Updated ISO/IEC Directives
- Jul 3
- 3 min read
In three months (October 5th this year), an updated set of ISO/IEC directives will come into force. While most of the changes relate to the internal management structures of committees and projects, aligning ISO and IEC and simplifying the directives, the timescales for standards development are being tightened-up with implications for the way standards work is initiated, specified, planned and managed, and the nature of the standards produced.
The following comments reflect my personal, individual, somewhat cynical or jaundiced opinion as a long-time member of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 27.
Preliminary Work Items must complete within 24 months, or they will be cancelled. Therefore, the scope and purpose of the PWI should be firm and reasonably likely to result in consensus, even before the PWI work is officially sanctioned, starting the PWI clock.
Drafting a reasonably complete and mature donor document, template, or set of objectives to launch a PWI can reduce the number of contentious, vague and ill-thought-out standards projects, but may also result in fewer innovative, forward-thinking standards if, at the outset, the objectives are unclear or unstable and consensus is uncertain.
There's a delicate balance here: global standardisation is particularly challenging in technological fields undergoing rapid change - such as information security for AI, IoT and quantum computing to name three topical examples - and in areas of intense commercial competition or social/political concern - such as IT and climate change, respectively.
Once a PWI reaches consensus and a new or amended International Standard project is approved, the project must 'complete' [whatever that means - perhaps approved and submitted to the secretariat for publication, or actually published and available for sale, I'm not sure] within 36 months of approval or within 48 months if an extension is justified and granted prior to the 36 month deadline, otherwise it will be summarily cancelled. The strict 3 or 4 year timescale only applies to full International Standards, not new or amended Technical Reports, Technical Specifications etc. with other timescales. Also, the minimum time needed to complete the remaining formal stages in a project (e.g. voting) can result in its cancellation during the project, not just at the very end.
This places greater emphasis on project management, direction and control, including aspects such as project risk management, clarity of objectives, scoping etc., control of changes, tolerance for delays and late submission, ability to cope with material changes and, as always, the need to align participants in order to reach sufficient consensus (not necessarily unanimity) within the deadline. Hopefully it will result in greater clarity around timescales e.g. GANTT charts or diaries for projects with planned and drop-dead dates.
One consequence is that newly-published standards may be less polished or mature if technical and editorial comments cannot be fully discussed and resolved within the deadline. So, submitted comments should be tighter, specific, timely and less contentious, and should be addressed and resolved efficiently ... but ...
At the same time, there is greater potential for national bodies (and their stakeholders) to frustrate the processes and delay progress, deliberately, on standards that are not thought to be in the national interest. For example, it may be possible to divert and distract a project into dealing with contentious aspects or tangential issues, causing delays that jeapordise the deadline. Collaboration and cooperation between national bodies, along with strong project management and direction, can mitigate this ethical/political/commercial risk.
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