[OpenISO] ISO/IEC JTC1 Ballot N-8812

[Norbert Bollow]

I wrote:
> Those of you who are also members of your national standardization
> organization's mirror committee for ISO/IEC JTC1 may be aware of
> the letter ballot N-8812 about the Establishment of an "Ad Hoc Group
> on Direct Participation".
> 
> I intend to vote "no" with a comment like the following, and
> encourage others to do the same.  (In other countries at least
> the explicit references to Switzerland should be changed of
> course.)

After a good chat with a standardization organization official, I've
decided to add a paragraph on the case where not everyone can
participate who would like to do so.

A revised draft follows:

"""
Swiss stakeholder organizations as well as individuals are already
able today to participate in the work of ISO/IEC JTC1 if they are
interested and have the comptence for doing so, simply by becoming
members of the Swiss Association for Standardization and informing
about what working group activities their experts are willing and
able to contribute to.  Of course, this situation is not unique to
Switzerland.  Rather, the P-member bodies of any ISO committee have
a duty to identify experts who can contribute to the related working
group activities.

Where due to circumstances there are limitations on the number of
people who can participate, the national standardization organizations
aim for fairness and balance in the selection of delegates.  Even
though the existing processes do not achieve these aims perfectly,
they do achieve greater fairness and a better approximation of balance
in the representation of all stakeholder groups than any process would
which does not explicitly aim for fairness and balance, or where the
organization which is responsible for the selection process does not
have strong economic incentives to win and preserve the trust of all
stakeholder organizations.

Therefore, the proposal to change the rules of JTC1 to introduce
"direct participation" is not really about empowering the
participation of stakeholders who would otherwise be somehow unable
to do so.  Rather, the main effect of the proposal would be to
further increase the influence of those corporations which try to
get what is essentially technical documentation of their products
approved as "international standards".  These companies could then
participate directly in addition to also influencing the national
member bodies.  This would certainly increase their interest in
JTC1, but not in ways that are beneficial to the public interest.

As Martin Bryan, Convenor of JTC1/SC34 WG1 has warned [1],
"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'..."

It is therefore important to avoid exploring changes that would
move JTC1 in the wrong direction and which would divert attention
from those changes which are urgently needed to encourage the
development of genuinely open standards and to decrease the risk
of the adoption as international standards of specifications which
are "open standards" only in name.


[1] http://www.jtc1sc34.org/repository/0940.htm
"""

Greetings,
Norbert.


-- 
Norbert Bollow <nb at bollow.ch                     http://Norbert.ch
President of the Swiss Internet User Group SIUG    http://SIUG.ch
Working on establishing a non-corrupt and
truly /open/ international standards organization  http://OpenISO.org