facilities and services.

Summing up, the benefits of e-business to industry, government and consumers are strengthened in a con-text of sound governmental policies, clear laws and regulations, solid legal agreements and implementable techni-cal standards.

Thanking all the participants in the conference, ISO Secretary-General Alan Bryden concluded with three key actions to sum up the workshop’s rec-ommendations for standardizers :

• “ ensure interoperability ”

• “ develop communication ”

• “ promote implementation ”

Conference programme and presenta-tions can be downloaded from :

www.iso.org/ebusiness_standards_conf_2008

“ Since customers choose the standards that work for them, standards developers

must ensure they are designing for the real world.”



Developments and Initiatives

ISO, IEC and ITU-T organize standardization course for managersby Daniele Gerundino, ISO Strategic Advisor to the Secretary-General

The Standardization Community Management Course is an impor-tant education and training initia-

tive organized by the World Standards Cooperation. The 2008 edition of the course was held by ISO, the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) and the Telecommunication Standardization Sector of the International Telecommu-nication Union (ITU-T) in Geneva, Swit-zerland, in September 2008.

The course is designed for man-agers of ISO, IEC and ITU-T members. It aims to prepare the managers to effec-tively participate in the development of the international standardization com-munity, as well as to provide a detailed insight into the business of internation-al standardization.

Organized over five working days, the course comprised: • plenary sessions during which ISO,

IEC and ITU-T heads of services high-lighted a broad variety of aspects rang-ing from organizational history, struc-ture and strategy overviews, to the benefits, development methods and processes of International Standards. The sessions also addressed conform-ity assessment practices, standards and public policies, intellectual property right issues and other approaches and solutions from the three organizations in the IT, communication, policy devel-opment and administration fields;

• contributions from external speak-ers from the World Trade Organiza-tion (WTO) and the World Intellec-tual Property Organization (WIPO), covering the relation between stand-ards and trade and standards and pat-ents and copyright;

• panel discussions involving the pre-senters of the different sessions and open interaction with participants;

• break-out sessions during which par-ticipants had the opportunity to inter-act with the business units of the organization they belong to (ISO, IEC or ITU-T) that offer services to their respective members.

About 70 applications for partici-pation were originally registered but, in order to ensure the quality of the course, only 33 participants were selected, allow-ing for geographical balance and well-distributed organizational representation (from ISO, IEC and ITU-T).

In spite of intense efforts and a heavy workload, all participants expressed their satisfaction regarding the quality of the course content and organizational arrangements. Participants also agreed that it had been both interesting and useful to have presentations from the three main international standardiza-tion organizations (ISO, IEC and ITU-T) at the same time, allowing them to compare similarities and differences in their practices. The possibility of meet-ing in person and interacting with the heads of the different units of the three organizations, with whom they have to deal on a regular basis, was also high-ly appreciated.

“ The course aims to provide a detailed

insight into the business of international

standardization.”

Participants had the opportunity to visit the United Nations Palais des Nations in Geneva.



Protecting standardsby Jose Checa, Legal Advisor, ISO Central Secretariat

An initiative to contribute to the further protection of copyright for standards was taken by the

Associação Brasileira de Normas Técni-cas (ABNT), the ISO member for Brazil, with an event organized in June 2008 in Brasilia, hosted by the Brazilian National Confederation of Industry (CNI).

The conference brought togeth-er a panel of national and international experts to discuss the important contri-bution of standards from a business, stra-tegic and legal perspective in technical, scientific and managerial areas, and how they are afforded protection by national and international copyright laws.

The event provided a compre-hensive overview of the interests at stake and included representatives from the Ministry of Science and Technolo-gy, the National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI), law firms, standards setting organizations and other busi-ness institutions.

ISO was represented by its Legal Advisor Jose Checa, who commented: “This has been a very positive expe-rience, and it has helped us to correct some misconceptions surrounding the development and publication of stand-ards and the way they are made avail-able to the marketplace.”

(From left) Pedro Buzatto Costa, ABNT President ; Marco Antonio Reis Guarita, CNI Director of Institutional Relations ; João Alziro Herz da Jornada, President of the National Institute of Metrology, Standardization and Quality (INMETRO).

