The event opened yesterday in St. Petersburg, Russia. Over the next few days, representatives from 128 countries will discuss how we can make standards development simpler, faster and better in order to meet the needs of today’s world.
The Prime Minister’s message was read by the Deputy Minister of Trade, Gleb Nikitin, who said Russia is seeing a "second birth" of the process of standardization with the Ministry of Trade taking a more active role.
President of GOST R, the ISO member for Russia and host of the event, Grigory Elkin explained why. "Many of you know we joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) a year ago. WTO requirements also boil down to the application of International Standards. Standardization thus becomes even more important to us today."
Big family
One of the main themes of this year’s General Assembly is stakeholder engagement.
ISO President Terry Hill emphasized the importance of helping all interested parties to get actively involved in standards development, and build customer needs and feedback systematically into our system, as a top priority for ISO. "We need to make sure we are developing what our stakeholders need, and there is no better way to make sure we do that than to be close to them."
He also said the key to ISO’s contribution is its diversity. ISO is a big family, he explained. We have over 163 member countries and over 600 international and regional organizations. In addition, there are thousands of experts on everything from industrial automation to financial planning, from industry to consumer organizations, from government to academia, offering their time and effort to develop International Standards.
ISO Secretary-General Rob Steele agreed, "We need to make sure we have good customer engagement. It's the first key objective of our strategic plan." But it is a two-way system. Speaking at a press conference that preceded the welcome ceremony, Mr. Steele said, "Participation in ISO standards development is vital. Otherwise it's like giving a pen to your competitor and asking him to write the rules."
"We as standardizers have a huge opportunity to make a positive difference in the world."
In this video Rob Steele and Terry Hill discuss the importance of the GA.
Follow the inside story of this event as it unfolds.
