This article is co-authored by Laurent Liscia, Executive Director, James Bryce Clark, General Counsel, and Dr Carol Cosgrove-Sacks, Senior Advisor on International Standards Policy at the OASIS Secretariat
How should European standardization policy be reformed to enhance efficiency? Should transparency be a key priority or could alternative measures more effectively improve the current European standardization system?
OASIS, one of the largest and oldest open standards consortia in the Internet and e-commerce field, participates actively in global and European standards coordination efforts. OASIS standards projects have long been initiated and implemented by a variety of European regional and national governments and enterprises.
We have been active in the recent EC projects to re-examine standards policy, and are keen to contribute to this conversation. Our views generally on how EU standardization policy ought to evolve have been circulated widely, and shared with the official policy bodies giving careful consideration to these issues in 2009-2010, especially in response to the ICT standards process – THE WAY FORWARD and participation in the high level EXPRESS process.
In summary, OASIS advocates that government policies and practices should more clearly address the fait accompli of pervasive use of consortia standards at every level of European public and private sector enterprise; and provide tools to welcome and leverage these cooperative industry innovations. Where EU Directives are thought to be ambiguous about “ESO” standards versus industry standards, they should be clarified to address and manage the obvious widespread adoption of both, and the continuing desire of industry participants to use them. De jure organizations should promote interorganizational cooperation, and be careful not to style themselves as competition to marketplace efforts.
Transparency can be an important tool in improving open standards, and promoting cooperation among standards sources, though it is not the exclusive approach to be applied.
Transparency may refer to several facets of the operation of standardization projects:
- One is visibility into the products. End-user implementers, as well as regulators, are better able to assess the evenhandedness and influences on a specification when the draft work and debates that produce it can be accessed openly. Restricted access impairs that ability to evaluate a standard’s quality and any biases. Impaired visibility also is an obstacle to work on interoperability that may come from cooperation or independent reviews.
- One is availability of licensure or legal rights. The obligations of participants and others to make legal rights available, for use of a standard, must be clear. Also, increasingly, as policymakers promote free and open source software, and open government data, some uses and implementations are prevented if standards are not clearly available free of royalty payment requirements, or in some cases, burdened by overly complex or burdensome license conditions.
- One is simple availability, in the sense of access. Standards not readily locatable via the Internet, or standards whose contents cannot be redistributed, or require payment to access, may be less likely to be widely adopted and leveraged by users. We note that there are fundamental unresolved issues with the traditional business models for standards creation, resulting, for example, in disparate standards access fees and practices among ISO, ITU and IEC.
- Finally, one is clarity of administration. The rules that affect an open standard’s development and progress, and decisions taken regarding the same, should be readily available to the public. Those with an interest in the trade-regulation and competition-law aspects of standards outcomes presumably also are better served by more disclosure.
OASIS very much appreciates the opportunity to engage in dialogue with the EU institutions. OASIS looks forward to many continued years of productive cooperation with policymakers and other standards-creating entities, in Europe and globally.
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