ISO launches development of future standard on energy managementby Roger Frost, Manager, Communication Services, Marketing & Communication

The first meeting of ISO’s new project committee ISO/PC 242, which is to develop an Interna-

tional Standard on energy management, was held in September in Washington, DC, USA.

The future ISO 50001 will estab-lish a framework for industrial plants, commercial facilities or entire organiza-tions to manage energy. Targetting broad applicability across national economic sectors, the standard could influence up to 60 % of the world’s energy use.

The meeting was attended by del-egates from the ISO national member bodies of 25 countries from all regions of the world, as well as representation from the United Nations Industrial Devel-opment Organization (UNIDO), which has liaison status with ISO/PC 242. All the participating countries have exist-ing activities on energy management and a strong interest in also develop-ing a harmonized solution at the inter-national level.

As part of the proceedings, del-egates described their various initia-tives in detail. For example, a presen-tation was given by UNIDO on the pre-paratory work the organization has car-ried out to support the ISO process by researching energy management needs in developing countries.

This gave ISO/PC 242 an insight into the different policies and situations around the world which need to be tak-en into account in the development of a globally relevant International Stand-ard for energy management.

Excellent progress was made in the technical discussions and a first working draft has already been created. A major point of discussion is the need to ensure compatibility with the exist-ing suite of ISO management system

standards. The committee therefore took the key decision to base the draft on the common elements found in all of ISO’s management system standards.

This will ensure maximum com-patibility with key standards such as ISO 9001 for quality management and ISO 14001 for environmental management.

The project committee is fully committed to an ambitious schedule and aims to have ISO 50001 ready for pub-lication by the end of 2010.

ISO Secretary-General Alan Bryden commented : “ This first meeting of PC 242 marks the launch of a new glo-bal approach to systematically address energy performance in organizations – pragmatically addressing energy efficien-cy and related climate change impacts. It is fully in line with and supportive of the global mobilization on these major challenges, and with the IEA 1) -ISO posi-tion paper on the contribution of Inter-national Standards.”

1) International Energy Agency. The IEA-ISO position paper is available on ISO Online at www.iso.org/iso/iso_iea_paper.pdf



New on the shelfISO launches video clip : “ The ISO 9000 family – Global management standards”by Roger Frost, Manager, Communication Services, Marketing & Communication

On the eve of the publication of ISO 9001:2008, ISO has just launched a video clip in which

users share their perspectives of earlier ISO 9001 editions and other standards in the ISO 9000 family which has become the global benchmark for qualtiy man-agement systems.

The ISO 9000 family – Global management standards takes the form of a fictional television business news report on ISO 9000 in which real users speak from their personal experience in the varied contexts of multination-al industry, a humanitarian aid organi-zation and a police department, which ISO says underlines the combination of flexibility, efficiency and effectiveness of the ISO 9000 approach.

ISO Secretary-General Alan Bryden comments : “ Whenever the ISO 9000 family is evoked, the emphasis is usually on ISO 9001 certification. This video is refreshing because the users emphasize the importance and benefits of ISO 9000 aspects such as manage-ment commitment, metrics, customer focus, continual improvement, knowl-edge transfer, cost savings and the eight quality management principles.”

The video includes interviews with ISO 9000 users from : the interna-tional oil and gas industry ; the Cambo-dia Trust, a humanitarian aid organization with headquarters in the United King-dom ; and the Phoenix Police Depart-ment, Arizona, USA.

The ISO 9000 family is devel-oped and maintained by ISO technical committee ISO/TC 176, Quality man-agement and quality assurance.

The video concept was created by Communication Services, ISO Cen-tral Secretariat (ISO/CS). Post-produc-tion by Communication and Information services (ISO/CS) and Taurus Studio (sound). Geneva, Switzerland, www.

taurus-studio.com. Production input by Trueworld Communications, Unit-ed Kingdom, www.trueworld.media.officelive.com

The ISO 9000 family – Global management standards can be down-loaded free of charge from ISO’s Web site (www.iso.org). It is also available (English only) in high resolution on DVD in PAL (ISBN 978-92-67-10485-0) and NTSC (ISBN 978-92-67-10486-7) ver-sions for being shown in conference set-tings. The DVD versions are also free, although postage and handling will be charged. They are available from ISO national member institutes and from the ISO Central Secretariat through the ISO Store (www.iso.org/isostore) or by con-tacting the Marketing & Communication department ([email protected]).

