From: enag@ifi.uio.no (Erik Naggum)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.iso
Subject: Re: ISO Procedures
Date: 20 Aug 92 21:48:29 GMT
Organization: Department of Informatics, University of Oslo, Norway

Markus Kuhn <mskuhn@immd4.informatik.uni-erlangen.de> writes:
|
|   I just read Erik Naggums insights in the position of ISO in this
|   world with great interest, but one question is still open for me:

I'll try to answer these, although I don't know nearly enough about the
general situation; I know fairly well how a small sector of Information
Technology (JTC 1) works, so please don't extrapolate this unchecked.  I
also haven't attended any of the big meetings, so that's all second-hand
stuff.

|   Who are the people responsible for technical decisions in the
|   standards making process?

There are three levels of decision-making in ISO: TC, SC, and WG.  The
Technical Committee is responsible for the administrative aspects of
approving and assigning new work items (WI), overseeing the progress of
projects, tally votes, and such.  This is a mainly political level.
Meetings are held annually.  The Sub-Committee is responsible for
progressing the working documents through the stages, and oversee the
WG's.  This is intended to be a purely technical level, but practice is
often otherwise.  Inter-WG friction is common at SC level.  Plenary
meetings are held annually or biannually.  The lowest level which is
supposedly technical is the Working Group.  WG's do all the work, and
each handle one or perhaps a few more projects, each having an editor
and frequently a Special Working Group, at the discretion of the WG.
SWG's are not really part of the ISO structure, in that there are no
requirements that you represent anybody at SWG meetings.  Each WG has a
convenor responsible for calling the working group membership to
meetings, usually four to six times a year.  At all levels, the
decisions are made by delegates from ISO member bodies.  They, again,
are supposed to be selected by the national member body and to bring to
the floor the decisions of the national parallell committee, if it
exists.  TC's are big enough to almost require their own national
secretariat handling their paperwork in puny countries like Norway, so I
assume that national parallell committees exist for TC's and SC's where
the country is participatory (as opposed to observatory) member.  JTC 1
is huge.  There are also really tiny TC's without SC's.

The direct answer to your question is that the delegates from member
bodies (and liaisons) make the political decisions, and anybody who
would like to state their opinion can send off their suggestions to the
project editor for consideration at the next SWG.  It helps to be
present, of course.  At the other levels, resolutions are made with a
more formal procedure.  (I have yet to attend any of these meetings
myself, so this is just things I've heard from the delegates who's been
there, and from friendly introductions to the hostile environment that
ISO is said to be from committee peers.)

|   How are they selected?

I believe the process is largely based on volunteering and being
accepted.  Sometimes the company volunteers and the delegate is
"volunteer" in the Army sense of the word.  Sometimes, a delegate or
those he represents completely misunderstands point and start to clamor
for, e.g. _Irish_, demands and starts a political give-and-take process,
which is grossly malplaced in the WGs and SWGs.  Mostly, however, the
experts in the WG are conscientious people with a sincere desire to see
a problem solved on a large scale.  Many of them have been struggling
with similar problems in their academic or business career, and some of
them may even get to the point of seeing their own inventions reach the
status of International Standard.

|   How is guaranteed, that they represent the creme-de-la-creme of
|   academic and industrial experts?

This is not guaranteed.  For instance, JTC 1/SC 18/WG 8/SWG SGML didn't
have any computer language experts until after SGML was published and
amended.  This shows in the standard, but it's surprisingly sound
despite this lack of expertise.  (Yes, this is being attended to by
yours truly and others in the quintennial review process.  ["Quin-
tennial" is an ISO term meaning "approximately every six years".])

|   Is everything organized more in a democratic or aristocratic way?

The Internet standardization process is meritocratic, while I believe
the ISO process is much more democratic.  I wish to stress that I think
democracy in anything resembling intellectual efforts is a major
obstacle to getting good solutions.  Some project editors, however, can
have a major impact on the selection process, and it's often up to their
lack of diplomatic skills to get things past the political bozos.  This
could indicate an aristocratic model.

|   If it is intended to be a democratic process, how can highly
|   motivated independent people (e.g. like me ;-) have influence on the
|   standardisation process without being employed in the marketing
|   department of a huge company?

Sell your car and buy a mountain bike, sell your house and rent a small
apartment, sell your stereo system and buy a CD walkman, skip the
expensive dinners with your date and eat at McDonald's....  Seriously,
you should contact your national member body, request to receive working
documents, which will usually leave you with at least one arm and one
leg, and show up at national parallel committees for starters.  It helps
to know what you're talking about _before_ you go there.  Oh, I forgot,
you need a fireplace in your apartment, so you can reduce the heating
bill by burning useless ISO documents.  The savings doesn't quite add up
to the cost of the fuel, though.  If you're lucky, some political body
which is gullible enough to think that International Standards can help
your local industry get an edge or at least give some prestige, will
have a budget dedicated to covering travel costs to committee meetings
in, e.g. the Seychelles or Cape Verde.

Sorry, I shouldn't joke about this.  It's serious stuff, but I have
received so many rejections for my applications for covering my travel
costs that I would like to use my meager wealth for one-way tickets to
Antarctica for the dweebs who first promised tons of geld for us IT
geeks and then redirect them, after we've made the reservations and
booked the tickets, to some stupid "Health, Safety and Environment"
bullshit.  What's "health, safety and the environment" without
information technology standards, huh?  Are they gonna rely on Word
Perfect for their document interchange needs, huh?  Huh?  Well, it seems
I'm getting carried away.

The direct answer is that it would definitely help to be employed in the
marketing department of a huge company.  Or to have a wealthy uncle or
something suffering from senile dementia.  Or rob a bank in the name of
the Future of Information Technology.  Or get yourself known as an
expert available for occasional assignments where the best experts of
the PC market have given up, write a few articles, sell you car and buy
a mountain bike, sell your house...  Hmmm, I already mentioned that.

|   Is it really a democratic process if my hobby of reading ISO
|   documents is nearly as expensive for a student as drug abuse (as
|   Erik Naggum wrote a few weeks ago :-)?

As I mentioned, ISO haven't really realized that students and our likes
would like to get access to their standards, and the national member
bodies aren't likely to be able to function as libraries with reading
rooms.  (Office spaces costs too much to allow a few students free space
to suck up information from already overpriced standards.)  This may
change, though, and maybe a nearby University sports an important figure
in the field you wish to join.  I know this University does, but I first
heard of him through an ISO connection in Canada, even though he works
approximately 200 feet from where I'm typing this.

Most of the time, ISO people are overly delighted to share their
knowledge and to find other people interested in what they're doing.
They frequently write books and articles, and try to reach more people
to take part in the most important work in the world since the Romans
built aquaducts.  I'm not saying they're lonely, just that being one in
approximately 4 million tends to increase your enthusiasm for other
people with similarly narrow interests.

If I don't send this now, I'll edit out all the cynical parts and all
this typing would be wasted.  Hope somebody find it useful, anyhow.

Best regards,
</Erik>
--
Erik Naggum             |  ISO  8879 SGML     |      +47 295 0313
                        |  ISO 10744 HyTime   |
<erik@naggum.no>        |  ISO 10646 UCS      |      Memento, terrigena.
<enag@ifi.uio.no>       |  ISO  9899 C        |      Memento, vita brevis.