Standards Council of Canada
Canadian Perspectives on the Value of Participation
in International Standards Development
The task of our participation in this is to make
sure that whatever comes out of the process is something
that Canada as a nation and stakeholders
in Canada can live with.
The end objective is probably to adopt the standard as a national
standard of Canada or at least to have it well recognized
amongst the community so that it becomes a benchmark,
a conformity with the standard as a demonstration
of due diligence.
The People: Committee roles and responsibilities
The role of an International Committee Chair
The chair literally is responsible
for the management of the entire technical committee,
all of its subcommittees,
all of its working groups within the subcommittee structure.
The chair is also accountable to the
ISO Technical Management Board.
He or she must ensure that ISO policy,
that the code of practice and so on are not only sufficiently
but are properly carried out.
The main thing is making sure the meetings go smoothly,
that people have the materials, that they get feedback,
they know what's going on, and you're making changes all the
time to the standard, depending on what decisions
are made at the meetings.
The role of the committee chair is to get the work done by
getting people organized through the Secretariat to do their
roles, either to write reports, provide drafts,
to set meeting dates with the Secretary,
to make sure that papers are properly reviewed and approved,
and sometimes to handle disputes between parties
or to get parties that are uncomfortable to speak out
or to prepare a reason to do so.
Generally to stick, to make sure that things at least stick
to the schedule that he can control.
Sometimes he can't.
I was in an unusual situation as an international chair of a
committee that I helped instigate from the
Consumer Policy Committee of ISO,
the working group on consumer product safety.
And so that what I put together were materials that sometimes
the chair may do or may not do.
I put together background material and did, you know,
literature reviews and that.
And I also developed a seed document, a standard,
I wrote a standard that could be used for people to look
at initially because it's always easier for people to,
if they see something, to be able to change it
or poke holes in it.
But it's easier if they have something to start from.
The biggest challenge in some respects is time because there's
so much that a technical committee chair needs to do,
needs to cover.
And it's surprising in talking to some,
some technical committee chairs, knowing some technical committee
chairs from time to time how fast that three year/five year
time period goes.
I think one of the biggest challenges you face as being
an international chair is when you have to remain impartial,
which is not always easy necessarily.
So you're not putting forward the view of Canada;
you're trying to put forward an international view
and bring together a consensus.
And, and so it's important that, that the technical
committee chair have the attributes that you would
find with, with, with any.
you know, senior executive, any CEO and you know, that,
that they're, that they're, that they are well spoken,
that they're extremely effective communicators, that, that,
you know, they're very diplomatic and again,
that they listen. They listen, they listen.
And they're well aware of their, their responsibilities and,
and carry them out and carry them out with dignity and with
respect for all member bodies and for all experts and all,
all representatives.
It is a time-consuming process.
There's no question about that.
It's going through, for instance,
putting together the results of the meeting;
changing the draft of the standards;
taking all the comments that come in from committee members
or when it's gone out for ballot;
going through all those comments; collating them;
making sure that you know or got some suggestions
as far as a response, whether there should be
a response or whether there can be a response.
Sometimes the committee has already made a decision
on a particular area.
So that it does take a lot of time.
Oh, benefits of being a committee chair for Canada
are sometimes not measurable.
But one is that people know the country.
It gains respect for the country as being somebody who
is interested in the welfare of people around the world,
not just our own.
I think that you meet a lot of very interesting people.
And I find that the more I work and have worked in the ISO
field, it's very valuable that people know and respect the
country and the people that represent it at
international meetings, be it the General Assembly,
the Consumer Policy Committee, the Delfin Committee,
or just your normal committee member, they know who you are,
and they do respond to that.
And they look even for you to give them
support and encouragement.
So I was able to accomplish something.
And it's fun.
And it's fun to talk to and work with people who are interested
in this subject from all over the world.
We had a good time and I learned a lot from them as well.
If you do a good job, if you earn their respect,
if you convene and chair the meetings with fairness,
if you achieve the, the deadlines that are required
and it also helps to get Canadian views accepted.
The role of an International Committee Convenor
The convener plays a role principally by taking on the
project if you will of developing the new standard XYZ,
whatever it may be.
He or she has the responsibility to, to,
to manage the working group itself.
The working group consists of experts from those countries
that wish to participate and as experts they have,
they are knowledgeable, have experience,
understand the marketplace, understand any regulatory
requirements where it's applicable to that particular
subject matter based on their in-country experience.
