A proposal for a work item may come from inside or outside the Technical Body. The Technical Body may approve the work item, if at least four ETSI Members volunteer to support the work. A Technical Body is free to organize its work in any way it wishes, within the rules of the Technical Working Procedures, including create Working Groups to which the tasks of drafting parts of the Technical Body's work programme are given. The formal approval for further processing or, in the case of ETSI Technical Specifications or ETSI Technical Reports, approval and adoption can only be done by the Technical Body, either at a meeting or by correspondence. While the drafting process is, in principle, the same for all ETSI deliverables, the process elements of the adoption process depend on the type of deliverable being processed.
Publication is then the only element in the adoption process.
The Publication process element consist of final editing of the Word for Windows version of the adopted TS or TR, archiving, and publication in PDF format. After adoption the deliverable is finally edited, archived and published in PDF format. The NSO sends the national position for the vote to ETSI via a web based electronic voting application. This procedure, which is normally obligatory for so-called Harmonized Standards, involves the NSOs at two stages with, as necessary, resolution actions taken by the Technical Body responsible for the draft. The comments, if any, received from the Public Enquiry are used by the Technical Body to decide on whether changes should be made to the draft before it is sent to the NSOs for their consultation and establishment of national position for the vote.