Transparency is certainly one of the main attributes of European Standardisation. CEN and CENELEC, and their national members (31 countries) constantly work to ensure maximum transparency at all stages in the development of European Standards.

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As Elena Santiago has mentioned, we are undertaking a major effort to improve access to standards and the standards process for SMEs – in the process these measures will benefit all stakeholders.

The study to which Elena referred contained no less than 58 recommendations. Each one is already being implemented in one way or another by one or more of our members. What we are doing is simply to try to extend these existing good practices as widely as possible within CEN-CENELEC and our members.

The recommendations have been grouped into a number of areas of which the major ones are :

- Increasing Awareness/ Education and Communication (web sites, training etc – noting we also have in the ESOs a Joint Working Group on how to improve this generally);

- Improving Access to Standards – Search Facilities, Information and Price (packages for reduced-price access, read-only access for drafts, abstracts of European Standards free of charge on line);

- Easier Use of Standards (making the text easier to understand, fewer cross-references etc);

- Increased Participation – Information on New Projects and how to get involved.

We intend to complete this exercise by the end of 2011. We think this should dramatically improve understanding of openness, noting that many of the issues are in fact related to difficulties to communicate to the market, rather than being barriers as such.

Transparency is a crucial requirement for standardization, requested by the WTO and even more so by all stakeholders involved. The issue of transparency can be divided into two different dimensions: the standardization process and its outputs. Focusing on the process one can further differentiate between issues related to participation, content and rules. Furthermore, transparency is an issue both for formal standardization bodies and consortia.

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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.

This EU standardization white paper is a weak attempt to focus on important issues. What is an ICT standard? Is a cell phone battery standard an ICT standard? Is a computer environmental disposal standard an ICT standard? Are the standards for telephone electronic components ICT standards? In fairness I do recognize this paper discusses standards that apply to the compatibility of computer or communications systems or equipment, less confusingly termed “compatibility” standards. The confused title is only preamble. Considering that the EU does not even have a reasonable (or widely accepted) definition of a technical standard proposing goals for a “quality” standard or “open” standard is meaningless.

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I will start first by saying in what role I make this contribution, which is in a personal capacity. I handle ICT standardisation and technology issues for the UK Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) – the ministry responsible for standardisation policy for the UK. As part of this I am a board member of ETSI and DVB. I am also a member of the Commission ICT standards steering group, and the steering group for the Commission IPR in standards study. These roles inform what I outline below, but are not statements on behalf of any of these organisations or groups.

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In the discussion about appropriate eligibility criteria under a modernized EU standardization policy, it should be considered to what extent the requirements that in many cases already apply under competition law would safeguard the public policy interests at stake.

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This article is co-authored by Valentin Nikonov and Lorenza Jachia (see bio here)

This statement describes the concept of building a risk-based regulatory system, which, we believe, should provide insight and directions to the reform of standardization policy. The concept of risks as triggers for regulatory intervention is widely recognized; and the development of risk management frameworks for regulatory systems is at the core of the policymakers’ agenda and a subject at the crossroad of different fields of research.

Risk as a concept can be used to evaluate how ‘balanced’ the regulatory system is, against two extremes: excessive regulations – regulations that are too stringent with respect to the risk they set out to address – and insufficient regulations that fail to address risks as perceived by the various stakeholders. As noted in Outcome of the UNECE International Conference on Risk Assessment and Management (see here), ‘laws, administrative measures and technical regulations, complemented by voluntary standards and norms are one important response to risks’.

The Working Party on Regulatory Cooperation and Standardization Policies of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE WP. 6) is pioneering a holistic approach to the management of risks in regulatory systems. We believe that this approach will raise both efficiency and transparency of regulatory systems.

The distinctive feature of this approach is its focus, which not confined to regulations but embraces the whole regulatory system in its institutional complexity.

