As companion pieces to those on JTC 1 Reform, I thought it
would be interesting to look at some recent, not so-recent, and proposed
initiatives taking place in International Standardisation that put web
technology at the centre of the standardisation process.
BSI’s DPC System
The first of these is BSI British Standards Draft Review
system. This recently-launched system
makes available a number of Drafts for Public Comment (DPCs), and allows the
general public to record comments on them with an easy-to-use web interface
that permits any clause to be commented-on. As BSI explains:
Standards documents are circulated for public comment in
order to get comments from as wide an audience as possible. The DPC stage
occurs during drafting in national, European and international arenas and is an
important part of the standards development process.
Those of you who have been following along purely for their
interest in OOXML will remember that there was a public comment stage for that
specification too (in the summer of 2007), in which members of the public
submitted comments (then typically by email) which were fed into the process.
Granted that mostly meant many copies of the then web-available objections were
submitted – but there were some nuggets of original criticism too.
Wider spread
Again, those of you have been purely interested in OOXML
will note the wide range of types of standard considered here. International
standardisation is about much more than ISO and IEC, and here you can find
drafts of CEN and CENELEC (European) standards and well as good old British
Standards too.
So far as I am aware, this BSI system is blazing a trail on the
international standards scene: it would be good to see other NBs too adopting
such mechanisms for public comment collection. Even better if they adopted the
same web-based APIs!
So come on, (British) readers: if you have any burning
thoughts you wish to contribute on “Thief
resistant lock assembly - Key egress” or “Code of practice for information and
communications technology continuity”, then please do so.