The Government at the Standards Bazaar Redux (Or, When Should A Government Mandate An IT Standard?) – PART 3

posted by on Tuesday, July 20th, 2010 at 12:00 pm

This is the third in a series of articles in which contributor Stacy Baird presents and in-depth analysis of the role of governments in standards setting initiatives which is released on a bi-weekly basis. For previous instalments see here: Part 1, Part 2 – Editor

PART 3: There are Many Ways in Which the IT Develops Standards: The Most Formal Forums for Standard Setting

The IT industry’s capacity to create interoperability standards is well supported by the fact that there is a veritable alphabet soup of formal forums in which IT and related standards are developed and an equally exhaustive use of the alphabet in IT standards nomenclature. The traditional course for standards development is gaining adoption in voluntary consensus forums most commonly described as national standards bodies (NSBs) and standards development organizations (SDOs). I am not going to go into detail as to the formal processes, suffice it to say they have well established consensus processes and most have an extremely long history of success in setting a wide range of industrial standards.

At the most formal end of standards-setting are SDOs, for example, those in the U.S. accredited by ANSI, the American National Standards Institute, the U.S. NSB. ANSI is the only accredited U.S. entity that is a member of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), two principal overarching international SDOs. A standard set by an ANSI-accredited standards development organization may be approved by ANSI as an American National Standard. Thereafter, an ANSI standard may be taken to the ISO for adoption. There are corrolary national standards bodies in most other countries.

SDOs include the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), International Telecommunications Union (ITU), or industry or sector-specific standards-setting organizations (e.g. InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS), Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA), Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), European Computer Manufacturers Association (ECMA), Association of Computing Machinery (ACM), Audio Engineering Society (AES), and Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE).

SDOs have produced an endless list of IT standards, including: IEEE 802.11 (aka Wi-Fi); IEEE 1394 (aka Sony iLink or Apple Firewire), TCP/IP Internet communications protocol (IETF), and so on. These standards development organizations are exceedingly credible and common to all industries that rely on standards.

Most of these organizations have been around for decades, some over a millenium, providing standards for worldwide adoption and the underpinnings for innovation and commercial progress since the industrial age. The British Standards Institution (BSI) was founded as the first NSB in 1901. ISO was founded in 1926 as the International Federation of the National Standardizing Associations (ISA). ANSI, in the U.S. was founded in 1918, first as the American Engineering Standards Committee (AESC). The IEEE has its roots in two standards development organizations, American Institute of Electrical Engineers founded in 1884, and the Institute of Radio Engineers, founded in 1912, which merged to form IEEE in 1963. DIN, the German Institute for Standardization, was established in 1917. Indisputibly, there is a long history of successful standards setting, standards for global adoption, in every industry related to the I.T. industry.

Along with SDOs, there are also numerous trade associations that establish or validate technologies as standards for particular industries, many of which are taken to SDOs for their adoption. Two trade associations that are regularly involved in electronics and broadcast standards, for example, are the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), and the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB).

There is an abundance of evidence that the IT industries have very sophisticated formal means to set standards. Next, I will describe the range of less formal, even highly informal approaches to standards setting, which illustrates truly how sophisticated the IT industries are in their ability to set standards to meet interoperability needs.