ABSTRACT: A WORK IN PROGRESS: GOVERNMENT SUPPORT FOR STANDARD SETTING IN THE UNITED STATES: 1980 – 2004

Andrew Updegrove

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

The United States government has historically not taken active an interest in supporting the development of voluntary consensus standards, or making use of them in its own purchasing. In the last two decades of the twentieth century, Congress passed several pieces of legislation that reversed this position. This article reviews the benefits that Congress sought to achieve in so doing, the agencies that they charged with administering and complying with the new legislation, and the regulatory and other activities undertaken to achieve those goals.