The International Organization for Standardization, known as ISO, is an international standard-setting
body composed of representatives from various national standards organizations.
Founded on 23 February 1947, the organization promotes worldwide proprietary, industrial
and commercial standards. It is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, and as of 2013 works
in 164 countries. It was one of the first organizations granted
general consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council.
Name and abbreviation The three official languages of the ISO are
English, French, and Russian. As its name would have different abbreviations in different
languages, the organization adopted as its abbreviated name "ISO", derived from the Greek
word isos. Both the name "ISO" and the logo are registered
trademarks, and their use is restricted. History
The organization today known as ISO began in 1926 as the International Federation of
the National Standardizing Associations. It was suspended in 1942 during World War II,
but after the war ISA was approached by the recently formed United Nations Standards Coordinating
Committee with a proposal to form a new global standards body. In October 1946, ISA and UNSCC
delegates from 25 countries met in London and agreed to join forces to create the new
International Organization for Standardization; the new organization officially began operations
in February 1947. Structure
ISO is a voluntary organization whose members are recognized authorities on standards, each
one representing one country. Members meet annually at a General Assembly to discuss
ISO's strategic objectives. The organization is coordinated by a Central Secretariat based
in Geneva. A Council with a rotating membership of 20
member bodies provides guidance and governance, including setting the Central Secretariat's
annual budget. The Technical Management Board is responsible
for over 250 technical committees, who develop the ISO standards.
IEC joint committees ISO has formed joint committees with the International
Electrotechnical Commission to develop standards and terminology in the areas of electrical,
electronic and related technologies. ISO/IEC JTC 1
Information technology
ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1 was created in 1987 to "[d]evelop, maintain, promote and
facilitate IT standards". ISO/IEC JTC 2
Joint Project Committee – Energy efficiency and renewable energy sources – Common terminology
ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 2 was created in 2009 for the purpose of "[s]tandardization
in the field of energy efficiency and renewable energy sources".
Membership
ISO has 164 national members, out of the 206 total countries in the world.
ISO has three membership categories: Member bodies are national bodies considered
the most representative standards body in each country. These are the only members of
ISO that have voting rights. Correspondent members are countries that do
not have their own standards organization. These members are informed about ISO's work,
but do not participate in standards promulgation. Subscriber members are countries with small
economies. They pay reduced membership fees, but can follow the development of standards.
Participating members are called "P" members, as opposed to observing members, who are called
"O" members. Financing
ISO is funded by a combination of: Organizations that manage the specific projects
or loan experts to participate in the technical work.
Subscriptions from member bodies. These subscriptions are in proportion to each country's gross
national product and trade figures. Sale of standards.
International Standards and other publications
ISO's main products are international standards. ISO also publishes technical reports, technical
specifications, publicly available specifications, technical corrigenda, and guides.
International standards These are designated using the format ISO[/IEC]
[/ASTM] [IS] nnnnn[-p]:[yyyy] Title, where nnnnn is the number of the standard, p is
an optional part number, yyyy is the year published, and Title describes the subject.
IEC for International Electrotechnical Commission is included if the standard results from the
work of ISO/IEC JTC1. ASTM is used for standards developed in cooperation with ASTM International.
The date and IS are not used for an incomplete or unpublished standard and may under some
circumstances be left off the title of a published work.
Technical reports These are issued when a technical committee
or subcommittee has collected data of a different kind from that normally published as an International
Standard. such as references and explanations. The naming conventions for these are the same
as for standards, except TR prepended instead of IS in the report's name.
For example: ISO/IEC TR 17799:2000 Code of Practice for
Information Security Management ISO/TR 19033:2000 Technical product documentation
— Metadata for construction documentation Technical and publicly available specifications
Technical specifications may be produced when "the subject in question is still under development
or where for any other reason there is the future but not immediate possibility of an
agreement to publish an International Standard". A publicly available specification is usually
"an intermediate specification, published prior to the development of a full International
Standard, or, in IEC may be a 'dual logo' publication published in collaboration with
an external organization". By convention, both types of specification are named in a
manner similar to the organization's technical reports.
For example: ISO/TS 16952-1:2006 Technical product documentation
— Reference designation system — Part 1: General application rules
ISO/PAS 11154:2006 Road vehicles — Roof load carriers
Technical corrigenda ISO also sometimes issues "technical corrigenda".
These are amendments made to existing standards due to minor technical flaws, usability improvements,
or limited-applicability extensions. They are generally issued with the expectation
that the affected standard will be updated or withdrawn at its next scheduled review.
ISO guides These are meta-standards covering "matters
related to international standardization". They are named using the format "ISO[/IEC]
Guide N:yyyy: Title". For example:
ISO/IEC Guide 2:2004 Standardization and related activities — General vocabulary
ISO/IEC Guide 65:1996 General requirements for bodies operating product certification
Document copyright ISO documents are copyrighted and ISO charges
for most copies. It does not, however, charge for most draft copies of documents in electronic
format. Although they are useful, care must be taken using these drafts as there is the
possibility of substantial change before they become finalized as standards. Some standards
by ISO and its official U.S. representative are made freely available.
Standardization process A standard published by ISO/IEC is the last
stage of a long process that commonly starts with the proposal of new work within a committee.
