September 24, 2007
Standardization
2 Comments
Last wednesday, there was a new meeting in Standard Norge Committee 185, the ISO /IEC JTC1 SC34 mirror committee (the sub committee where OOXML resorts). Interesting data emerged.
According to Steve Pepper’s presentation, there were only 9 Participating Members in SC34 November last year. Since then, another 29 members have joined. Bear in mind that this sub committee has enjoyed a quiet, rather anonymous life until the bomb shell called OOXML was dropped in its lap late last year. Membership fluctuations have been few and far between. All of a sudden, countries like Malta, Cyprus and Lebanon showed an immediate interest in the sub committee’s technical matters.
Few had registered that it wasn’t necessary to participate in SC34 in order to vote on the fate of OOXML as an ISO standard. The voting countries where the P-Members of its mother, the JTC1. Countries flooded the SC34 to no avail.
Actually, it may prove to be a curse to SC34.
You see, in order to get much done in the sub committee, at least 50% of its P-Members needs to participate in a voting. Even with as much as 20% of the newcomers being interested in more than helping out Microsoft, it leaves less than 40% of the members caring enough to cast a vote. This will slow the the work to a grinding halt. SC34 will be left dead in the waters.
Am I exaggerating? I think not. The first example already proves my point; The letter ballot of 2007-09-03 failed as only 24% cared to vote (the link shows that Norway didn’t vote, but in fact we did). The only voting countries were the P-members from back then - the 9 pre-OOXML member countries. Not one of the newcomers responded.
It may have seemed like a blessing to get all this attention with lots of new committee members. Now it looks like the opposite.
I wonder if Microsoft cares about the consequences of their ISO stuffing. I hope the troubles in SC34 jumpes up and bites the monopoly in its big behind.
September 22, 2007
Standardization
2 Comments
As announced, here is the revision going by snail-mail to ISO:
An Open Letter to ISO (pdf)
The changes are small but significant. Here are two of the paragraphs that benefitted from valuable input:
I urge ISO to adopt a policy that a country may not become a P-member before it has a proven interest as an O-member in that technical committee’s work. The country should have attended a certain number of TC meetings. To maintain its P-membership status, the country must also maintain a minimum of activity – meeting attendance and voting.
It may be time also to reevaluate the one country one vote principle. In ISO, the Chinese vote carries the same weight as that of Cyprus. In the JTC1/SC34 the late-comers includes Trinidad and Tobago, Côte-d’Ivoire, Cyprus, Hong Kong, Lebanon and Malta. Countries could be grouped into three categories based on population size. A vote from a category three country would carry the same weight as three countries from category one.
Again, thanks for the suggestions.
September 9, 2007
Standardization
No Comments
Based on the input to my Open Letter to ISO, I am about to revise it and send it to the ISO officials (by snail mail).
Thanks to the people who left comments on my blog post.
Thanks to the people at Ars Technica.
Thanks to Slashdot. Sorry for not fixing the feature to comment my blog post until several hours after this was slashdot’ed.
Thanks to Norbert Bollow at OpenISO.org.
Thanks to all the bloggers who commented on this, and to all the people who filled my inbox with good suggestions.
The final letter will be posted here. Add this blog as an rss feed, and you will see it as it is posted.
September 7, 2007
Standardization
36 Comments
Is it time to standardize ISO?
In light of the recent events relating to the standardization process of EOOXML, it seems appropriate to look into possible standardization of the process itself.
The DIS 29500 (EOOXML) process has revealed several shortcomings, both on the national level and on the level of ISO.
The organisations representing each country have very different procedures for determining the nation’s vote in ISO. Some countries will vote only if their technical committee is unanimous on the issue. Others will reach consensus defined by a 3/4 majority vote or even 2/3 majority. In some countries there is no vote and the technical committee is only advisory to the national standards organisation. Others yet have a two-stage process where the nations vote is determined through two committees. In short there is no standard for accepting a standard.
