A Learning Experience, I Hope
Last week I was a bit critical of INCITS’s committee process that allowed what appears to be stacking of the committee in advance of a major vote. We’ve also seen reports from at least one national body where a weak process or – worse – bad enforcement of the process has made one wonder about how standards are created and approved, specifically Portugal. And Rob Weir points out that Ecma is pretty blatant in advertising that it approves submissions without revisions, allowing them to be submitted to JTC1 essentially without review.
But at least our friends in South Africa seem to be catching on to what is going on, and see the misuse of the PAS process as A Bad Thing. I’m starting to feel like the PAS process is broken, frankly, which is a shame. I think that the basic concept behind the PAS process, where work done outside the ISO/IEC JTC1 process can be submitted to JTC1 for approval, is a good one, and allows international recognition of work done by a variety of organizations. But as I said in February, “It’s not so much a bad process as a process with certain weaknesses.” JTC1 needs to take a look at revising the PAS process and be much stricter about what it allows to be submitted. Rubber stamping of work created in a closed, commercial environment is not compatible with an open, consensus-based standards process.
I’ve quite encouraged by Andy Updegrove’s report this morning that the INCITS Executive Board has defined the mechanism (an ad hoc process, I suppose) they will use to deal with the OOXML ballot and produce a U.S. recommendation to JTC1. I know most of the Executive Board members, as well as the V1 chair and the folks at JTC1 SC34, and know them to be professional, competent people. I’ll trust them to do the best they can with the process they have.
Even the best of organizations have weaknesses in their committee and approval processes. Not every possible future situation or controversy can be anticipated. Organizations learn over time, and most constantly revise their processes based on these new situations. We’ll just hope that all of the organizations involved in this recent controversy will, once things settle down, take a look at how to prevent the next one from being so messy.