Here are some abbreviations used for marking a standard with its status:
PWI - Preliminary Work Item NP or NWIP - New Proposal / New Work Item
Proposal AWI - Approved new Work Item
WD - Working Draft CD - Committee Draft
FCD - Final Committee Draft DIS - Draft International Standard
FDIS - Final Draft International Standard PRF - Proof of a new International Standard
IS - International Standard Abbreviations used for amendments:
NP Amd - New Proposal Amendment AWI Amd - Approved new Work Item Amendment
WD Amd - Working Draft Amendment CD Amd / PDAmd - Committee Draft Amendment
/ Proposed Draft Amendment FPDAmd / DAM - Final Proposed Draft Amendment
/ Draft Amendment FDAM - Final Draft Amendment
PRF Amd - Amd - Amendment
Other abbreviations: TR - Technical Report
DTR - Draft Technical Report TS - Technical Specification
DTS - Draft Technical Specification PAS - Publicly Available Specification
TTA - Technology Trends Assessment IWA - International Workshop Agreement
Cor - Technical Corrigendum Guide - a guidance to technical committees
for the preparation of standards International Standards are developed by ISO
technical committees (TC) and subcommittees (SC) by a process with six steps:
Stage 1: Proposal stage Stage 2: Preparatory stage
Stage 3: Committee stage Stage 4: Enquiry stage
Stage 5: Approval stage Stage 6: Publication stage
The TC/SC may set up working groups (WG) of experts for the preparation of a working
drafts. Subcommittees may have several working groups, which can have several Sub Groups.
It is possible to omit certain stages, if there is a document with a certain degree
of maturity at the start of a standardization project, for example a standard developed
by another organization. ISO/IEC directives allow also the so-called "Fast-track procedure".
In this procedure a document is submitted directly for approval as a draft International
Standard to the ISO member bodies or as a final draft International Standard if the
document was developed by an international standardizing body recognized by the ISO Council.
The first step—a proposal of work is approved at the relevant subcommittee or technical
committee. A working group of experts is set up by the TC/SC for the preparation of a working
draft. When the scope of a new work is sufficiently clarified, some of the working groups usually
make open request for proposals—known as a "call for proposals". The first document
that is produced for example for audio and video coding standards is called a verification
model (VM). When a sufficient confidence in the stability of the standard under development
is reached, a working draft (WD) is produced. This is in the form of a standard but is kept
internal to working group for revision. When a working draft is sufficiently solid and
the working group is satisfied that it has developed the best technical solution to the
problem being addressed, it becomes committee draft (CD). If it is required, it is then
sent to the P-members of the TC/SC for ballot. The CD becomes final committee draft if the
number of positive votes is above the quorum. Successive committee drafts may be considered
until consensus is reached on the technical content. When it is reached, the text is finalized
for submission as a draft International Standard. The text is then submitted to national bodies
for voting and comment within a period of five months. It is approved for submission
as a final draft International Standard (FDIS) if a two-thirds majority of the P-members
of the TC/SC are in favour and not more than one-quarter of the total number of votes cast
are negative. ISO will then hold a ballot with National Bodies where no technical changes
are allowed, within a period of two months. It is approved as an International Standard (IS)
if a two-thirds majority of the P-members of the TC/SC is in favour and not more than
one-quarter of the total number of votes cast are negative. After approval, only minor editorial
changes are introduced into the final text. The final text is sent to the ISO Central
Secretariat, which publishes it as the International Standard.
Products named after ISO The fact that many of the ISO-created standards
are ubiquitous has led, on occasion, to common use of "ISO" to describe the actual product
that conforms to a standard. Some examples of this are:
Many CD images end in the file extension "ISO" to signify that they are using the ISO 9660
standard file system as opposed to another file system—hence CD images are commonly
referred to as "ISOs". Virtually all computers with CD-ROM drives can read CDs that use this
standard. Some DVD-ROMs also use ISO 9660 file systems.
Photographic film's sensitivity to light is described by ISO 6, ISO 2240 and ISO 5800.
Hence, the film's speed is often referred to as by its ISO number.
As it was originally defined in ISO 518, the flash hot shoe found on cameras is often
called the "ISO shoe". Criticism
With the exception of a small number of isolated standards, ISO standards are normally not
available free of charge, but for a purchase fee, which has been seen by some as too expensive
for small open source projects. The ISO/IEC JTC1 fast-track procedures have
garnered criticism in relation to the standardization of Office Open XML. Martin Bryan, outgoing
Convenor of ISO/IEC JTC1/SC34 WG1, is quoted as saying:
I would recommend my successor that it is perhaps time to pass WG1’s outstanding standards
over to OASIS, where they can get approval in less than a year and then do a PAS submission
to ISO, which will get a lot more attention and be approved much faster than standards
currently can be within WG1.
The disparity of rules for PAS, Fast-Track and ISO committee generated standards is fast
making ISO a laughing stock in IT circles. The days of open standards development are
fast disappearing. Instead we are getting 'standardization by corporation'.
Computer security entrepreneur and Ubuntu investor, Mark Shuttleworth, commented on
the Standardization of Office Open XML process by saying "I think it de-values the confidence
people have in the standards setting process," and Shuttleworth alleged that ISO did not
carry out its responsibility. He also noted that Microsoft had intensely lobbied many
countries that traditionally had not participated in ISO and stacked technical committees with
Microsoft employees, solution providers and resellers sympathetic to Office Open XML.
When you have a process built on trust and when that trust is abused, ISO should halt
the process... ISO is an engineering old boys club and these things are boring so you have
to have a lot of passion … then suddenly you have an investment of a lot of money and
lobbying and you get artificial results. The process is not set up to deal with intensive
corporate lobbying and so you end up with something being a standard that is not clear.
See also Notes and references
Further reading
External links Official website
Publicly Available Standards, with free access to a small subset of the standards.
Advanced search for standards and/or projects Concept Database, a terminological database
of ISO standards.
ISO/IEC JTC1