Bad Process, Part Deux
I’m trying, generally, to keep out of the ODF/OOXML fray. While I have my personal opinions on the matter, in this blog I’m focusing on best practices for standards setting. I’ll leave the OOXML discussions to Andy Updegrove, Bob Sutor, and others.
This morning I read Rob Weir’s account of the voting at INCITS, the ANSI-accredited organization tasked with recommending the U.S. national position on ballots for JTC1. My reaction was the same as after reading the account, last January, of the JTC1 approval process, which didn’t define a key term — bad process.
In the past few weeks, according to Rob’s account, Microsoft and its allies have been stacking the V1 committee at INCITS. Where there were previously seven members of V1, six of whom have now voted against OOXML, within the last couple of months the number has grown to 26, with the 19 new members voting in favour. I can understand the interest that Microsoft has in getting OOXML approved as an international standard, and that it will push the rules as far as it can in order to accomplish this. I will fault, instead, the process of a standards organization that allows this stacking to happen.
A technical process should allow any interested party to join in the work of developing and approving a standard. That’s part of being open, and openness is required by the ANSI Essential Requirements as well being a basic principal required by the World Trade Organization’s policy on Technical Barriers to Trade, the U.S. Standards Strategy, the U.S. OMB Circular A-119, etc.
But a committee process shouldn’t necessarily allow anyone to come and go as they please, and give the right to vote to anyone who walks in off the street at the last minute. Allowing public inspection of a committee’s activities is important, and public comment should be encouraged. But participants should not be allowed to vote until they have been participating long enough to understand the issues and the technology behind the specification, and the process should especially guard against last-minute packing of the room.
Luckily this committee vote was only a preliminary step. We’ll wait to see how the further approval steps at the U.S. and JTC1 levels proceed over the next couple of months.