Scaffolding the New Web: Standards and Standards Policy for the Digital Economy

Martin Libicki, James Schneider, Dave R. Frelinger, and Anna Slomovic

1/01/2005
(Original Publish Date: 2000)

This work is RAND's response to a request made in FY 1999 by the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to investigate the current standards development process to assess its adequacy and recommend public policies that may be warranted by the need to keep it healthy. The resulting report aims to enhance the reader's sophistication about the standards process and its central issues. It is discursive but cannot claim to have discovered eternal principles. Why? The standards field is complex and nuanced and, like many an organic entity, looks more complicated as one draws closer. It is easier to explain what does not work (complex top-down specifications) than to guarantee that any alternative approach will, in fact, succeed - particularly when the market is molting as rapidly and repeatedly as it does. More so, the text is a snapshot in time. Judgments about the odds of this or that approach reflect the state of knowledge circa the summer of 1999 (and, of course, not the many twists and turns of the market since then). Thus, although this work can inform standards strategy in general, it cannot form the basis for a strategy for any specific standard. The content should be of interest to members of the technology policy community and those curious about how information technology markets work. Readers are assumed to be generally knowledgeable about the industry's structure and products but not necessarily about information technology standards per se.