Communications of the ACM
Sharing Standards: Standardizing the European Information Society
In 1999, the European Union formally approved Agenda 2000 (europa.eu.int/comm/ agenda2000/overview/en/agenda.htm) as "a strategy for strengthening growth, competitiveness and employment for modernizing key policies and for extending the Union's borders through enlargement as far eastward as the Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova." Also in 1999, the EU formally inaugurated a new common currency called the euro. The French finance minister said, "There was a time when empires were created by marching armies but [now] tens and tens of millions give themselves a currency [the euro] to unite their destinies." In an effort to create an economic and political superpower, the EU is standardizing its activities and leading the world to incorporate its standards. This standardization effort is particularly evident in information and communication technology (ICT).
The EU took two bold steps in 1998 to advance its ICT standardization position. One step was to create a new Information Society Standardization System. The other step was to introduce a new category of standardization document called a Workshop Agreement.
What lies behind these steps and what will happen next? What are the new opportunities for Europeans and others to participate in EU standards development? How will collaborations among other standards development organizations be effected by these new European developments?
The Organizations
European law recognizes three official European standards organizations: CENthe European Committee for Standardization (www.cenorm.be); CENELECthe European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (www.cenelec.be); and ETSIthe European Telecommunications Standards Institute (www.etsi.org).
The mission of these organizations is to promote voluntary technical harmonization in Europe in collaboration with worldwide bodies. In 1985, the European Commission detailed plans to achieve a common market by 1992. It invoked the support of CEN, CENELEC, and ETSI to deliver the large volume of standards required to remove technical trade barriers. In view of the voting power in international standards bodies of the many European countries, the threat of a standards-based "Fortress Europe," and the pace demanded by the 1992 objective, international standards organizations became and remain particularly supportive of European needs.
"There was a time when empires were created by marching armies but [now] tens and tens of millions give themselves a currency [the euro] to unite their destinies."
Europe continues to lead in regional ICT standardization activities. In 1998, CEN created a new entity called the Information Society Standardization System (ISSS). ISSS (www.cenorm.be/isss) was created to include all the relevant European information society standardization activities under a single umbrella. ISSS provides a range of products to meet the ICT standardization needs of Europe not separately covered by CENELEC or ETSI. To quote from the ISSS literature, the organization's goal is "to provide market players with a comprehensive and integrated range of standardization-oriented services and products in order to contribute to the success of the information society in Europe."
Competing with Consortia
ISSS was created, in part, to counter the rise of consortia in the worldwide ICT standards arena. CEN identified and described over 140 open, ICT standards-developing consortia (almost certainly an underestimate), such as the Internet Engineering Task Force, the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), and the Object Management Group. CEN concluded (see www.cenorm.be/isss/Survey.htm for more information):
The relative decline in the role of formal standardization has been matched by the development of "consortia standardization," in which interested parties club together to produce "standards" without the so-called drawbacks of the formal standards process. These consortia have their own drawbacks, not least in terms of ensuring broad consensus and subsequent visibility, but they are an established feature of the landscape.
Consortia now dominate much of the world of ICT standardization.
Financial support for consortia varies. Companies that pay a fee to maintain the infrastructure of the consortium form a business-based consortium, such as the Object Management Group. Some consortia accept only people who individually pay fees, as in the IEEE. The Internet Engineering Task Force receives infrastructure support from the U.S. government but is open at no fee to participation by any individual. The financial model of ISSS is a cross between that of the Internet Engineering Task Force and business-based consortia. For many ISSS activities, the EU provides financial support through CEN; for some activities, the participants are encouraged to pay subscription fees.
Many consortia are able to move from the stage of having identified a need for a particular standard to the publishing of the approved standard within a year. By contrast, the major International Standards Development Organization (ISO) has traditionally followed a five-year standards development cycle. Both ISO and CEN have within the past few years introduced major new tracks in their standards development process, allowing speedy development and publication of official documents.