The ISO Survey – 2007 shows ISO manage-ment systems standards implemented in 175 countriesby Roger Frost, Manager, Communication Services, Marketing & Communication

The ISO Survey of Certifications – 2007 reveals certification activity around one or more of ISO’s man-

agement system standards in 175 coun-tries, up from 170 in 2006 – “ a clear demonstration ”, according to the sur-vey, “ that they have become essential tools of the world economy ”.

ISO Secretary-General Alan Bryden comments : “ The survey illus-trates in a very concrete manner the extent to which ISO management sys-tem standards are meeting the organiza-tion’s strategic objective of ‘ global rel-evance ’ – in other words, adding value

for the organizations that use them all over the world.”

The principal findings of the sur-vey are as follows :

ISO 9001:2000 (quality management)

Up to the end of December 2007, at least 951 486 ISO 9001:2000 certifi-cates had been issued in 175 countries and economies. The 2007 total repre-sents an increase of 54 557 (+ 6 %) over 2006, when the total was 896 929 in 170 countries and economies. Services again accounted for 32 % of all certifi-cates issued.

The increase appears much small-er than in 2006 (+16 %) and according to the survey several factors may have combined to produce this result :

• The 2007 survey data collection meth-odology was strongly re-focused on obtaining figures from primary sourc-es, the certification bodies that actu-ally issue certificates, to reduce the increased possibility of error inher-ent in obtaining data from secondary sources (accreditation bodies and data-bases). This has resulted in the totals for several countries being revised downwards.

• Certification activity slowed down in anticipation of the forthcoming new edition of ISO 9001, with organiza-tions adopting a “ wait and see ” atti-tude, as many did in the run-up to the 2000 edition.

The market for certification is maturing in certain countries where this activity began early on.

• The continuing growth of sector- or activity-specific editions of ISO 9001 reduces the number of certifications to the generic standard.

• The trend for organizations to replace multiple-site certificates by one cer-tificate covering all sites continues, although its extent is difficult to quan-tify, and also reduces the number of certificates.

ISO 14001:2004 (environmental management)

Up to the end of December 2007, at least 154 572 certificates had been issued in 148 countries and economies. The 2006 total represents an increase of 26 361 (+ 21 %) over 2006, when the total

2007

The ISO Survey o f Cer t i f icat ions

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was 128 211 in 140 countries and econ-omies. The service sectors accounted for 29 % of certificates issued, up from 27 % in 2006.

ISO/TS 16949:2002 (quality management for automotive suppliers)

Up to the end of December 2007, at least 35 198 ISO/TS 16949:2002 cer-tificates had been issued in 81 countries and economies. The 2007 total represents an increase of 7 199 (+ 26 %) over 2006 when the total was 27 999 certificates in 78 countries and economies.

ISO 13485:2003 (quality management for medical devices)

Up to the end of December 2007, at least 12 985 ISO 13485:2003 certifi-cates had been issued in 84 countries and economies. The 2007 total represents an increase of 4 959 (+ 62 %) over 2006 when the total was 8 026 in 81 countries and economies.

ISO/IEC 27001:2005 (information security management)

At the end of December 2007, at least 7 732 ISO/IEC 27001:2005 certifi-cates had been issued in 70 countries and economies. The 2007 total represents an increase of 1 935 (+33 %) over 2006 when the total was 5 797 in 64 countries and economies. Service sector organiza-tions accounted for 90 % of the certifi-cates issued.

The survey results continue to shed light on the evolution of the global economy, with newly emerging econo-mies such as China, India, Brazil and the Russian Federation appearing among the leading countries for totals of certificates issued, or growth during 2007. Coun-tries other than the established indus-trialized economies showing intensive certification activity include Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, the Republic of Korea, Mexico, Poland, Romania, Thai-land and Turkey.