In brief, the approach is based on the implementation of a series of codified steps (as shown on the picture below):

1. Establishing policy criteria that the regulator will refer to in managing public risks, and the consultation mechanisms that it will use to communicate effectively with all stakeholders;

2. Identifying assets: these can be thought of as the public goods the regulator seeks to protect (safety of the workers, health of citizens, environmental assets such as forests and air quality…). This steps results in a constantly updated assets inventory;

3. Identifying and assessing the risks to the assets that have been identified. The result of these processes is a list of risks that are ranged according to the level of their criticality, a function of their expected probability and impact;

4. Choosing a risk management strategy that is appropriate to each risk identified Taking into account its policy criteria, the regulator decides for each risk whether to accept it, to avoid it, to transfer or to mitigate it, by implementing appropriate measures;

5. Implementing the chosen risk management strategy. This involves:
• integrating the regulatory and other measures with existing tools
• establishing coordinating mechanisms among competent authorities and stakeholders
• giving guidance and establishing an appropriate budget for the institutions responsible for monitoring compliance (conformity assessment and/or market surveillance authorities
• deciding on penalties for non-compliance

6. Drawing up contingency plans

7. Establishing appropriate mechanisms for the continual improvement of the system

We believe that the UNECE WP. 6 is an ideal forum for the debate of these issues, as it has a broad mandate encompassing all the phases of the regulatory dialogue, including fostering convergence among technical regulations internationally, cooperation among conformity assessment bodies and guidance to market surveillance institutions. For this reason, the Working Party will at its next annual session to be held on 3 and 4 November 2010 institute a new Group of Experts on Risk Management in Regulatory Systems (GRM), that is informally starting its activities with a survey to identify how risk management tools are currently used by regulatory system stakeholders and where potential bottlenecks exist. We will be happy to share the results of the survey with TalkStandards.

I have long advocated for transparency especially in the telecoms / mobile space in relation to price plans.

There is also a clear need for transparency, within the standardization process.

We all accept that need.

But transparency means sharing information and sharing too much information can lead to Obfuscation. Obfuscation is the concealment of intended meaning in communication, making communication confusing, intentionally ambiguous, and more difficult to interpret.

Here is an example:

Currently there is a discussion in the European parliament around a paper called The Internet of Things – An action plan for Europe (pdf).

The document outlines a concept called ‘The silence of the chips’.

Silence of the chips is easy to understand and on first impressions, it is benevolent.

In a nutshell, in a world of sensors, RFID chips etc, an individual should have the right to effectively disconnect from their networked environment at any moment.

Hence, silence of the chips and the attempt to enshrine the idea of the ‘silent chips’ in future standards for the Internet of Things.

Leaving aside the fact that there are many security situations where these sensors could actually benefit us, the attempt to ensure that the chips seek permission(or in an extreme case – we can silence them) are motivated by the need for greater transparency.

But they could also overwhelm people with too much information and could defeat the very purpose of Ubiquitous computing (i.e. seamless computing – devices that exist in the background).

Thus, in this case, the attempt to include transparency may lead to too much information, which could be used to hide some real issues and will ultimately defeat the goals of ubiquitous computing itself.

The concept is certainly catching in popular imagination.

Inspired by the Anthony Hopkins/Jodie Foster movie Silence of the Lambs, there is even a logo for the silence of the chips and a whole bunch of memorabilia around it like t-shirts and mugs.

My concern is – if some of these ideas go ahead under the guise of transparency, the only people who will gain any value from it are the mug makers and t-shirt makers!

And society as a whole will be poorer in terms of the benefits we could gain from Ubiquitous computing.

Image source: Oneillkza / Boing Boing

Everyone is in favour of transparency these days – who can be against the idea of more information getting out there to consumers? So, yes, more transparency in standards is broadly a good thing. But standard setting is a complex process and sometimes full transparency is not always possible if it comes at the expense of longer-term corporate business strategies or discretionary negotiations between entities which might be harmed by information entering the public domain.

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