International Organization for Standardization Totally Explained

Everything about The International Organization For Standardization totally explained

The International Organization for Standardization (Organisation internationale de normalisation), widely known as ISO, is an international-standard-setting body composed of representatives from various national standards organizations. Founded on 23 February 1947, the organization promulgates world-wide proprietary industrial and commercial standards. It is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland.
While ISO defines itself as a non-governmental organization, its ability to set standards that often become law, either through treaties or national standards, makes it more powerful than most non-governmental organizations. In practice, ISO acts as a consortium with strong links to governments.

Name and abbreviation

The organization's logos in its two official languages, English and French, include the word ISO, and it's usually referred to by this short-form name. ISO isn't an acronym or initialism for the organization's full name in either official language. Rather, the organization adopted ISO based on the Greek word ἴσος (isos), meaning equal. Recognizing that the organization’s initials would be different in different languages, the organization's founders chose ISO as the universal short form of its name. This, in itself, reflects the aim of the organization: to equalize and standardize across cultures.

International Standards and other publications

ISO's main products are the International Standards. ISO also publishes Technical Reports, Technical Specifications, Publicly Available Specifications, Technical Corrigenda, and Guides. International Standards are identified in the format ISO[/IEC][/ASTM] [IS] nnnnn[:yyyy] Title, where nnnnn is the number of the standard, yyyy is the year published, and Title describes the subject. IEC is included if the standard results from the work of JTC1 (the Joint Technical Committee). 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 The date and IS are not used for an incomplete or unpublished standard, and may under some circumstances be left off the title of a published work.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 can be issued when "a technical committee or subcommittee has collected data of a different kind from that which is normally published as an International Standard",

Members

ISO has 157 national members, out of the 195 total countries in the world.
ISO has three membership categories:

Member bodies are national bodies that are considered to be the most representative standards body in each country. These are the only members of ISO that have voting rights.

Correspondent members are countries that don't have their own standards organization. These members are informed about ISO's work, but don't 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 which are called "O" members.

Products named after ISO

The fact that many of the ISO-created standards are ubiquitous has led, on occasion, to common usage of "ISO" to describe the actual product that conforms to a standard. Some examples of this are:

CD images end in the file extension "ISO" to signify that they're using the ISO 9660 standard filesystem 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 filesystems.

Photographic film's sensitivity to light, its "film speed," is described by ISO 5800:1987. Hence, the film's speed is often referred to as its "ISO number."

ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1

To deal with the consequences of substantial overlap in areas of standardization and work related to information technology, ISO and IEC formed a Joint Technical Committee known as the ISO/IEC JTC1. It was the first such committee, and to date remains the only one.
Its official mandate is to develop, maintain, promote and facilitate IT standards required by global markets meeting business and user requirements concerning

the design and development of IT systems and tools

the performance and quality of IT products and systems

the security of IT systems and information

the portability of application programs

the interoperability of IT products and systems

the unified tools and environments

the harmonized IT vocabulary, and

the user-friendly and ergonomically-designed user interfaces. There are currently 18 sub-committees:

SC 02 - Coded Character Sets

SC 06 - Telecommunications and Information Exchange Between Systems

SC 07 - Software and System Engineering

SC 17 - Cards and Personal Identification

SC 22 - Programming Languages, their Environments and Systems Software Interfaces

SC 23 - Removable Digital Storage Media Utilizing Optical and/or Magnetic Recording * Technology for Digital

SC 24 - Computer Graphics and Image Processing

SC 25 - Interconnection of Information Technology Equipment

SC 27 - IT Security Techniques

SC 28 - Office Equipment

SC 29 - Coding of Audio, Picture, and Multimedia and Hypermedia Information

SC 31 - Automatic Identification and Data Capture Techniques

SC 32 - Data Management and Interchange

SC 34 - Document Description and Processing Languages

SC 35 - User Interfaces

SC 36 - Information Technology for Learning, Education, and Training

SC 37 - Biometrics Membership in ISO/IEC JTC1 is restricted in much the same way as membership in either of the two parent organizations. A member can be either participating (P) or observing (O) and the difference is mainly the ability to vote on proposed standards and other products. There is no requirement for any member body to maintain either (or any) status on all of the sub-committees. Although rare, sub-committees can be created to deal with new situations (SC 37 was approved in 2002) or disbanded if the area of work is no longer relevant.

IWA document

Like ISO/TS, International Workshop Agreement (IWA) is another armoury of ISO for providing rapid response to requirements for standardization in areas where the technical structures and expertise are not currently in place. The utility harmonizes technical urgency industrial wide.

Criticism

Except for a few ones, 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.
ISO has garnered criticism for the handling of the standardization of Office Open XML (ISO/IEC 29500) and the ISO rubberstamping of OASIS approved standards like OpenDocument (ISO/IEC 26300). Martin Bryan, Convenor of ISO/IEC JTC1/SC34 and WG1, is quoted by saying:

I would recommend my successor that it's 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're 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 that ISO didn't carry out its responsibility. He also noted his opinion that Microsoft had intensely lobbied many countries that traditionally hadn't participated in ISO and stacked technical committees with Microsoft employees, solution providers and resellers sympathetic to Office Open XML.

When you've 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've to have a lot of passion … then suddenly you've an investment of a lot of money and lobbying and you get artificial results ... The process isn't set up to deal with intensive corporate lobbying and so you end up with something being a standard that’s not clear.

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