ISSS was created, in part, to solidify CEN efforts in the ICT arena. Furthermore, ISSS has been created to address the following CEN concerns about consortia-based standardization:
- Many core technologies are driven from the U.S., and European companies may find it difficult to participate;
- Consortia activities generally do not adequately take into account user requirements or the needs of local markets; and
- There may be inadequate synergies among different consortia.
ISSS attempts to maximize the ability of Europeans to determine the content of standards, to be most sensitive to the needs of Europe, and to coordinate standardization activities.
In addition to its formal development role, ISSS is also charged with increasing consumer awareness of standards and the responsiveness of standards developers to consumer concerns. ISSS believes that through the use of the Web, consumers should be able to more easily access information about standards activities and to supply input to the process.
Workshops
To introduce speed into its operation, in 1997 CEN created a new type of product under its Workshop Agreement (CWA). This product responds to market needs first recognized in the ICT sector with its characteristically short product life cycles. CWA development occurs in open workshops that are established and then dissolved depending on the respective work items. Access to these workshops is open to participants outside Europe. Physical meetings are limited since most work can be done by using the Internet. CWA development time is relatively short.
Anyone can create an ISSS workshop. The first step is to prepare a work plan. This plan must have exactly three parts: objectives, schedule of deliverables, and budget.
The work plan is submitted to the ISSS Secretariat. The Secretariat (which is funded by CEN) assesses whether the work plan is in accord with ISSS's other activities. If the work plan is accepted, the ISSS will then help find a Workshop Secretariat, post the work plan on the ISSS Web site for feedback and support, and host a kick-off meeting. The goal of a workshop's formal kick-off meeting is to appoint officers, approve the draft work plan, and agree on the technical work.
Work plans may be in different stages of development when they are brought to ISSS. A plan may focus on a new issue for exploration. Alternatively, it may be that a consortium or forum has started work and needs a more appropriate environment to increase the breadth of participant expertise or to test its progress in the open market. Indeed, the development stage may have already ended and the creators seek an arena for validation and feedback. ISSS's role is to complement, not duplicate, work performed elsewhere. The flexible model is proving useful to bring, for example, the results of funded research projects into the public arena.
A workshop is expected to rely extensively on the Internet for communication and archiving documents. Nevertheless, face-to-face meetings cannot be avoided altogether. Documentation for any meeting will be available online before the meeting, and results of the meeting will be posted online. A work sheet for each workshop deliverable must indicate the scope, time-scale, and editor for the deliverable. The work sheet will be regularly updated by the ISSS Secretariat.
Where consensus has been reached on a deliverable, the Workshop Secretariat shall pass as soon as possible any resulting CWA to the ISSS Secretariat for publication. The ISSS Secretariat will provide the document in .pdf format to all CEN Members.
Technical Committees and EDIFACT
In addition to workshops, ISSS has control of two other technical standards development entities: technical committees (TCs) relevant to ICT that were formally directly administered by CEN and the new European Board for EDIFACT Standards.
The TCs go through a multi-year process of producing different stages of a standard. When a TC believes its technical work is complete, it seeks top-level ratification. TCs gather the national delegations of experts convened by CEN national members. Each nation makes sure its delegation conveys a national point of view and is comprehensive to all interests affected by the proposed standard. When these national members have approved the final document, the document is officially a CEN standard.
There are 10 TCs under ISSS's jurisdiction. The breadth and depth of these TCs is suggested by the brief description of topics addressed by three of the TCs:
- Machine readable cards. A TC develops standards for bank, health, and other cards; related device interfaces; inter-industry standardization; integrated circuits cards; and for testing of compliance of cards with technical standards.
- Road transport and traffic telematics. A TC develops standards for vehicle identification, communication between vehicles and road infrastructure, communication between vehicles, vehicle-person interfacing, traffic and parking management, user fee collection, and public transport management.
- European localization requirements. A TC standardizes the identification, manipulation and coded representation of European character data, and its input, interchange, and rendition by electronic means.
The European Board for EDIFACT Standards (EBES) began in 1999. EBES is the European entry point within the UN/EDIFACT process and constitutes a focal point for European coordination. The Board provides a structure to ensure that European-developed EDIFACT messages and amendments (known as data maintenance requests) are submitted to the global directory of approved messages. About 800 such requests are currently produced annually in Europe.
