Welcome to the Open Forum on Reviewing SSOs – Fostering or Impeding Efficient Standardization?

There is an ongoing debate about whether standard setting organizations can be ranked or compared against each other, and if so, what criteria should be used and who could make such an assessment.

Proponents of the idea of SSO ranking suggests that it would facilitate choosing standards while making sure that demands for openness, consensus are met (see e.g. Trond-Arne Undheim and Andy Updegrove); while opponents argue that standards are ultimately successful if they succeed in markets, meeting demand from end-users.

Governments have set up frameworks for adopting standards, taking into account different attributes of the underlying development process, e.g. the US OMB Circular No A-119 and the EU Modernizing ICT Standardization in the EU and proposals of ranking SSOs have come from IBM, the British Standards Insitute, Yale Law School and Digistan.

The open forum is set to discuss important issues such as:

Is a formalized review of SSOs fostering or impeding efficient standardization?

What are the pros and cons of rankings?

The discussion will be based on the introductory remarks posted to the right.

Please join the discussion!

Mattias Ganslandt, Editor