You know ISO

You know ISO...
but what are PAS, TS and IWA?

Based on an article by Mike Smith, Director Standards, ISO Central Secretariat. (ISO Bulletin, November 1998)

ISO’s role has evolved over the first fifty years of its existence and will no doubt continue to do so in the future. Through the decisions of Council, ISO responds to its members’ wishes; they in turn respond to the market’s, and thus when new requirements come to be felt for more streamlined procedures to develop normative documents specifically for committees for whom speed is all-important, ISO has responded by developing new products to cater for these needs.

Let us for a moment look back at the why’s of these evolving needs.

When ISO was created in 1947, its objective was essentially to provide recommendations to its members aimed at harmonizing national standards, and for the first 25 years of its existence, the results of ISO’s technical work were published as ISO Recommendations.

It was in the early 1970s that ISO began to publish International Standards and, with hindsight, this was a very opportune moment given the significant expansion of international trade which followed. By the early 1980s, it was starting to be accepted that ISO standards had their own validity in the market place and by the latter part of the decade we saw the first signs of what has come to be known as the globalization of markets. These were interesting times for ISO and those involved with the organization. Not only were ISO standards starting to establish their own validity in the marketplace, but in many instances ISO was being asked to prepare the first standards on particular topics, and was consequently moving away from its original mission of harmonizing national standards. Global markets would need international standards, it was reasoned, and the future of ISO was therefore assured.

That assurance was to be challenged by two major events in the late 1980s/early 1990s, however. The first was the decision by the European Community to create the Single European Market on the basis of very general, Community-wide legislation supported by voluntary consensus standards developed by the European standards bodies. For many years, the European Commission had accepted that ISO standards could serve for the purposes of harmonization within Europe and the activities of ISO’s counterpart at the European level, CEN, the European Committee for Standardization, had generally been low-key. This new decision, to establish the so-called New Approach Directives in Europe, resulted in a very significant expansion of European standardization activity and in many cases a diversion of resources for standardization from ISO to CEN, bearing in mind that Europe has always been one of the major contributors to international standardization. In some instances, therefore, the activites of some ISO standards-developing groups came essentially to a standstill, which, not unexpectedly, caused some degree of consternation amongst ISO’s non-European members.

Ultimately, this development resulted in the establishment of the Vienna Agreement on technical cooperation between ISO and CEN, by which both organizations benefit from the results of standardization work at the international and European levels and also by means of which ISO’s non-European members can influence European standardization. With this has also come the realization that the Single European Market (SEM) is not an end in itself and that, given the volume of trade to and from Europe, the SEM needs to be integrated into the global market. And a final consequence has been a much increased rate of adoption of ISO standards as national standards, not only within the European Union, in which around 40 % of all European standards are direct adoptions of ISO standards, but also in other countries around the world.

All well and good? Well, not quite.

Hierarchy

The second major event which emerged in the 1990s was the realization that the traditional hierarchy of international, regional, national and company standards was increasingly being supplemented by "standards" developed in other fora, generally called consortia, particularly in areas of fast-moving technology. Such documents generally represent an agreement between major market players and not the wide consensus which is typical of an ISO standard. Undeniably however such documents were achieving the status of de facto international standards in the market place and in some sectors therefore the question was whether ISO’s methodology for reaching agreements on standards was still relevant.

Over the last few years, various consultations have been carried out with industry and it has been confirmed that the activities of consortia do not represent a threat to the formal standardization system. The vast majority of industries continue to need international standards developed according tothe full ISO process of consensus and transparency, and in most cases the timeframes required for the development of such standards are acceptable. At the same time, it has to be recognized that the documents developed in the alternative fora are meeting a market need and that generally these are produced more rapidly than ISO standards and therefore are more able to respond to the rapid product development and marketing cycles which have become typical of some industries. In some instances such documents have achieved the status of de facto international standards.

To face this challenge, and to respond to the need for continuous improvement of its processes, ISO therefore decided to develop streamlined procedures which can be used at the discretion of those ISO technical committees for which speed of standards development is a paramount consideration, and to rationalize the set of ISO deliverables. It streamlined its existing procedures and, more particularly, introduced two new deliverables possessing reduced levels of transparency and consensus but which seem to respond to market requirements at least in some sectors.

As part of the streamlining of existing procedures, ISO committees will in future, subject to certain conditions, have the option of dispensing with the committee stage – the part of the ISO process during which national positions are debated in order to reach consensus within an ISO committee – and with the final approval stage, during which the texts of final standards are submitted for formal approval by the full ISO membership.

New deliverables representing the consensus between technical experts in an ISO working group or an international consensus achieved in an ISO committee, allow publication of new types of documents, called, respectively, Publicly Available Specification (ISO/PAS), and Technical Specification (ISO/TS). ISO will also provide the possibility for adoption of documents developed outside the ISO system by less transparent and consensual procedures.

Such documents, whether developed within or outside the ISO system as ISO/PAS or ISO/TS, must be reviewed every three years and at the second review must either be withdrawn or revised to become full ISO International Standards.

ISO International products:
A coherent collection of the major normative documents

Click to see a schematic representation of the choice of types of normative document now available. Explanations of the products can be obtained either by clicking directly on the diagram, or on the links below.

· ISO Standard

· ISO/PAS Publicly Available Specification

· ISO/TS Technical Specification

· ISO/TR Technical Report

· International Workshop Agreement (IWA)

While due process remains a fundamental concept to all of ISO’s activities, it is hoped that these new procedures and deliverables will demonstrate ISO’s willingness to be flexible and responsive to world requirements for technical standards.

Not only should this arsenal of new deliverables help to ensure the relevance of ISO’s International Standards on all fronts by responding to current market requirements; if these new types of document help obtain wider diffusion and spread of information and knowledge on new or upcoming areas of technology, thereby strengthening links between standardization and the world of research, then they will be providing an added – ancillary – bonus.

Last modified 2003-02-13

"Over the last few years, various consultations have been carried out with industry and it has been confirmed that the activities of consortia do not represent a threat to the formal standardization system."

"... The ISO Council has decided to add another mechanism to ISO’s armoury for providing normative documents... through an open workshop mechanism whereby market players will be able to negotiate in a workshop setting the contents of particular Industrial Technical Agreements."