Core participants subscribe financially to EBES. These core participants are allowed to submit data maintenance requests and to vote on decisions in EBES. Beside these core participants, any interested parties may register as associated participants. These associated participants are placed on an email list and receive general information about the EBES work.
Existing Workshops
Workshops offer a place where clients (in particular the users) can bring their ICT standardization requirements and be given the opportunity to find a solution in an environment tailor-made for their needs. The subject matter of ISSS workshops is as diverse as the information society. Generally, ISSS is most active in applications. ISSS does not deal with the infra-structural aspects that are proper to its sister organization, ETSI.
ISSS initiated over a dozen workshops in its first year of existence and receives a steady stream of new proposals. The brief descriptions of the following workshops will indicate the different character they might assume.
The Extensions for Financial Services Workshop. This illustrates the transformation of a consortium into a workshop. The workshop plan was prepared by the Banking Solutions Vendor Council (BSVC) and approved in June 1998. BSVC defined a 32-bit Windows open application-programming interface for supporting retail-banking peripherals. The BSVC standard was proposed to be published as a CWA and by December 1998 was officially published by CEN as a CWA. BSVC core members included ICL, Microsoft, Retail Management Solutions, and Siemens Nixdorf. This original core subsequently expanded into 17 (paying) core members from different continents and numerous associate members.
The Electronic Commerce Workshop. Formed as a spin-off of the reorganization of EBES subsequent to its placement within ISSS, the former EBES Technical Steering Group founded the ISSS E-commerce Workshop. The principle of the E-commerce Workshop is to provide a European platform for considering e-commerce standardization requirements. The workshop has 250 registered participants.
In tandem with the creation of the E-commerce Workshop, ISSS obtained funding from the EU to further stimulate e-commerce activity. With this funding, pilot projects are implemented. The results of these projects are incorporated into ISSS workshops and then published as CWAs. In this way, e-commerce in individual sectors can cross-fertilize. The first two such workshops are the Electronic Commerce for Hospital Procurement Workshop and the Electronic Commerce for the Sanitaryware and Heating Systems Industry Workshop.
Learning Technologies Standardization Workshop. The EU mandated the creation of this particular workshop and is initially funding the development of a large-scale plan that would assure widespread use of electronic multimedia in education throughout Europe. This workshop can be used to illustrate a major concern about the relationship between standards development in ISSS workshops and developments elsewhere. The IEEE created a Learning Technologies Standards Committee in 1998.
The work plan of the ISSS Learning Technologies Standardization Workshop seeks to complement the work of the IEEE Learning Technologies Standards Committee. This cooperation should produce European localization requirements of IEEE's relevant standards. In general, however, consensus across different standards consortia is difficult to achieve. At the regional level, CEN/ISSS strives for consensus across the different consortia that participate in ISSS activities.
Future
The impact of a standard is proportional to the extent that organizations decide to conform to the standard. The EU's large and growing size provides an immediate and receptive audience for its standards. However, the ISSS also faces obstacles related to its regional character.
Traditional standards have well-recognized legal significance in trade agreements. The new ISSS workshop agreements do not presently have this legal significance, although this possibility is now under consideration by the European Commission. The information society is a global one, and the results of a regional standardization activity might not be accepted in other regions. Competition between European efforts and efforts elsewhere could lead to reduced global cooperation. Nevertheless, European specifics need to be considered.
The strengths of the ISSS approach include rapid development of new standards documents through the use of Internet tools and a reduced number of steps to get a standards document to be recognized by and published by CEN. The EU is investing substantial resources into information and communications technologies standardization. The EU is attempting to relate such standardization to the concerns of every enterprise in Europe. Such a commitment by the governments of Europe to support the Information society could contribute to the prosperity of Europe and could encourage similar efforts elsewhere in the world. Each geographic region could develop its own equivalent of ISSS and through appropriate collaborative agreements contribute to the global information society.
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