At the beginning of November 2007, the Trinidad and Tobago Bureau of Standards (TTBS) invited the Trinidad and Tobago Computer Society (TTCS) to participate in a mirror committee for Information Technology.This committee was established by the TTBS to develop national policy positions on various issues and to contribute towards the work of the ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1 (ISO/IEC JTC 1).
The TTBS has recently acquired Participatory Member Status (P-status) in the ISO/IEC JTC 1. This involves mandatory voting on draft international standards and compulsory involvement in working groups and sub-committees.
At the ISO’s ballot to fast-track Microsoft’s Office OpenXML (OOXML) format as an international standard (held in September 2007), the Trinidad and Tobago Bureau of Standards (TTBS) cast an “abstain” vote. It is likely that this issue will continue to be discussed by the mirror committee as another vote on OpenXML is scheduled for February 2008.
The TTCS will be posting the various issues before the TTBS committee to our mailing lists, wiki and blog comments. Do consider them and let us know your opinions on these matters.
Many new P-status members who joined ISO/IEC JTC1 before the OpenXML vote are not voting on other ISO standards. We do not want Trinidad and Tobago to be one of them. See ConsortiumInfo.org post : “..Global Standards Work in SC 34 “Grinds to a Halt”
The TTCS will post more details about the TTBS IT committee as they become available.
About ISO/IEC JTC 1
The ISO/IEC JTC 1 mission statement is “to develop, maintain, promote and facilitate IT standards required by global markets meeting business and user requirements concerning
- the design and development of IT systems and tools
- the performance and quality of IT products and systems
- the security of IT systems and information
- the portability of application programs
- the interoperability of IT products and systems
- the unified tools and environments
- the harmonized IT vocabulary, and
- the user-friendly and ergonomically-designed user interfaces.”
There are eighteen sub-committees (SC) working under ISO/IEC JTC1, but one subcommittee SC 34, has received a great deal on attention on a recent vote related to the Microsoft OpenXML format.