ISO makes available the princi-pal findings of the survey free of charge on the ISO Web site. More information, including industry sector breakdowns, can be found in The ISO Survey of Cer-tifications – 2007. A combined brochure and CD, it is available from ISO nation-al member institutes and from the ISO

Central Secretariat through the ISO Store (www.iso.org/isostore) or by contacting the Marketing & Communication depart-ment ([email protected]).

New ISO/TS 14823 helps travellers plan their trip for better comfort and convenienceby Sandrine Tranchard, Communication Officer, ISO Central Secretariat

Whether for holidays or business trip, travellers are increasing-ly making use of information

technology systems to plan their trip, such as evaluating travel times, distanc-es and costs.

The new ISO technical specifi-cation, ISO/TS 14823 presents a system of standardized codes for existing signs and pictograms used to deliver traffic and traveller information (TTI) and will help Information technology systems (ITS) to work effectively, employing common principles and practices within regions and, as far as possible, globally.

ITS offers unprecedented poten-tial for increasing the level of service to travellers, the efficiency of current infra-structure, and improving safety, con-venience, and cost-efficiency. Among the potential benefits of ISO/TS 14823 are improving the environment, includ-ing air quality and noise abatement, and saving travel time and cost and as well

as making travel time more productive for business travellers and more agree-able for all travellers. It can also facil-itate the use of alternate or multiple travel modes, improving travel times and helping to load-level the transpor-tation system.

The coding system presented in ISO/TS 14823 can be used to form mes-sages to be handled by respective media systems, graphic messages on on-board units, and media system information on TTI dissemination systems. These types of information are required by travellers for their pre-trip planning, as well as their in-trip plan modification based on information obtained through media systems.

A system handling graphic mes-sages generally comprises TTI system operators, media systems and commu-nication networks interconnecting these systems. ISO/TS 14823 relates to :

TTI systems operators, which include :

• traffic management centres (TMC),

• traffic information centres (TIC),

• parking information centres (PIC),

• public transport centres (PTC),

• value-added service providers (VASP)

Media systems, which include :

• on-board units (OBU) ;

• variable message signs (VMS) ;

• personal computers (PC) ;

• public access terminals (PAT).

The main part of the standard explains the concepts of graphic data information service to the users who need TTI information service, and presents an overview of the user service. Infor-mation elements contained in messages provided by pre-trip and in-trip infor-mation services can be broadly divided into these types :

• traffic sign information (danger warn-ing, regulatory, informative) ;

• public facilities information ;

• ambient/road condition information.Adopting unified graphic data is

expected to improve the understandabil-ity of the graphic information by the user



and thereby increase the convenience of TTI systems.

The purpose of the graphic data dictionary (GDD) presented in ISO/TS 14823 is, in order to facilitate the data exchange between media, to catalogue graphic images like traffic signs and pictograms specified and used unique-ly in each country and to assign them a certain code.

ISO/TS 14823:2008, Traffic and travel information – Messages via media independent stationary dissemination systems – Graphic data dictionary for pre-trip and in-trip information dissem-ination systems, was developed by ISO technical committee ISO/TC 204, Intel-ligent transport systems. It is available from ISO national member institutes and from ISO Central Secretariat through the ISO Store (www.iso.org/isostore) or by contacting the Marketing & Communica-tion department ([email protected]).

ISO and IEC release new electronic version of the Guide to the Expression of Uncertainty in Measurement (GUM)by Janet Maillard, Assistant Editor, ISO Focus

ISO and the International Electrotech-nical Commission (IEC) have pub-lished the first of a planned series of

guidance documents on the uncertainty of measurement.

ISO/IEC Guide 98-3:2008, Uncer-tainty of measurement – Part 3: Guide to the expression of uncertainty in measure-ment (GUM:1995), is a reissue of the 1995 version of the Guide to the Expression of Uncertainty in Measurement (GUM), with minor corrections. The new guide is avail-able in both paper and electronic form. It will be followed by the first of three sup-plements, ISO/IEC Guide 98-3/Supple-ment 1, Propagation of distributions using a Monte Carlo method.

