Scientific and technological reports

The Standardisation Process

Because of the enormous cost of producing standards and the length of time involved, a set of formal procedures are used by ISO and IEC for the production of a new standard; these procedures are similar to those used in most standards organisations.

Preliminary stage: This is an investigative stage to determine if there is a need for the standard and if there is sufficient knowledge available to develop a standard.

Proposal stage: A proposal is prepared which is circulated to all member countries to establish whether they are in favour of the work and if they wish to participate in it. At least four countries have to agree to the work before it can start.

Preparatory stage: Here the detailed work has to be started to produce a working draft of the standard and depending on the complexity of the subject and level of agreement amongst those working on the standard, this stage can take several months or several years. Time limits are now placed on this and all other stages.

Committee stage: Once a working draft has been produced, it is submitted to the relevant committee for approval to be sent out to all countries for comment. The purpose of this stage is to attract the widest possible support and comment on the document. The working group responsible for the document will then consider the comments and if these are easily dealt with pass the document on for the next stage. However if there is substantial comment, they may decide that it is necessary to send the document out for further comment.

Approval stage: Once the document is thought to be in a form that will be acceptable to a majority of countries, it is sent out for a formal vote. In principle, no further technical changes can be made to the document and countries have to vote for or against it or formally abstain. A straight majority with all countries having equal weight decides if the document becomes a standard.

Publication stage: The final work is editing, printing and distributing the document to all the national standards bodies.

Standards Organisations

ISO

International Organisation for Standard-isation. Comprises national standards bodies of 88 countries (72 member bodies and 16 correspondent members). More than 4300 ISO Standards published, based on approval by 75% of member bodies. More than 2100 technical bodies for the preparation of international standards (160 technical committees, 600 subcommittees and some 1350 working groups).

IEC

International Electrotechnical Commission. The electrotechnical counterpart of ISO. Comprises national electrotechnical committees of 43 countries. Standards or reports are approved if not more than 20% of National Committees cast a negative vote. Approximately 1800 current standards or reports. Over 80 technical committees, with over 120 subcommittees.

CEN

European Committee for Standardisation. Comprises national standards bodies of 16 EU and EFTA countries. Prepares European Standards that are published without variation of text as national standards in the countries approving them. Each member has one vote. About 55 technical committees.

CENELEC

European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardisation. Electrotechnical counter-part of CEN. Comprises national electro-technical committees of EU and EFTA countries. Prepares European Standards for identical publication nationally and also Harmonisation Documents as the basis of technically equivalent standards. Weighted voting system. About 35 technical committees.

CECC - CENELEC Electronics Components Committee. European system to facilitate international trade by harmonisation of specification and quality assessment procedures for electronic components, and by the granting of an internationally recognised mark and/or certificate of conformity. Comprises national electrotechnical committees of 11 West European countries. About 20 active working groups.

ETSI

The European telecommunications Standards Institute is a non-profit organisation whose mission is to determine and produce telecommunications standards; it is an open forum that unites 347 members from 28 countries, representing admin-istrations, public network operators, manufacturers, service providers, users and counsellors. Any European organisation proving an interest in promoting European telecommunications standards has the right to represent that interest in ETSI. There are 12 technical committees, 60 technical sub-committees, and more than 140 working or rapporteurs groups.

More than 2500 experts are working in over 200 groups. The work programme includes more than 2000 standardisation projects. Up to now, 489 European telecommunication Standards ((I-)ETSs) and ETSI reports have been published.

BSI

British Standards Institute is the UK Member Body of the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) and the European Committee for Standardisation (CEN). Its Electrotechnical Council forms the British Electrotechnical Committee, the UK National Committee of the parallel electrotechnical organisations, the International Electro-technical Commission (IEC) and the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardisation (CENELEC).

ISO, IEC, CEN and BSI have a range of Technical Committees providing the co-ordination and organisation required for the development of the standards. The Technical Committees themselves can control and develop such a wide range of standards that it is usual to sub-divide the workload to Sub-Committees, who themselves will allocate the development of specific standards to Working Groups. The Working Groups are the engine house of the organisation where the standards are written, modified and edited. In many cases the areas of interest between different bodies overlap, hence there are a number of joint committees (eg ISO/IEC).

January 1996