[Discussioni] Evaluation of Ten Standard Setting Organizations

[Francesco Potorti`]

Il governo danese ha commissionato uno studio sugli standard aperti,
producendo un documento che trovate ad
 <http://www.itst.dk/arkitektur-og-standarder/Standardisering/Aabnestandarder/baggrundsrapporter/Evaluation%20of%20Ten%20Standard%20Setting%20Organizations.pdf>

Questo l'incipit:

On 2 June 2006, the Danish parliament (the Folketing) unanimously
adopted Parliamentary Resolution B103 on the use of open standards for
software in the public sector. The Resolution instructs the Government
to ensure that the public sector's use of information technology,
including the use of software, should be based on open standards.

Therefore, the Danish National IT and Telecom Agency (IT- og
Telestyrelsen) has commissioned to IDC to evaluate the degree of
"openness" of the leading standard setting organizations.

Given the definition of "openness" in B103, this project has developed a
framework for evaluating the ability of standard setting organizations
to define "Open Standards".  Ten standard setting organizations were
evaluated and all organizations had the opportunity to review and
comment on the evaluation of their organization. The ten organizations
are: CEN, Ecma, ETSI, IETF, ISO, ITU, NIST, OASIS, OMG, and W3C.
Looking at the ten organizations researched there are differences in the
number of requirements in which they score positive. It is difficult to
see any clear patterns in the ratings though. We believe there are a
number of reasons for this. Standard organizations are generally aware
of the need of openness because they all aim at providing successful,
widely accepted standards. However, the concepts of openness and
consensus have been implemented using different models that relate to
the type of organization, their formal foundation and their degrees of
formalization.  We therefore see the apparent differences in openness as
a sign of the structure chosen by the organizations.

In conclusion there are, indeed, differences between standard setting
organizations in terms of "openness" and certainly in terms of how
"openness" is implemented. It can be, however, difficult to make a
distinction of which form of "openness" is the most appropriate.