Before you start you might find it helpful to print out the ‘Glossary of terms and abbreviations’ so that you can refer to it when you need to.
After completing this section, you should be able to:
These and many other examples of convenience for consumers in everyday life show why standards, especially International Standards, are directly relevant to you.
Come visit us on www.iso.org and navigate to ISO Standards in Action, to find out more about International Standards and how they make a difference in the real world.
A standard is a document, established by a consensus of subject matter experts and approved by a recognized body that provides guidance on the design, use or performance of materials, products, processes, services, systems or persons.
Some details of the common elements of an International Standard and its development can be found in My ISO job. Many national standards follow the same format.
Standards can be developed by national, regional and international standards developing organizations and also by businesses or other organizations for their own internal use. They can also be developed by consortia of businesses to address a specific marketplace need, or by government departments to support regulations. This module is most concerned with standards produced by the international standards organizations, ISO and IEC, and their national members.
The formal definition from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and its sister organization, the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) is: a document, established by consensus and approved by a recognized body, that provides, for common and repeated use, rules, guidelines or characteristics for activities or their results, aimed at the achievement of the optimum degree of order in a given context.
Whereas IEC’s scope of work is specifically electrical and electrotechnical standardization, ISO’s work programme encompasses virtually all other areas except telecommunications which is covered by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). However, a joint technical committee of ISO and IEC (JTC1)1 deals with information technology standardization.
Standards are voluntary agreements, developed within an open process that gives all stakeholders, including consumers, the opportunity to express their views and have those views considered. This contributes to their fairness and market relevance, and promotes confidence in their use.
ISO has formalized these concepts within its Code of Ethics and its Strategic Plan, which both underline the importance of consumer participation in standards development.
ISO and IEC also produce other standards-related documents. For more information, see "Joining in: participating in international standardization", “Involving consumers – Why and how”, and “Guidance for National Standards Bodies on engaging stakeholders” in the Resources Section of this module.
Go to Resources section.
An important process commonly associated with the implementation or use of standards is conformity assessment. This is the process of evaluating or measuring whether materials, products, processes, services, systems or persons meet requirements (such as those contained in a standard). ISO and IEC also develop procedures and standards for conformity assessment.
The International Standards published by ISO or by IEC are international consensus documents developed by representatives of the ISO or IEC member bodies coming together in international Technical Committees. International Standards contain technical specifications or other precise criteria, which ensure that materials, products, processes, services, systems, or persons are fit for their intended purpose (for more about consensus, see 1.4).
Standards have no predefined lifetime but undergo periodic review to ensure that they take account of the latest technological developments and market trends.
As noted above, standards do not necessarily just contain requirements (which are specifications, such as defining characteristics, tolerances and limiting values) for products.
They can also be test methods, codes of practice, management system standards, recommendations, or guidelines (guidance) on an agreed best practice.
Management system standards describe how businesses internally manage their production and continuous improvement processes, either for quality assurance purposes, or to address specific concerns such as food safety, environmental stewardship or security of information systems.
Standards are also developed for the growing services sector
Standards set criteria that affect health and safety or define labelling and packaging requirements for consumer products. They can deal with graphical symbols, certification of persons, or conformity assessment practices. These standards are of particular interest for consumers.
Standards ensure consistency of essential features of goods and services, such as quality, ecology, safety, economy, reliability, compatibility, interoperability, efficiency and effectiveness.
Standards codify the latest technology and facilitate its transfer. Standards are therefore an invaluable source of knowledge.
Thus, standards avoid reinventing the wheel: they distil expert knowledge and make it available to all.
International Standards, in particular:
(Also see 2.2)
The first thing to remember is that standards usually start at the country level. Most countries have their own national standards-making bodies, and most of these are members of ISO and will have all of the following roles:
National standards bodies may also group together to make regional standards. For example, national standards bodies in Europe are also members of the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) as well as members of ISO. Together with its sister organizations, CENELEC and ETSI, CEN has a special role to develop European Standards that can support European Union laws (known as ‘directives‘) or broader European public policies. Other regional standards groups exist as well, such as in Latin America (COPANT), or the Asia-Pacific region (PASC).
The use of standards may be voluntary, or they may be referenced in regulation (therefore mandatory). The "New Approach" in Europe is an example of this (see www.newapproach.org).
Standards are used in Europe to support pan-European legislation under this ‘New Approach’. Standards are mandatory when referenced in specific EU Directives, but otherwise the decision on their use remains voluntary.
