Dear
Mr. Smith,
Thank
you very much for your letter and for attending the PSO General Assembly
2002.
I have
a pleasure to forward your message to the PSO Protocol Council Members for their
consideration
and
will inform you on their decision, which will be taken during the next PSO-PC
conference call
on Wednesday, 24 July 2002.
Kind
regards,
Vladimir Androuchko
PSO-PC Secretary
2001-2002
-----Original
Message-----
From: Smith Michael
[mailto:smith@iso.org]
Sent: jeudi, 20. juin 2002 18:36
To:
Androuchko Vladimir
Cc: Favre Christian; Brannon Keith; jhouldsworth;
Zhao Houlin
Subject: Fw: PSO
Dear Mr Androuchko,
Thank you once again for the opportunity to
attend the PSO General Assembly. It was of great interest to learn of the
recent activities of the PSO members as well as of the
deliberations concerning the reform of ICANN.
I noted that there seems to be some uncertainty
as to whether the PSO will be continued as a result of the ICANN reform.
Nevertheless, I can confirm that ISO remains interested in participating
either in the PSO if it is indeed to continue, or in any other structure that
might be established to succeed it. ISO's application for membership of the
PSO is motivated by the fact that we have many relevant activities and our
belief that our participation would add value to the
organization.
I would therefore take this opportunity to
respond to the open question attached to ISO's application for membership,
namely how participation in ISO work is organized.
Firstly, let me recall that ISO is a federation
of national standards bodies (There are currently ISO members in 143
countries.). It is the responsibility of ISO's national members to ensure that
national positions are established taking account of all interests at the
national level. In order to accomplish this, ISO members establish national
mirror committees corresponding to the ISO committee in question and such
mirror committees are populated by experts from industry, government, academia
etc.
These national committees are responsible for
nominating experts to serve on ISO working groups (the experts serve in
an individual capacity and not as representatives of the ISO
member), as well as selecting the delegates to attend ISO committee
meetings and deciding on the national poisitions to be represented by those
delegates. ISO's formal standards work, through its technical committee
structures, therefore, is based on the establishment of national consensus
positions which are then negotiated in the ISO forum to establish an
international consensus.
As you will appreciate, ISO's scope covers a vast
range of subjects, but to give some idea of the extent of participation in ISO
work, it is estimated that each year some 35 000 experts participate directly
in ISO work and taking into account the national mirror committees there are
over 200 000 experts
contributing to ISO work.
One can add to this figure that some 550 other
international and regional organizations contribute to ISO work via liaison
mechanisms. Depending on the type of liaison chosen such organizations have
the right to participate in ISO committee work and also to nominate experts to
serve on ISO working groups.
As noted above, this description concerns the
formal ISO standardization system through its technical committee structures
and it allows ISO to comply with annex 3 of the WTO/TBT
agreement.
However, in recognition of the fact that some
industries seem no longer to need in all cases fully developed consensus
international standards, ISO has introduced open
workshops as a means for market players
and other interest groups to develop documents which meet their needs.
Participation in such workshops is open to anyone who wishes to attend and
participants do not need to seek accreditation from ISO's national members in
such cases. The output of such workshops is published in the form of
International Workshop Agreements (IWAs).
Of more immediate concern, the ISO/IEC joint
technical committee for information technology standardization (JTC 1) has
also decided to introduce the workshop mechanism as part of its working
procedures and its subcommittees are currently reviewing their work programmes
to identify items which should continue to be developed through the committee
structures and processes and those that would be more suitable for development
in workshops.
I hope the above provides the necessary
clarification as to how a company or individual would be able to participate
in ISO activities.
With kind regards,
Mike Smith
Drector, Standards Department