Further, ISO/IEC Guide 98-1 is being prepared to promote the sound evalu-ation of measurement uncertainty through the use of the GUM and to provide an introduction to the supplements and oth-er related documents.

Measurement is involved in making commercial, health, environmental and sci-entific decisions. Measurement uncertain-ty enables users to obtain the probability of making an incorrect decision based on measurement, and to manage the conse-quential risks. Thus, a statement of meas-urement uncertainty is indispensable in judging the fitness for purpose of a value obtained by measurement.

As an example, a customer buy-ing fruit at the greengrocer would be con-tent if the scales gave a value within 2 g of the fruit’s actual weight. However, the dimensions of parts of the gyroscopes within the inertial navigation systems of commercial aircraft must be checked by measurement to one part in a million for correct functioning.

ISO/IEC Guide 98-3 establishes general rules for evaluating and expressing uncertainty in measurement that can be fol-lowed at various levels of accuracy and in many fields – from the shop floor to funda-mental research. The principles of this guide are applicable to a broad spectrum of meas-urements, including those required for :

• maintaining quality control and qual-ity assurance in production;

• complying with and enforcing laws and regulations;

• conducting basic research, and applied research and development, in science and engineering;

• calibrating standards and instruments and performing tests throughout a national measurement system in order to achieve traceability to national standards;

• developing, maintaining, and compar-ing international and national physical reference standards, including reference materials.

Though primarily concerned with the expression of uncertainty in the meas-urement of a well-defined physical quan-tity, the guide is also applicable to evalu-ating and expressing the uncertainty asso-ciated with the conceptual design and the-oretical analysis of experiments, methods of measurement, and complex components and systems.

Since its initial publication in 1993, the GUM has found wide acceptance, and its methods have been adopted by various regional metrology and related organiza-tions across the world.

To quote from the introduction to ISO/IEC Guide 98-3 : “ Just as the nearly universal use of the International System of Units (SI) has brought coherence to all sci-entific and technological measurements, a worldwide consensus on the evaluation and expression of uncertainty in measurement permits the significance of a vast spectrum of measurement results in science, engi-neering, commerce, industry, and regula-tion to be readily understood and properly interpreted. In this era of the global mar-ketplace, it is imperative that the method for evaluating and expressing uncertainty be uniform throughout the world so that measurements performed in different coun-tries can be easily compared.”

The GUM is the responsibility of the Joint Committee for Guides in Metrol-ogy, which consists of experts nominated by the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures (BIPM), the International Elec-trotechnical Commission (IEC), the Inter-national Organization for Standardization (ISO), the International Organization of Legal Metrology (OIML), the International Federation for Clinical Chemistry and Lab-oratory Medicine (IFCC), the International Organization for Pure and Applied Chem-istry (IUPAC), the International Organiza-tion for Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) and the International Laboratory Accredi-tation Cooperation (ILAC).

ISO/IEC Guide 98-3:2008, Uncer-tainty of measurement – Part 3: Guide to the expression of uncertainty in measure-ment (GUM:1995) is available from ISO national member institutes and from ISO Central Secretariat through the ISO Store (www.iso.org/isostore) or by contacting the Marketing & Communication depart-ment ([email protected]).

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Laboratories and inspection bodiesLaboratoires et organism

es d’inspection

ISO/IEC Packs

Conformity assessmentLaboratories and inspection bodiesÉvaluation de la conformitéLaboratoires et organismes d’ inspection

This CD contains all the ISO/IEC standards and guides necessary

for laboratories to demonstrate their competence to carry out

testing, calibration and sampling. The basic requirements are

stipulated in ISO/IEC 17025:2005.Testing is a major conformity assessment activity and also

provides the basis for other conformity assessment processes

such as product certification and inspection. Inspection bodies

examine a huge range of products and processes, installations

and plants. The overall aim is to reduce risk to the buyer and

consumer of the item being inspected. As many laboratories

also operate inspection activities , the CD also includes

ISO/IEC 17020:1998, General requirements for the operation

of various types of bodies performing inspection activitiesThis product is compatible with Microsoft Windows ®,

Mac OS X ® and Linux ®.© ISO/IEC, 2008 – All rights reserved

Ce CD contient toutes les normes et guides ISO/CEI nécessaires

aux laboratoires pour démontrer leur compétence à procéder

à des essais, étalonnages et échantillonnages. Les exigences

fondamentales sont stipulées dans la norme ISO/CEI 17025:2005.

