Standard is an established norm or requirement vital to support and harmonize trading. It is usually a formal document that establishes uniform engineering or technical criteria, methods, processes and practices.

• support and harmonize trading
• enable meaningful communication by well defined protocols and interfaces
• they set norms that make IT products and services comparable

Standardization is not limited only to technology but also to business process, human factor and organization related issues.

The most important standardization bodies in the field of IS:

• ITU-T (International Telecommunication Union Telecommunication Standardization Sector)

  • coordinates standards for telecommunications
  • it has been an intergovernmental public-private partnership organization
  • the international standards that are produced by the ITU-T are referred to as "Recommendations" and are made by study groups
  • financed by members with contributory units proportional to member economic power
  • more on wikipedia

• ISO (International Standards Organization)

  • voluntary organization
  • its members are national standards organizations
  • organized into Technical Committees (TCs) and these into working groups (WGs)
  • member of ITU-T

  • standardization process:

    • TCs makes a draft agreement
    • draft is circulated as a draft international standard (DIS) to all ISO members
    • after successful voting, final modifications are included in the draft
    • draft becomes a final draft international standard (FDIS)
    • FDIS is circulated to members and if everything goes well it becomes an international standard and it is published
  • more on wikipedia

• ANSI (American National Standards Institute)

  • private, non-government and non-profit organization
  • members are companies, organizations, government agencies, institutional and international
  • individual membership of US citizens is possible
  • official US representative in ISO
  • more on wikipedia

• NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology)

  • non-regulatory agency of the United States Department of Commerce
  • its mission is to promote U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement science, standards, and technology in ways that enhance economic security and improve quality of life
  • more on wikipedia

• IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers)

  • international non-profit, professional organization (largest) for the advancement of technology related to electricity
  • individual or corporate membership
  • more on wikipedia

• IAB (Internet Architecture Board)

  • committee charged with oversight of the technical and engineering development of the Internet
  • more on wikipedia

• IAB - IEFT (Internet Engineering Task Force)

  • open standards organization, with no formal membership or membership requirements
  • organized into a large number of working groups and informal discussion groups (BoF)s, each dealing with a specific topic
  • more on wikipedia

• ISOC (Internet Society)

  • international, nonprofit organization
  • provides leadership in Internet related standards, education, and policy
  • more on wikipedia

• Ecma International

  • formal ECMA - European Computer Manufacturers Association International
  • membership is open to companies that produce, market or develop computer or communication systems
  • more on wikipedia

• W3C (WWW Consortium)

  • main international standards organization for the World Wide Web

  • standardization process:

    • Working Draft (WD)
    • Last Call Working Draft
    • Candidate Recommendation (CR)
    • Proposed Recommendation (PR)
    • W3C Recommendation (REC)
  • more on wikipedia

• OMG (Object Management Group)

  • consortium focused on modeling (programs, systems and business processes) and model-based standards (UML for example)
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• FIPA (Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents)

  • developing and setting computer software standards for heterogeneous and interacting agents and agent-based systems
  • dissolved in 2005 and an IEEE standards committee was set up in its place
  • more on wikipedia

• OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards)

  • global consortium that drives the development, convergence and adoption of e-business and web service standards
  • members join OASIS Technical Committees (TCs) where they can be observers or active voting members
  • liaises with W3C and ISO
  • more on wikipedia

• ebXML (Electronic Business using eXtensible Markup Language)

  • family of XML based standards sponsored by OASIS and UN/CEFACT
  • more on wikipedia