On 2011-01-01 17:50, Finkleman, Dave wrote:
I have learned in my ISO work that we develop standards for those to whom the issue matters -- not for those who are unaffected or have no stake. In our AIAA paper we enumerate the criteria for a standard. Working groups are appointed to develop specific standards. Each member must be a recognized expert. Each must have a material stake in the outcome. Membership must be balanced among industry, academia/research, and government at least to the extent that no single group can dominate.
For the issuance of ISO standards, only national standardization committees can be contributing P members, not persons. While I have contributed to ISO IEC JTC1 SC32 via the German standards organization (over ten years), the committe was always dominated by participants from industry. I am not aware of any ISO rule to the contrary. IMHO, the most effective control of ISO standards is the public review and comment period (usually of 3 months) to be held before an "FDIS" can become an ISO standard. Every comment raised within that period has to be considered and resolved by the working group. This prevents contentious standards being adopted without serious discussion and without a big majority in favor (it does not prevent useless standards, though). The operating procedures of ITU (as well as those of many other consortia like IEEE, MPEG,...) do not seem to require a public review before a standard is adopted. The only way to influence the content of a standard is the participation in the standardization work -- which is laborious and expensive, and therefore limited to the immediate stakeholders. The standard defining UTC should be up for public review before it is imposed on the world because nobody can choose not to use it. Michael Deckers. _______________________________________________ LEAPSECS mailing list [email protected] http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/leapsecs
