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Full text of interview of ISO Secretary-General by Reuters on ISO/IEC 29500

ISO Secretary-General Alan Bryden was recently inteviewed by Georgina Prodhan, European Technology Correspondent of the Reuters news agency on issues related to the adoption of OOXML as an ISO/IEC standard. Reuters released a condensed version of the interview on 26 June. Here is the complete text of the interview.

Reuters: Where does the adoption of OOXML as the International Standard ISO/IEC 29500 stand today?

Alan Bryden: Four member countries of ISO and IEC – Brazil, India, South Africa and Venezuela – have appealed against the decision to adopt the standard. The IEC General Secretary and I are now considering these appeals until the end of June before passing them on with our comments to the ISO Technical Management Board and the IEC Standardization Management Board. The two management boards will then decide whether the appeals should be further processed or not. In line with ISO/IEC rules, the publication of ISO/IEC 29500 is now on hold pending the outcome of the appeals process. Since voting on the standard began, we have been communicating regularly to report results and explain the processes. FAQs on ISO/IEC 29500, media releases and the standards development rules are available on the ISO Web site at www.iso.org/iso/faqs_isoiec29500.

Reuters: The adoption of OOXML has generated a tremendous amount of publicity, much of it negative. What's your reaction to this?

Alan Bryden: Some of the negative publicity is quite extreme and as ISO's Secretary General it's not exactly pleasant for me to see ISO vilified, particularly when much of the extreme criticism is based on false assumptions and a lack of understanding of what ISO is and how it works. However, the sheer amount of publicity does serve to illustrate a growing realization that International Standards are important.

The concentration on ISO/IEC 29500 also needs to be put into context. ISO publishes almost 100 new or revised standards every month, not just on information technology, but for just about every sector of business and technology, without generating the reactions like those related to OOXML. On the contrary, the reactions are positive, which is understandable, because ISO develops standards in response to market demand and through the participation of representatives of the stakeholder groups in industry, government, consumer associations and civil society that require, will implement, or will be affected by the standards.

The ISO system is an increasingly successful one since the demand for new standards and for ISO to launch work in new areas is constantly growing. We now have a published portfolio of more than 17 000 standards and related documents. Our high production and comprehensive portfolio underline how much our standards are needed, implemented and appreciated by the global community.

Reuters: All the same, doesn't the furore over OOXML indicate that the standards development process needs improvement?

Alan Bryden: Continual improvement is a constant of standardization. Continual improvement of ISO standards is achieved by periodically reviewing them, starting three years after initial publication and then at least every five years, and deciding to confirm, withdraw or update them as required to maintain them at the state of the art. The ISO standards development process is also under continual review by the ISO Technical Management Board to identify opportunities to improve it. Examples of such improvements are introducing electronic balloting, offering a range of normative documents in addition to International Standardsto meet different needs, and the adoption of the fast track process, initially to serve the rapidly evolving IT sector, but subsequently extended to all other sectors.

Reuters: But doesn't OOXML show that the fast track process is broken?

Alan Bryden: Again, this needs to be put into context. The fast track process used to adopt ISO/IEC 29500 is not a new development; it was introduced by the joint technical committee ISO/IEC JTC 1, Information technology, about 20 years ago. The total number of JTC 1 standards that have been fast tracked is 267, of which 212 are current today. The issue of revising the fast track procedure, or any other ISO or IEC procedure, is an on-going process and the experience with ISO/IEC 29500, along with the results of other standards development activities, will indeed assist in determining whether further continued improvements should be made.

Reuters: Do corporations like Microsoft have too much power in the ISO system?

Alan Bryden: Companies have no direct vote on the International Standards, which are adopted according to voting by national member bodies, on the basis of one vote per country. ISO/IEC 29500 has been approved as a standard as a result of a vote by ISO and IEC national members who cast their vote on the basis of input from stakeholders in their country. The vote was open to member countries of ISO and IEC, then standing at 104, out of which 87 voted. As a stakeholder in the process, Microsoft and other interests certainly participated in the process to establish national positions. ISO and IEC national members are fully responsible for the way national votes are formed and relevant national interests consulted.

It needs to be understood that companies cannot usually directly introduce standards for adoption by ISO and IEC, and they normally need to pass through an ISO/IEC national body or a category A liaison organization, although there are provisions within the JTC 1 Directives which would allow this to happen if JTC 1 itself authorizes it. Microsoft originally submitted OOXML to Ecma International, an IT industry association, for transposing into an ECMA standard. Following a process in which other IT industry players participated, Ecma International subsequently published the document as ECMA standard 376.

Ecma International then submitted the standard in December 2006 to ISO/IEC JTC 1, with whom it has liaison status, for adoption as an International Standard under the JTC 1 fast track procedure. This allows a standard developed within the IT industry on which substantial development work has already been carried out, to be presented to JTC 1 as a draft standard for accelerated review, balloting and eventual adoption. In total, ISO/IEC 29500 has spent a total of 15 months being processed within the ISO/IEC system, from its submission in December 2006 to the deadline of 29 March 2008 approving it.

Reuters: Has ISO's credibility been damaged by the OOXML issue?

Alan Bryden: Although OOXML has certainly been a high profile case, particularly because of the existence of the Internet and the World Wide Web, it is not the first controversial issue that ISO has had to deal with. Both in the past, and in this particular case, the robustness of the ISO/IEC processes have proved their value and, irrespective of the outcome of the current appeals, we are confident that the robustness of the system will again lead to the answer the market place wishes to see and, in fact, reinforce ISO's credibility.

ISO enjoys a high credibility through developing standards that are practical tools to support health, safety, security, quality, efficiency, compatibility and environmental care in products and services. A measure of this credibility is that ISO has a record membership of 157 countries, of which the majority are developing nations, and partnerswith some 680 international organizations, including most of the UN system.

