While thousands of ISO standards provide benefits to business, government and the general public worldwide, the people responsible for their development largely remain in the back-ground. That will change on 5-6 June when a rare gathering of some of the key figures behind the development of ISO standards takes place in Geneva, Switzerland.
The chairpersons of ISO's standards-developing technical committees and subcommittees have been invited by the organization's President, Prof. Giacomo Elias, to take part in a conference on the future of the organization and its way of working.
Approximately 30 000 technical experts on loan from business, industry, government, academia, consumer organizations and other bodies take part each year in the development of ISO standards. Each working day, there are some 15 ISO technical meetings taking place around the world. Between meetings, the experts continue the standards' development work by correspondance - increasingly by means of new information and communications technology (ICT) tools. The system is extremely decentralized and the leaders of one committee rarely have the opportunity to exchange views and experiences with their counterparts from other committees.
"With ISO evolving rapidly to become a Virtual Organization making a maximum use of ICT for increases in speed and efficiency, at decreasing cost, I felt it was the right moment for a meeting of the men and women who actually make international standardization happen," Prof. Elias explained. "ICT notwithstanding, people work with people and in a decentralized system like ISO's we need to be sure that we share an understanding of what we are trying to achieve and are aligned in the pursuit of our goals."
During the two-day conference, the standards makers will be discussing ISO's long-range strategy and a whole series of initiatives to increase the alignment between ISO's technical work and the market requirements for them.
Prof. Elias commented: "The chairpersons of our technical committees are ISO's ambassadors vis-à-vis industry, the scientific community, governmental bodies and consumer organizations. They see issues close-up, from the industrial and market standpoints. Therefore, this conference will be a gathering of perhaps the most influential group of people in international standardization."
With ISO meetings taking place all around the world, the conference could have been held on any of the continents. However, ISO chose Geneva, where its Central Secretariat is located, to underline the good relations between the organization and the internationally oriented city that has been its host for 53 years.
ISO (International Organization for Standardization) is the world's largest developer of standards. Between 1947 and 1999, ISO published more than 12 500 International Standards. ISO's work programme ranges from standards for traditional activities, such as agriculture and construction, through mechanical engineering to the newest information technology developments, such as the digital coding of audio-visual signals for multimedia applications. Its world famous ISO 9000 series of quality management standards has been implemented by organizations in at least 143 countries.