The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is an international standard-setting body composed of representatives from various national standards bodies. Founded on 23 February 1947, the organization produces world-wide industrial and commercial standards.
While the ISO defines itself as a non-governmental organization (NGO), its ability to set standards that often become law, either through treaties or national standards, makes it more powerful than most NGOs. In practice, the ISO acts as a consortium with strong links to governments. As of fall 2006, there are 158 members, each of which represents one country.
ISO cooperates closely with the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), which is responsible for standardisation of electrical equipment
The name
The organization is usually referred to simply as "ISO" . It is a common misconception that ISO stands for "International Standards Organization", or something similar. ISO can be mistaken for an acronym only in English (acronyms do not have to respect letter order); however, its origin is from the Greek word (isos), meaning "equal". In English, the organization’s long-form name is "International Organization for Standardization", while in French it is called "Organisation internationale de normalisation." These initials would result in different acronyms in different languages, e.g., English (IOS) and French (OIN); thus the founders of the organization chose "ISO" as the universal short form of its name, which in and of itself reflects the aims of the organization - to equalize or standardize across cultures.
International Standards, and other publications
ISO's main products are the International Standards, but the ISO also creates Technical Reports, Technical Specifications, Publicly Available Specifications, Technical Corrigenda, and Guides.
International Standards are numbered, and have a format that contains "ISO[/IEC][/ASTM] [IS] nnnnn[:yyyy] Title" where "nnnnn" is the standard number, "yyyy" is the year published, and "Title" describes the subject. "IEC" will only be included if the standard results from the work of JTC1 (the "Joint Technical Committee"; see below). "ASTM" is included for standards developed in cooperation with ASTM International. The date and "IS" will always be left off an incomplete or unpublished standard, and may (under certain circumstances) be left off the title of the published work.
Technical Reports are issued when "a technical committee or subcommittee has collected data of a different kind from that which is normally published as an International Standard", such as references, explanations, etc. The naming conventions for these are the same as for standards with the exception of having TR prepended in the place of IS in the standard's name. Examples:
ISO/IEC TR 17799:2000 Code of Practice for Information Security Management
ISO/TR 19033:2000 Technical product documentation -- Metadata for construction documentation
Technical Specifications are sometimes produced when "the subject in question is still under development or where for any other reason there is the future but not immediate possibility of an agreement to publish an International Standard". Publicly Available Specifications may be "an intermediate specification, published prior to the development of a full International Standard, or, in IEC may be a 'dual logo' publication published in collaboration with an external organization". Both are named by convention similar to Technical Reports, for example:
ISO/TS 16952-1:2006 Technical product documentation -- Reference designation system --
Part 1: General application rules
ISO/PAS 11154:2006 Road vehicles -- Roof load carriers
ISO will on rare occasions issue a Technical Corrigendum. These are amendments to existing standards because of minor technical flaws, improvements to usability or to extend applicability in a limited way. Generally, these are issued with the expectation that the affected standard will be updated or withdrawn at its next scheduled review.
ISO Guides are meta-standards covering "matters related to international standardization". They are named in the format "ISO[/IEC] Guide N:yyyy: Title", for example:
ISO/IEC Guide 2:2004 Standardization and related activities -- General vocabulary ISO/IEC Guide 65:1996 General requirements for bodies operating product certification systems
ISO document copyright
ISO documents are copyrighted and ISO charges for copies of most. ISO does not, however, charge for most draft copies of documents in electronic format. Although useful, care must be taken using these drafts as there is the possibility of substantial change before it becomes finalized as a standard. Some ISO standards are made freely available. For examples, see Freely Available Standards (http://isotc.iso.org/livelink/livelink/fetch/2000/2489/Ittf_Home/PubliclyAvailableStandards.htm) and Free Standards2 (http://webstore.ansi.org/ansidocstore/free_standards.asp)
Members
There are 158 national members, out of the 198 total countries in the world.