Reuters: Why does every country's vote have equal weight? Is this something that ISO might reconsider?

Alan Bryden: Today, ISO is a network of the national standards institutes of 157 countries, of which 105 are "member bodies", with the right to vote. As in the United Nations system, the ISO practice is one country, one vote. Membership fees are based on GDP and put simply, the richer countries pay more, with no one dominating through a cap system. An alternative to one country, one vote, would be to give more votes, or weighted voting, to the richer countries. However, there is no call within ISO to do so.

The majority of our members are developing countries, or economies in transition, and one of the baselines of international standardization as practised by ISO is facilitate participation in developing standards for all, and for all to benefit from the results of this work. No countries should be left along the roadside. This is why one of ISO's strategic objectives is helping to build the standardization capacity of developing and transition economies as a framework for economic and social improvement.

Reuters: In general, ISO's brief to set standards gives it enormous power. Can you characterise or give examples of the areas of people's everyday lives that are affected by ISO decisions? Do you believe this power is properly vested in ISO, as it is currently organised?

Alan Bryden: It may come as a surprise to many when I reply that ISO has no brief to set standards and that ISO has no power and naturally, these statements need explaining and qualifying.

Firstly, ISO is a nongovernmental organization and is not, therefore, part of any intergovernmental arrangement, including the United Nations system. It has not been created by any such system to set standards. ISO is a network of national standards bodies that came together in the aftermath of the Second World War to harmonize national industrial standards in order to facilitate reconstruction and trade. When it began operating in 1947, it had 27 member countries and today, 157. ISO standards are voluntary and the initiation of standards development work in ISO is a bottom-up process, with documented and consensual validations. We also make sure that our standards are globally relevant, meaning that, in principle, they should be applicable worldwide.

Although ISO itself has not been formally given a brief by the international community to develop standards, in practice, the ISO system has become the trusted partner of that community. In addition to its 157 national members, the partners of the ISO system include some 680 international organizations from both public and private sectors.

Although ISO is nongovernmental, many of its members are either part of the governmental structure in their countries, or have a mandate from their governments to engage in standardization. Still others are completely private sector bodies originating from industrial associations. As a result, ISO has a rather unique position as a bridge between public and private sectors enabling it to channel input from a broad range of stakeholder groups into standards and to ensure that its standards benefit business, government and society at large.

Secondly, ISO has no formal power. All our standards are voluntary and ISO has no power to force anyone to adopt or comply with them. Even ISO's members are not obliged to adopt ISO standards as national standards. However, ISO standards are widely adopted and implemented because the market, industry, government, consumers and other stakeholders find them useful. Industry adopts ISO standards to help ensure safer, cleaner and more efficient products and services. Governments may use ISO standards as the technical basis for regulations on health, safety and the environment.

Since ISO's production of standards has reached record levels in recent years and since we are continually being asked to broaden the scope of our work, we can conclude that the international community finds ISO standards very useful indeed.

As for the effects of ISO standards in everyday life, they are countless. The standardized dimensions of freight containers make trade and transport cheaper and faster, standardized format and security protocols of bank cards make financial transactions more convenient and secure, road vehicles are continually made safer and more environmentally friendly by standards, health is protected by standards for food products and medical devices, IT standards have facilitated interoperability and the ability to exchange information and images between computer systems, as well as the arrival of e-business. And these examples are only scratching the surface.

Reuters: Are increasingly complex technology specifications making your work harder?

Alan Bryden: More often than not, it's ISO that helps the industry sectors concerned to develop internationally harmonized specifications, especially for basic areas such as terminology and health and environment-related aspects of new technologies. Examples are our work on standardization for nanotechnologies, biofuels, radio frequency identification, biometrics and energy management systems. In this way, ISO International Standards help to transform innovation into market-ready products and services, to ensure inter-operability and to disseminate new technologies and good business practices worldwide.

It's important to grasp that the development of ISO standards involves the contribution of experts from the sectors that require the standards, that will implement them and that will be the closest to observe the effects of their implementation. It is what makes ISO standards market relevant on a global basis. With direct participation of international experts in the field, enriched by input from national "mirror" committees organized by the ISO members, ISO standards can be envisaged for just about any area that our stakeholders in business, government and society judge to be important. In recent years, therefore, ISO has expanded the scope of its work to services, such as financial planning, tourism and IT service management, to good managerial or conformity assessment practices and to societal issues such as climate change, supply chain security, food safety, organizational continuity and social responsibility.

The need to facilitate the participation in ISO's work of new stakeholders can make this work harder, but also more rewarding because we know the work is useful to society.

Reuters: Why does the world need standards? Are there areas in which it is preferable to have no standards, or multiple standards?

Alan Bryden: I'd like to answer in reverse order. Multiple national standards may be appropriate in areas such as building and clothes where local geographic and climatic conditions make unique international standards less useful. As a general rule, the objective at the international level is to have one, globally relevant standard. It can sometimes happen, especially in fast moving areas such as IT, that broadly similar standards, but focused on different functionalities, may each engage the interest of market segments. In such cases, multiple standards can exist and it is the market that eventually decides which will survive.

In fact almost every sector benefits or could benefit from the advantages of improved safety, freer trade and greater interoperability afforded by International Standards. There are perhaps certain areas in which International Standards, such as those developed by ISO and IEC, are not appropriate, for example on subjects concerning political matters or religious beliefs.

The world needs standards because to implement criteria and values such as safety, health, environmental friendliness, efficiency, effectiveness, reliability, inter-operability and compatibility, they need to be "translated" into concrete requirements, specifications, guidance or good practice for products, services, processes, systems, materials and personnel. And that's why the world asks ISO to develop standards.

• FAQs on ISO/IEC 29500