International Organization for Standardization: Meaning (information, definition, explanation, facts)

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is an international standard-setting body made up of representatives from national standards bodies. Founded in 1947, the organization produces world-wide industrial and commercial standards.

While the ISO defines itself as a non-governmental organization, its ability to set standards which often become law through treaties or national standards makes it more powerful than most NGOs, and in practice it acts as a consortium with strong links to governments. Participants include one standards body from each member country and major corporations.

ISO cooperates closely with the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), which is responsible for standardization of electrical equipment.

The organization is usually referred to simply as ISO (pronounced eye-so). It is a common misconception that ISO stands for International Standards Organization, or something similar. ISO is not an acronym; it comes from the Greek word isos, meaning equal. In English its name is International Organization for Standardization, while in French it is called Organisation Internationale de Normalisation; to use an acronym would result in different acronyms in English (IOS) and French (OIN), thus the founders of the organization chose ISO as the universal short form of its name. However it should be noted that ISO also identifies itself as the International Organization for Standardization in its own reports.

ISO standards are numbered, and have a format that contains "ISO ISnnnnn:yyyy: Title" where "nnnnn" is the standard number, "yyyy" is the year published, and "Title" describes the subject.

Aside from standards, ISO also creates Technical Reports for documents that cannot or should not become International Standards such as references, explanations, etc. The naming conventions for these are the same as for standards with the exeption of having TR prepended in the place of IS in the standard's name. Examples:

• • ISO IS17799:2000 Code of Practice for Information Security Management
  • ISO TR15443-1/3 Information Technology - Security Techniques - A Framework for IT Security Assurance parts 1-3

Finally, ISO will on rare occasssions issue a Technical Corrigendum. These are amendments to existing standards because of minor technical flaws, improvements to useability 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 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.

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 don't always agree and not all proposals become standards by unanimous vote. The individual nations and their Standards Bodies remain the final arbiter.

The fact that many of the ISO created standards are ubiquitous has lead, on occassion, 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 (there are other file systems that can be used) - hence CD images are commonly referred to as "ISOs". Virtually all computers with CD-ROM drives can read CDs that use this standard. DVD-ROMs also use ISO 9660 filesystems.

• Photographic film sensitivity to light, its speed, is measured and determined by ISO standard, hence the film speed is often referred to as its "ISO number". There are equivalent standards giving us its ASA and DIN.

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 infrmation
• 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 JTC1 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 product. 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 only in the last year) or disbanded if the area of work is no longer relevant.