ISO has three membership categories:
member bodies are national bodies that are considered to be the most representative standards body in each country. These are the only members of ISO that have voting rights.
correspondent members. These are countries which do not have a standards organization of their own. These members are informed about the work going on in ISO but are not allowed to take part in the actual standardization work.
subscriber members are countries with small economies. These have reduced membership fees but can follow the development of new standards.
Problems during the 1990s
During the 1990s, ISO gained a reputation for being slow, bureaucratic, congested, and insensitive to feedback from both vendors and their customers. One problematic project was the enormous Open Systems Interconnection project, which attempted the development of one single computer networking standard, but was finally shut down in 1996 after becoming mired in interoperability problems and bickering between vendors. Attention then turned to the volunteer-based, open-process and non-profit Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), which develops the standards necessary for the Internet to function. When IETF turned out to be too slow, vendors began funding more focused, agile consortia like the W3C, another open, non-profit organization headed by the inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee. Since then, ISO has undertaken modest reforms to decrease the time required to promulgate new standards.
ISO International Standards are not in any way binding on either governments or industry merely by virtue of being International Standards. This is to allow for situations where certain types of standards may conflict with social, cultural or legislative expectations and requirements. This also reflects the fact that national and international experts responsible for creating these standards do not always agree and not all proposals become standards by unanimous vote. The individual nations and their standards bodies remain the final arbiters.
Products named after ISO
Still, the fact that many of the ISO-created standards are ubiquitous has led, on occasion, to common usage of "ISO" to describe the actual product that conforms to a standard. Some examples of this are:
CD images end in the file extension "ISO" to signify that they are using the ISO 9660 standard filesystem as opposed to another file system - hence CD images are commonly referred to as "ISOs". Virtually all computers with CD-ROM drives can read CDs that use this standard. Some DVD-ROMs also use ISO 9660 filesystems.
Photographic film's sensitivity to light, its "film speed," is described by ISO 5800:1987. Hence, the film's speed is often referred to as its "ISO number."
ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1
To deal with the consequences of substantial overlap in areas of standardization and work related to information technology, ISO and IEC formed a Joint Technical Committee known as the ISO/IEC JTC1. It was the first such committee, and to date remains the only one. Its official mandate is:
Develop, maintain, promote and facilitate IT standards required by global markets meeting business and user requirements concerning:
design and development of IT systems and tools
performance and quality of IT products and systems
security of IT systems and information
portability of application programs
interoperability of IT products and systems
unified tools and environments
harmonized IT vocabulary
user friendly and ergonomically designed user interfaces
There are currently 18 sub-committees:
SC 02 - Coded Character Sets
SC 06 - Telecommunications and Information Exchange Between Systems
SC 07 - Software and System Engineering
SC 17 - Cards and Personal Identification
SC 22 - Programming Languages, their Environments and Systems Software Interfaces
SC 23 - Removable Digital Storage Media Utilizing Optical and/or Magnetic Recording * Technology for Digital
SC 24 - Computer Graphics and Image Processing
SC 25 - Interconnection of Information Technology Equipment
SC 27 - IT Security Techniques
SC 28 - Office Equipment
SC 29 - Coding of Audio, Picture, and Multimedia and Hypermedia Information
SC 31 - Automatic Identification and Data Capture Techniques
SC 32 - Data Management and Interchange
SC 34 - Document Description and Processing Languages
SC 35 - User Interfaces
SC 36 - Information Technology for Learning, Education, and Training
SC 37 - Biometrics
Membership in ISO/IEC 17799 JTC is restricted in much the same way as membership in either of the two parent organizations. A member can be either participating (p) or observing (O) and the difference is mainly the ability to vote on proposed standards and other products. There is no requirement for any member body to maintain either (or any) status on all of the sub-committees. Although rare, sub-committees can be created to deal with new situations (SC 37 was approved in 2002) or disbanded if the area of work is no longer relevant