Under the World Trade Organization (WTO) rules, governments are required to base their national regulations on standards produced by organizations like ISO and IEC, as much as possible (also see 1.3).
Partly because of these rules, and also because of the general globalization of trade, national and regional standards bodies are either adopting or otherwise using International Standards, where possible.
The important distinction between standards and legislation is that standards are voluntary, whereas legislation is mandatory. When regulatory authorities use standards as a basis for legislation, only then do they become mandatory, and then only within the jurisdiction covered by the legislation.
Regulatory authorities decide themselves whether to use Standards to support their technical regulations. Once this happens, there are various ways of referring to the legal text:
For more details and examples, see the information publication Using and referencing ISO and IEC standards for technical regulations in Section 8.
ISO is a network of the national standards bodies (NSBs) of some 164 countries (in 2012), with one member per country. Among other activities, ISO's Central Secretariat in Geneva, Switzerland, coordinates the organization and development of International Standards.
ISO is a non-governmental organization: its members are not, as is the case in the United Nations system, delegations of national governments. Even so, ISO occupies a special position between the public and private sectors. This is because many of its members are part of the governmental structure of their countries, or are mandated by their government. Other members have their roots uniquely in the private sector, having been set up by national partnerships of industry associations, working cooperatively with the public sector.
Therefore, ISO is able to act as a bridging organization. It can develop solutions that meet both the requirements of business and the broader needs of society, including stakeholder groups like consumers and other users.
ISO cooperates with the IEC and ITU and they have joined to form the World Standards Cooperation (WSC) as the focus of their combined strategic activity.
These three organizations each have a strategic partnership with the World Trade Organization (WTO) aiming to promote a free and fair global trading system. ISO cooperates in the framework of several WTO Agreements, notably the WTO Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (WTO-TBT). Signatories to the TBT commit themselves to promoting and using international standards such as the type produced by ISO.
ISO cooperates closely with most of the specialized agencies and bodies of the United Nations that are involved in technical harmonization and assistance to developing countries.
ISO also maintains close working relations with regional standards organizations, many of whose members also belong to ISO.
In addition, across the board some six hundred specialized organizations representing trade or regulatory sectors and other stakeholder groups, including consumers, participate in developing ISO standards.
Only relevant stakeholders are involved in the development of any one standard.
In order to allow systematic classification and study of stakeholders, the ISO Technical Board has defined seven distinct categories for classification of experts participating in technical committees (TMB Resolution 75/2012). They appear in the table below.
Category |
Title |
Typically including: |
A |
Industry and commerce |
manufacturers; producers; designers; service industries; distribution, warehousing and transport undertakings; retailers; insurers; banks and financial institutions; business and trade associations |
B |
Government |
international and regional treaty organizations and agencies; national government and local government departments and agencies, and all bodies that have a legally recognized regulatory function |
C |
Consumers |
national, regional and international consumer representation bodies, independent of any organization that would fall into the ‘industry and commerce’ category, or individual experts engaged from a consumer perspective |
D |
Labour |
international, regional, national and local trades unions and federations of trades unions and similar bodies the main purpose of which is to promote or safeguard the collective interests of employees in respect of their relationship with their employers
|
E |
Academic and research bodies |
universities and other higher educational bodies or professional educators associated with them; professional associations 1); research institutions |
F |
Standards application |
testing, certification and accreditation bodies; organizations primarily devoted to promoting or assessing the use of standards 2) |
G |
Non-governmental organization (NGO) |
organizations that usually operate on a charitable, not-for-profit or non-profit distributing basis and that have a public interest objective related to social or environmental concerns. |
Notes 1) Professional associations are regarded as:
2) ‘Accreditation’ refers to the accreditation of testing and certification bodies. |
Also see ISO’s Web site, ISO Online, for more details about ISO and its partners.
Typically a national standards body (NSB), or one of its member organizations will first determine the market need for a standard.
For example, this need might be a request from the government to use a standard as a technical regulation to support consumer protection, or it might be a request from an industry group to address interoperability problems or from a consumer group to describe the risks associated with adventurous activities.
The standardization body can then do one of three things:
One essential feature of international standards is that the process is formally laid down in the ISO/IEC Directives (the rules that govern the standards development procedure). All international standards development work must follow this process, which has been established to ensure transparency and fairness. These are two important principles that underpin the credibility of ISO and IEC.
In ISO (and IEC), a proposal for an International Standard is most usually submitted by an NSB:
It can also come from a number of other sources, such as an ISO policy or governing body (e.g. COPOLCO), the ISO Secretary-General, a Technical Committee or an organization in liaison (e.g. OECD or CI).