Les essais constituent une activité majeure d’évaluation de

la conformité et fournissent aussi la base d’autres processus

d’évaluation de la conformité comme la certification et l’inspection

des produits. Les organismes d’inspection examinent une très

large palette de produits et processus, installations et usines.

L’objectif général est de réduire les risques que présente, pour

l’acheteur et le consommateur, l’article qui fait l’objet de

l’inspection. Comme nombreux laboratoires ont également des

activités d’inspection, le CD inclut l’ISO/CEI 17020:1998, Critères

généraux pour le fonctionnement de différents types d’organismes

procédant à l’inspection.Ce produit est compatible Microsoft Windows ®, Mac OS X ® et Linux ®.

© ISO/CEI, 2008 – Tous droits réservés

ISO/IEC Packs

New on the shelf



Main Focus

ISO General Assembly

Food production – Quality, safety and sustainability “ We are what we eat ” says an old proverb. Modern agricultural practices, animal feed and transportation containers have all given rise to safety concerns at one time or another. Growing awareness among increasingly health conscious consumers about the quality of what they eat, and the intensifying coverage of food crises and issues in the media, have emphasized the need for Interna-tional Standards.

A need strengthened by the fact that food production in today’s global marketplace regularly crosses boundaries as products travel from farm to fork, making safety and quality controls even more vital.

International Standards have an impor-tant part to play here with respect to both specific aspects and subjects, and to generic requirements. By providing consistent harmonized specifications, they can ensure that food around the world adheres to the same high standards.

ISO’s main committee addressing food issues is ISO/TC 34 which has pro-duced over 700 standards on products ranging from poultry to coffee. The committee has also developed a generic standard for food safety management systems, already implemented by an

estimated 4 000 organizations in 93 countries at the end of 2007, as well as more recently, a food traceability stand-ard for all organizations in the feed and food chain.

Furthermore, concerns about environ-mental impact, carbon footprint and the demand for sustainable agriculture and fair trade are also driving the need for International Standards. In response, ISO is producing extensive work to address several of these issues, for example, through the technical committee for sustainable aquaculture.

The next issue of ISO Focus explores a number of the ISO initiatives aiming to ensure the quality, safety and sustaina-bility of food products along the production chain, addressing issues ranging from quality crops and food irradiation to RFID identification of animals. The December issue also includes contributions from some key actors in the sector with which ISO collaborates to ensure a harmonized approach, such as the Codex Alimentarious and the World Trade Organization Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures.

The next ISO Focus provides the high-lights of the ISO/TC 34 plenary which took place in Paris, France, where the latest most exciting developments in the food sector were discussed. Learn more in the next issue of ISO Focus.

Coming up

The ISO 31st General Assembly was held in October 2008 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, hosted by ESMA, the local ISO member.

On the occasion of World Standards Day (14 October) whose 2008 theme was “ Intelligent and sustainable buildings ”, the meeting featured an open session on Buildings for a sustainable future.

The December issue of ISO Focus features the highlights of the 2008 General Assembly, which was attended by a record-breaking number of 416 participants including delegates from 115 ISO member countries and from ISO’s extensive partnership network.

The meeting provided a valuable opportunity to look back at progress made and ahead to future developments. Discussing the achievements of the past year, ISO Secretary-General Alan Bryden stated : “ Important new standards have been published on issues as diverse as food safety, GHG emissions accountability and verification, informa-tion security, security management in the supply chains, water services or information processing.

“ We have also opened some important new frontiers, from risk management, societal security and social responsibility to nanotechnologies, biofuels, water services, tourism, and aquaculture and fishery.”

Do not miss out the next issue of ISO Focus to find out more.



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