It seems ISO is not prepared for a politicized process where a big and influential commercial enterprise will use any means possible to push its own standard through to certification.
Committees are flooded by the vendor in support of the standard. Votes are bought and results are hijacked. Several national bodies have flawed and skewed procedures open for corruption.
The list is much longer, but a few examples should suffice:
Norway - originally a process decided by unanimity but altered on the fly
Sweden - voting seats bought and the result thus hijacked
Switzerland - process rigged in favor of the vendor, the chairman excluded the option of voting “reject” or “reject, with comments”
Portugal - process skewed by blaming on lack of available chairs
Malaysia - two committees voted unanimously “rejection with comments” and mysteriously overturned by the government to “abstain”
Even if this is the tip of an ice berg, the examples should warrant a thorough examination of the national processes.
The fact that ISO enforces no standard for national bodies opens the standardization process for manipulation or corruption. I strongly urge ISO to adopt a strict policy for its members detailing the rules for how a national body shall determine its vote in ISO and that it enforces such policy vigorously.
On the level of ISO, criticism has been raised against the fast track process. An investigation should be called to see if EOOXML was unduly put on the ISO Fast Track.
During the Fast Track, many new countries have joined as P-Members (Participating members) in the technical committee, the JTC1. Several of the countries have no credible track on standardization work, have joined very late in the process only to vote an unconditional “Yes” to a standard that has obvious room for improvement. It may be purely coincidental that the countries that came late in the process score much lower on the Corruption Perception Index by Transparency International. It is possible to corrupt the process by pressuring countries to join a process and vote without sufficient knowledge. I urge ISO to adopt a policy that P-members may not be accepted later than 3 months before the committee is to vote.
It may be time also to reevaluate the one country one vote principle. In ISO, the Chinese vote carries the same weight as that of Cyprus. In the JTC1/SC34 the late-comers includes Trinidad and Tobago, Colombia, Côte-d’Ivoire, Cyprus, Lebanon and Malta.
As for approving standards within the field of IT, ISO would greatly benefit from adopting the IETF requirment of two independent reference implementations for passing a standard. This should increase the quality of ISO’s IT standards.
The strength, integrity and scalability of ISO have been tested. The organizations agility and adaptability will now be measured. May ISO move quickly to fix its own PR and more importantly its own standardization process.
The publicity that ISO has been given through the DIS 29500 process is phenomenal. ISO and standardization in general has reached a peak in public awareness. I hope the organization will use this publicity to show strong integrity and potential.
The intent of this letter is to safeguard future standardization and to ensure that the processes scale in the face of increased pressure from large commercial interests.
Geir Isene
CEO FreeCode International
September 4, 2007
Standardization
No Comments
Despite manipulation and corruption of the process, Microsoft has suffered a serious blow in the standardization of OOXML.
Millions and millions of dollars have been poured into the project, yet Microsoft failed to get its file format accepted as an ISO standard.
Out of the 41 Participant Members of the ISO technical committee, only 53% voted in favor of the proposal, 14% short of the required level for acceptance.
This goes to show that despite a weak and corruptible ISO process, cards were called and the flawed standard was halted. So far, so good.
But the process continues. Most likely until Microsoft gets its file format standardized. The Ballot Resolution Meeting in February 2008 will bring up all the comments and look at ways to resolve them. The software vendor will have its todo list and may commence fixing the shortcomings.
Nevertheless, we have our breather. And Goliath was left stunned. A quick hurray and back to being a busy bee.
September 2, 2007
Standardization
No Comments
Regardless of the result in today’s vote on OOXML, ISO needs reform. The fact that there is no standard for the standardization process is shocking. Each voting country has its own way of determining its vote. Most of the countries’ voting procedures are open to manipulation or even corruption. And on the ISO level itself, there are obvious flaws.
In a few days I will post my set of suggestions in the form of an open letter to ISO. Stay put.