Shaping IT Through Participation in Standards Setting – A Practicable Alternative for Users?

Kai Jakobs, Aachen University Computer Science Department, Informatik IV, Rob Procter, and Robin Williams

1/01/2005
(Original Publish Date: 1999)

The paper presents and discusses some findings from a survey of multi-national corporate e-mail users. After a brief description of the methodology used is followed by a discussion of users' opinions regarding active participation in the standards setting process, as revealed by the survey. Relations between the different stakeholders of the process are identified, and the specific differences between large users and SMEs are discussed, as is the issue of why, how, where, and when to participate. Finally, in order to make sure that standards actually meet the user community's diverse requirements, a new standards setting process is proposed.