Update: An Open Letter to ISO
September 22, 2007 8:19 pm StandardizationAs 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 27th, 2007 at 15:42
There’s no need to change the one country one vote principle. As far as I know, standards have always been evaluated by qualified people (at least until the OOXML scandal).
My first argument against your proposal is that a scientist from Sweden (population : 9 million) is not 33 times less qualified than his US homologue (population : 297 million) or 111 times less competent than his Chinese counterpart (population : 1.3 billion).
As a second argument, don’t tell me that in Nigeria (140 million inhabitants), there are more people interested in the inner workings of the ISO than in Belgium (10 million inhabitants).
Third argument : what happens when the population of a second category country overcomes that of a third category country ? Should ISO rules be modified for each individual case ?
September 27th, 2007 at 16:01
You are indeed raising valid points.
I would however insist on a classification of voting countries in some way, maybe based on both track record and population size to limit domination by countries with no credible track on standardization but with a big population.
The fact that Malta’s voice weigh in equal to China’s seems wrong. It seems odd that standardization issues would be determined so very differently pre and post-USSR.