If you have ever wondered about the lifecycle of an ISO standard, or wanted to know more about what ISO is, then this article is for you.

What Is ISO?

Founded in 1947 by a group of delegates from 25 countries, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is a nongovernmental organization made up of national standards bodies with a unified goal of ensuring products and services are safe, reliable, and of good quality.

It develops and publishes a wide range of proprietary, industrial, and commercial standards and is comprised of representatives from various national standards organizations. In this article we will focus on the Information Technology (IT) arena.

ISO Standards Lifecycle

ISO has a Joint Technical Committee (JTC) with the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) to develop standards relating to IT. The process to create such a standard is comprised of 6 stages:

• Stage 1* (proposal stage): An NP (New Project) is under consideration.
• Stage 2 (preparatory stage): A WD (Working Draft) is under consideration.
• Stage 3 (committee stage): A CD (Committee Draft) is under consideration.
• Stage 4* (enquiry stage): An DIS (Draft International Standard) is under consideration.
• Stage 5 (approval stage): An FDIS (Final Draft International Standard) is under consideration.
• Stage 6* (publication stage): An IS (International Standard) is being prepared for publication.

Note: The stages marked with an asterisk (*) are mandatory and cannot be skipped.

Stage 1 (Proposal)

ISO has a Joint Technical Committee (JTC) with the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) to develop standards relating to IT. Known as JTC 1, it was created in 1987 and whose mission is “to develop worldwide Information and Communication Technology (ICT) standards for business and consumer applications”.

The process starts with a study period, the outcome of which is a New work item Proposal (NP). This is usually submitted to the JTC 1, which is formed of National Bodies (NB) and a Techincal Committee (TC).

The NP document includes enough information about the project to allow a NB to decide if it is going to participate in a project. This information includes the obvious things like title, scope, and program of work as well as a business case that sets out the purpose and justification for doing the standardization.

Once an NP is created, it is submitted to a vote within JTC 1. In order to achieve acceptance, it needs to meet the two following conditions:

• Two thirds (2/3) of the Principal members of JTC 1 (called P-members) must approve the work
• at least five P members of JTC 1 must participate in the work

Stage 2 (Preparatory)

Once the NP is approved, it is assigned to a subcommittee (SC) to work on it. The SC establishes a Working Group (WG) to take responsibility, find a project editor for the project, and create a Working Draft (WD).

The draft will go through several revisions, process that can prove time consuming. For this, JTC 1 can flag anything that is stagnating in this stage 3 years after the NP’s creation date. Factors that cause stagnations are issues related to copyright, patents and conformity assessment.

Once the WG decides that the document respects the standard format and has the right content, it forwards it to the WG’s parent committee who will decide which stage to go to next:

1. Send the document as a Committee Draft (CD) to the Committee stage
2. Skip the Comittee stage to directly send it as a Draft International Standard (DIS) to Enquiry stage.

Stage 3 (Committee)

During this optional stage, the WG sends the document as a Commitee Draft (CD) to the members of the parent committee who then comment and vote. This can happen repeatedly, until the parent committee agrees that the technical content is correct and complete.

At this stage, the committee submits the document for registration for Draft International Standard (DIS) ballot.

Stage 4 (Enquiry)

The Draft International Standard (DIS) is submitted to ISO Central Secretariat. It is then circulated to National Bodies (NB) who have 12 weeks to vote (Yes,, No or abstain) and comment on it.

If 2/3 of the P-members vote Yes and no more than 1/4 of the total number of votes cast are negative, the DIS is considered as approved and is sent directly to 6th and final stage: Publication.

On the other hand, if the DIS is not approved and technical changes are proposed, the committee further submits the document to the next stage as a Final Draft International Standard (FDIS).

Stage 5 (Approval)

The document is now sent out for a Final Draft International Standard (FDIS) vote. This is a two-month ballot, that requires at least two thirds of positive votes, along with no more than one-quarter of the total number of cast votes being negative.

If the vote fails, the document goes back to the CD stage. If it passes only minor editorial changes are possible to the document before it goes to the next stage for publishing.

Stage 6 (Publication)

At this stage the secretary submits the final document for publication. But if the standard has passed through the Approval stage, the manager may submit the project leader’s responses to member body comments on the FDIS.

Only editorial corrections can be made to the final text, which is then published by the ISO Central Secretariat as an International Standard.

Conclusion

As you can see, the ISO lifecycle may look simple on the surface, but its process can be tedious. With repeated rounds of proposals, comments, votes, revisions and approvals, one can see that the standardization process is not a quick one.