An ISO International Standard represents a global consensus on the state of the art in the subject of that standard. This global consensus is reached over the course of a six-stage development process for International Standards, which is described in detail below.
ISO’s standards development process is designed to reflect the WTO principles of transparency, openness, impartiality and consensus, effectiveness and relevance, coherence, and addressing developing country concerns, so as to contribute to the credibility of the International Standards produced. For example, the process allows for input and consensus building, first among market players and experts at the drafting stages of the standards, and second among countries at the formal voting stages of the standards. As a result, all ISO International Standards effectively reflect a double level of consensus.
For more about the process click on this flowchart:
Review of International Standards (Confirmation, Revision, Withdrawal)
The average development time for an International Standard is approximately three years. Increasingly, the work is done electronically to improve speed to market and to conserve resources.
ISO also produces other types of documents that involve fewer consultation stages such as international Workshop Agreements (IWA), Technical Reports (TR) (therefore a lower degree of consensus), but are quicker to reach the marketplace.
According to ISO/IEC Guide 2:2004 Standardization and related activities – General vocabulary, consensus is “General agreement, characterized by the absence of sustained opposition to substantial issues by any important part of the concerned interests and by a process that involves seeking to take into account the views of all parties concerned and to reconcile any conflicting arguments.
The Foreword of the ISO/IEC Directives, Part 1, also affirms consensus-building as the basis for ISO’s standardization process. Consensus is an essential procedural principle, requiring the resolution of substantial objections in meetings or by correspondence. It is “a necessary condition for the preparation of International Standards that will be accepted and widely used”.
The aim is to resolve substantive issues before the final stages of development.
At the international level, it is generally the task of the Technical Committee Chair, in consultation with the Secretary and the Project Leader for the standard, to decide whether consensus has been reached and the text is ready to be circulated to the membership of ISO and/or IEC (enquiry stage).
ISO seeks to ensure that its standards are market-relevant and meet the needs of the end-user. This end-user is often a consumer who is exposed to an increasingly global offer of products and services. As standardization plays a significant role in assuring that products meet essential consumer requirements for health, safety, and quality for example, standards are a key tool in promoting consumer protection. See Section two for more about how standards benefit consumers.
Realizing that consumers were an important stakeholder in standards development, ISO established a policy development committee in 1978, the Committee on consumer policy (COPOLCO). COPOLCO reports directly to the ISO Council, the governing body of the organization.
COPOLCO has a membership of some 112 National Standards Bodies from among the ISO membership (as of January 2013), of which approximately three-quarters are from developing countries.
In relation to standards development at the national level, COPOLCO membership encourages networking. This assists consumer representatives at the national level to benefit from the experiences of consumers in other countries.
For specific contributions that COPOLCO has made to ISO's work, see section 4.2
See the dedicated consumer area of ISO Online for more about COPOLCO.
COPOLCO cooperates closely with several other ISO policy development committees, as "internal" partners. The ISO Committee on developing country matters (ISO/DEVCO) concentrates, inter alia, on helping ISO's developing country members build capacity and therefore participate effectively in the ISO system, equally with other countries. COPOLCO and DEVCO work closely together on training workshops to help NSBs and consumer organizations work more effectively together in standards development.
Go to DEVCO website
COPOLCO also cooperates with the ISO Committee on conformity assessment (ISO/CASCO) on matters of common interest, including product recall, market surveillance, and use of marks of conformity assessment.
COPOLCO works with three external partners (liaisons):
These liaisons participate in COPOLCO’s annual meetings and workshops, and also contribute to the development of COPOLCO’s publications and research.
The IEC also participates in COPOLCO, as does ANEC, the European consumer voice in standardization.
COPOLCO also organizes training activities to foster consumer representation in standards development, in partnership with ISO/DEVT, the capacity-building arm of ISO’s Committee on developing country matters (DEVCO). Through the generous support of the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, several ISO members and sponsoring organizations, seven regional training events took place in various locations around the world. Following these, there were two ‘train the trainer’ events (one in English, one in French), as well as a number of follow-up workshops which are still continuing. There is now relevant training expertise available in more regions and countries, which can undertake training on consumers and standards. For more information, contact ISO/DEVT (devt@iso.org).
The presentations and proceedings of all of these workshops are publicly available in a dedicated area of ISO Online.
ISO also produces the following helpful materials that are available in the resource section of this module: