Part 10: Risk of “Government Failure” is Particularly Acute in a Dynamic Market
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Part 9 – Risk of “Government Failure” Should Give Government Cause to Pause

I have been describing the facts, law and public policy that support a government preference for market developed IT standards. I now turn to the negative motivation for governments, the risk of failure should government jump into the standard-setting fray. It is often observed that the market is more well informed, efficient, flexible, and nimble than government in developing IT standards. In general, this observation leads to a concern that government intervention to address an IT market failure is the high risk of “non-market failure,” or “government failure.” A non-market failure can be defined as the unintended and undesirable consequences of government failure where it intervenes to address a market failure.

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U.S. Trade Policy and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade Promote Market-Developed Standards as Fundamental to Trade Unfettered Trade

In my previous comments, I’ve described the capacity of the IT industry to develop standards, and in the U.S., clear laws that favor market-developed standards. I now turn to the broader U.S. trade policy and the WTO Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade.

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PART 7 – U.S. Law and Policy Prefers Standards Developed in the Marketplace: the National Technology Transfer and Advancement Act of 1995 and OMB Circular A-119

For this and the next installment, I will focus for the most part on U.S. law and policy as it provides a most clear illustration. In the context of standard setting, there is a substantial early history of the government as the exclusive or predominant standards-setting entity, rooted in its British heritage dating back many hundreds of years.
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This is Part 6 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 4, Part 5 – Editor

PART 6: The Well Developed Range of Standards, both Proprietary and Open, Reflect a Sophisticated Standards-Setting Ecosystem

Previously I described the several forums and market characteristics that can develop an IT standard: SDOs, patent pools, market driven de facto standards and consortia. As further evidence of the sophistication of the IT standards-setting marketplace, there are numerous and highly differentiated types of standards that can achieve interoperability

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This is Part 5 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 3, Part 4 – Editor

PART 5 – Not Hot, nor Cold, but Just Right… (or “Not Formal, Not Informal, but Drawing on the Best of What Came Before”): Consortia

I have been discussing the sophistication of the IT industry in setting standards as evidenced by the industry’s long history and considerable use of formal (SDO) and informal means such as patent pools. In between SDOs and patent pools resides a more recent concept commonly used by the IT industry, a truly flexible approach to standards development – where the relevant industries or businesses develop and support a standard by mutual agreement through a consortium.

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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.

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This is the second 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 posted on a bi-weekly basis. The first in the series can be seen here – Editor

PART 2: There are Good Reasons for Government to be Reluctant to Mandate IT Standards

To start with the end: Government should be reluctant to mandate an IT standard. Before regulating an industry, policy makers have to look at a few things: the sophistication of the industry with regard to what is being considered for regulation; the capacity of industry to address a perceived problem without government regulation; whether regulation would be contrary to or in support of good public policy; and finally, whether the risk of “government failure” outstrips the risk of market failure. It is incontrovertable that when it comes to standards, the IT industries are sophisticated.

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This is the first in a series of articles in which contributor Stacy Baird will analyse the role of governments in standards setting initiatives which will be posted on a bi-weekly basis – Editor

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