The procedures used to develop and maintain ISO standards and other technical work are described in ISO/IEC Directives. Even though such directives apply to ISO, IEC, and ISO/IEC Standards, we will refer hereon to ISO terminology for the sake of clarity, although there could be slight differences at the IEC scope. ISO Standards are developed and maintained by ISO technical committees, see Sect.4.1. ISO/IEC Directives are published in two parts:
• Part 1 and Consolidated ISO Supplement: Official procedures to be followed when developing and maintaining an International Standard and procedures specific to ISO [95].
5For example, ISO 14000—Environmental management. 6http://www.iso.org/iso/home/standards.htm.
4.3 The ISO Standards Development Process 123
• Part 2: Principles to structure and draft documents intended to become International Standards, Technical Specifications or Publicly Available Specifications. [94]
The process of elaborating and publishing an ISO standard is quite similar to the academic peer-reviewed process when publishing scientific papers. After someone proposes a new standard, possibly from outside the corresponding TC, a draft (manuscript) is prepared, circulated, voted, and revised, throughout a series of steps until the standard is published. Of course it might happen that a proposal or draft is rejected at some point and eventually not published. However, in contrast with academic publications, ISO standards are also bounded to maintenance procedures to keep the applicable bulk of standards alive. The different stages that an ISO standard passes through are summarized in Table4.1.
Once a proposal (NP) is accepted, it is included as a project in the programme of work of the corresponding TC or SC. As such a project, it must include target dates for each subsequent stage, a project leader, and procedures for project management and progress control. Let us take a walk for the usual stages of an ISO Standard development. Please note that some stages are mandatory, whilst others could be skipped, see [95].
1. PWI. Preliminary Work Items that are not yet mature enough to be incorporated to a programme of work, for example relating to emerging technologies or recent discoveries. If the preliminary work item has not progressed to the proposal stage in 3 years, it is automatically deleted from the programme of work.
2. NP. A new Work Item Proposal can be for a new standard, a new part of an existing standard, a technical specification (TS) or a publicly available specification (PAS). The proposal can be made by different stakeholders, such as the own TC, a national body, or an organization in liaison, among others. It must include at least an outline and a project leader. The (of course standardized) form is circulated to the TC members to vote. Approval requires simple majority of P-members (see Sect.4.1) and the commitment to participate by some of them. Once approved, it is included in the TC programme of work as a project.
Table 4.1 Standard
development project stages Acronym Description
PWI Preliminary Work Item NP New Work Item Proposal WD Working Draft
CD Committee Draft
DIS Draft International Standard FDIS Final Draft International Standard ISO International Standard
3. WD. A first version of the Working Draft could have been submitted with the NP. Once the project is accepted, the project leader and the experts nominated during the approval work together to prepare/improve a working draft conforming to Part 2 of ISO/IEC Directives [94]. A working group can be proposed by the TC Secretariat. ISO/IEC Directive Part 2 assures that all standards have the same structure and style. ISO Standards are published in English and French7, so all efforts must be made to have English and French versions of the text in order to avoid delays. When the WD is finished, it is circulated to TC members as a first committee draft (CD).
4. CD. At this stage, national bodies provide comments on the CD. It is quite an active stage in which technical details are discussed within the TC or SC both electronically and in-person meetings. Comments are compiled by the secretariat until an appropriate level of consensus is attained. In case of doubt, a two-thirds majority is usually sufficient. During this stage the CD can be discussed and revised until it is proposed as a DIS.
5. DIS. A draft international standard is circulated for voting and commenting to all national bodies, not only to those involved in the TC/SC. At this stage, technical comments, mandatory in case of negative vote, can be made. Comments can be addressed by the secretary for the final draft. Before stepping into the next stage, a report on the voting and decisions on comments is circulated again, and finally an FDIS is prepared.
6. FDIS. This is the last stage before publication. The procedure follows a similar procedure to the one in DIS. However, editorial comments are expected rather than technical comments.
7. ISO. The international standard is eventually published once the comments in FDIS has been addressed.
8. SR. After publication, an ISO Standard and other deliverables such as TR are subject to systematic review in order to determine whether it should be con- firmed, revised/amended, converted to another form of deliverable, or withdrawn. For an ISO Standard, the maximum elapsed time before systematic review is 5 years.
Figure 4.1summarizes the standards development process, including approx- imate target dates, see [95] for details. Please note that at any voting stage, the document can be rejected and referred back to the TC/SC, that may decide to resubmit a modified version, change the type of document (e.g., a technical specification instead of an international standard), or cancel the project.