Reforming the Reformist Agenda
(Cross-posted from Talk Standards)
Conversations about the governance of standards setting organizations will from time to time stray towards the topic of reform, along with the need for simplicity in the standards development process. I would argue that the complexity that we deal with today is both necessary and an important component of a functioning ICT industry.
Today SSOs (Standard Setting Organizations) are very diverse. Almost all of them produce both effective standards and standards that never achieve marketplace acceptance. But the flexibility, competition and choice that this ecosystem provides is healthy for the ICT industry. The processes by which ICT standards are created can vary greatly and are constantly evolving. Formal ICT standards are developed in formal SSOs, industry consortia, professional associations, and other industry groups. Many of these diverse organizations have open and published processes that allow all relevant stakeholders to participate and help to balance conflicting requirements. Other ICT SSOs are more focused and less formal collaborations, which can produce needed standards that are very targeted in nature or which can incubate standards for further standardization at a more formal SSO.
While this diversity and breadth of SSOs can be perceived as overwhelming, the truth is that it has emerged as a result of the market in which we all operate. It provides for flexibility, competition and choice. No one process can guarantee that every standard it produces has some level of immediate intrinsic value. No one standards body or process necessarily produces “better” standards; again the test of success and relevance of a standard is the extent to which it ultimately gets used in the marketplace. (As an example, the IETF TCP/IP standard became much more widely implemented than the ISO OSI standard despite the fact that ISO has produced many other very successful ICT standards.) SSOs routinely review their activities, procedures and policies, and they make improvements and changes as needed.
Standards-setting organizations also have collaborative actions and liaisons between themselves, and with other bodies that support related conformance or interoperability testing, business initiatives and so on. Many standards make references to other standards coming from other SSOs or have ratification processes that they apply to other SSOs’ work.
There is certainly no shortage of people who find the diversity of SSOs confusing and frustrating, and from time to time I find myself in that camp. However, any conversation about making changes to the broad array of standards setting processes that we know today has to dig deeply into why we are where we are, and has to recognize the many successful standards that are already implemented by in hardware and software by many hundreds of developers using every possible language and from every possible discipline.
While the subject of reform is an important discussion point when it comes to SSO governance we risk the word bringing an unnecessary level of drama along with it. What I would personally rather see is a broader array of voices collaborating in the ongoing work to evolve the process that we have today to meet the needs that we know the industry will have in years to come.
We have a proven, solid and working standards setting system in place today and in my view it is important that as a community and as an industry we continue to build upon that.
Oliver Bell, Director, Standards Engagement Australia and New Zealand, Microsoft