A convenor is somebody who basically takes a small group of
people together who are experts on a subject but may not
necessarily be representing their country as much
as they are their expertise.
So the convenor's job, unlike the chair,
is just to get those people to work on a particular document,
a particular concept, and put it forward to another group,
or develop a basic seed idea.
You're able to actually, in the case of convener actually to get
some of the Canadian requirements on the table
as issues to a greater extent than you could possibly
do as a chair.
You also can influence what goes on in terms of products that are
coming, in this case, the things that I've been involved with,
in terms of the safety of products that are being imported
into Canada, so that from that perspective the needs of the
Canadian consumers are met to a much greater extent.
They're not put into a risk because somebody
has put a product on the market that is not safe. So from that perspective, it helps.
The convener plays the critical role of leading
the, the, the work itself.
And one of the first responsibilities of,
of a working group convener is in fact to prepare a work plan
and to share that at a very early stage with his colleagues
or her colleagues around the table and get approval and buy,
buy in to, to proceed with the work.
To get the work done would be the big responsibility.
To get people to do their own work,
and to get the discussions.
Again, you'll have to be fairly neutral as a convenor,
but you do have to drive actions.
So you would have an action plan,
you would write out questions, you would get people
to handle the questions.
In any of these meetings the difficulty is that somebody will
make a comment, somebody else will make a separate comment
and then the third person wants to comment on the first comment.
So the dynamic is very difficult.
And to be sitting up there at the head table either
as a convener or as a chair of a working group or even
the technical committee, you know,
it, it's like trying to bring order into chaos at times.
By coming together and addressing some of these issues
you actually in many cases are benefiting consumers in both
worlds and bringing those two together can be very interesting
and can be a big challenge.
There's always that interpersonal challenge.
There's always a challenge in communications because not
everyone around the table will have English as their first
language so you have to, you have to work with that.
If everything was up in English on a screen,
everything we talked about, and we made the changes on the
screen, a lot of people often can read English whereas they
might be uncomfortable speaking English.
And whenever there was a decision to be made or we wanted
to get an opinion, what I would do is go around
the table to everybody.
So no one was basically pointed out as being different or that
and asking them whether or not they agreed
or what their opinion was.
So everyone got a chance to participate without feeling
uncomfortable about it.
The real challenge is, is, is to be an active listener
and that takes work.
That takes a lot of effort to be an active listener.
And then playing that out, you want to,
you want to move people again towards convergence
and to a consensus.
Maintain your timeline and ensure that this is a good
quality product at the end of the day.
The role of an International Committee Secretary
His or her first responsibility is always to ensure
that the chair is informed, is kept up to date.
And that means the secretary has to communicate
with the subcommittee chairs frequently and,
and to understand the nature of the work,
the progression of the work, what issues are at hand,
where agreements have been met, where agreements are still
outstanding, what countries are, are, are, are tending to,
tending to move this way, what countries are tending to move
in a different direction.
And, and again, with diplomacy, with tact and so on as to try
and harness all of this, put a package before the chair,
make sure the chair can understand the dynamics that
are at hand, put that into a strategic framework.
If you accept a secretaryship of a committee,
you have to have resources available within the standards
body or some other organization to actually
do the work of a secretary.
And to be able to travel to the meetings cause a secretary
should be in the room taking notes of the meeting to produce
the summary, to help draft the resolutions and to make sure
that at the end of the meeting the resolutions are passed.
And then very promptly afterwards that the attendance
list is distributed and that the summary of the meeting is,
is distributed.
The Secretariat, which is really the one that runs
and administers the process, can go to other member countries
and say, you know, you're a member but we don't see your
representative coming, or we don't see the responses coming.
Is there a problem?
You need a good secretary, or else you will miss things.
And then people get upset because their ideas have not
been incorporated in even though they thought that at the meeting
it had been discussed and had been agreed to.
The secretary can help, also help obviously
to frame decisions.
To set the limits for making a decision as well or can assist
and can facilitate decision-making, he has,
he or she has all of those roles.
With the working group it can mean that you don't necessarily
have a secretary.
You often are doing that yourself.
With a chair of an international committee,
ours was handled a little bit differently because I did
a lot of the work that a secretary would do.
But normally a secretary on an international committee
would be taking the comments in and collating them,
making sure that the minutes go out.
They take the minutes at the meeting,
make the changes at the meeting so everybody can see
what's being proposed and can agree or disagree.