How to choose the right ICT policy: report on the CEC standardization policy workshop

David Arnold

1/01/2005
(Original Publish Date: 1995)

Arnold summarizes the three-day General Workshop, held in Belgium, at which some 350 attendees, almost all European, discussed the information and communications technology (ICT) standardization policy and the ISO (International Standards Organisation) process for establishing Commission of the European Community (CEC) standards and proposed a wide variety of conflicting improvements. About a third of the participants were government functionaries, 18 percent represented ICT manufacturers, and 16 percent were from the many European standards bodies. I suspect that the workshop organizers deliberately sought confusion by conducting an open discussion among 90 experts in small parallel streams, so the CEC could find some evidence in the resulting chaos to support their prewritten recommendations. The author rather mildly expresses his doubt about these conclusions. A preface to the report states that the workshop's objective reflected the traditional European position that standardization is a method of deliberate economic control rather than an aid to the user or to the supplier. In my opinion, no matter what changes are made in its standardization policy and process, Europe will continue to have to follow the ad hoc and de facto standards set elsewhere as long as its standards setters are embroiled in such obvious confusion and conflict.