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The International Organization for Standardization (ISO ; ; ) is an independent, non-governmental,
international standard An international standard is a technical standard developed by one or more international standards organizations. International standards are available for consideration and use worldwide. The most prominent such organization is the International O ...
development organization composed of representatives from the national
standards organization A standards organization, standards body, standards developing organization (SDO), or standards setting organization (SSO) is an organization whose primary function is developing, coordinating, promulgating, revising, amending, reissuing, interpr ...
s of member countries. Membership requirements are given in Article 3 of the ISO Statutes. ISO was founded on 23 February 1947, and () it has published over 25,000 international standards covering almost all aspects of technology and manufacturing. It has over 800 technical committees (TCs) and subcommittees (SCs) to take care of standards development. The organization develops and publishes
international standard An international standard is a technical standard developed by one or more international standards organizations. International standards are available for consideration and use worldwide. The most prominent such organization is the International O ...
s in technical and nontechnical fields, including everything from manufactured products and technology to food safety, transport, IT, agriculture, and healthcare. More specialized topics like
electrical Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter possessing an electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as described by Maxwel ...
and
electronic engineering Electronic engineering is a sub-discipline of electrical engineering that emerged in the early 20th century and is distinguished by the additional use of active components such as semiconductor devices to amplify and control electric current flo ...
are instead handled by the
International Electrotechnical Commission The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC; ) is an international standards organization that prepares and publishes international standards for all electrical, electronics, electronic and related technologies. IEC standards cover a va ...
.Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica. 3 June 2021.
International Organization for Standardization
. . ''Encyclopedia Britannica''. Retrieved 2022-04-26.
It is headquartered in
Geneva Geneva ( , ; ) ; ; . is the List of cities in Switzerland, second-most populous city in Switzerland and the most populous in French-speaking Romandy. Situated in the southwest of the country, where the Rhône exits Lake Geneva, it is the ca ...
, Switzerland. The three
official language An official language is defined by the Cambridge English Dictionary as, "the language or one of the languages that is accepted by a country's government, is taught in schools, used in the courts of law, etc." Depending on the decree, establishmen ...
s of ISO are English, French, and Russian.


Name and abbreviations

The International Organization for Standardization in French is ' and in Russian, ('). Although one might think ''ISO'' is an abbreviation for "International Standardization Organization" or a similar title in another language, the letters do not officially represent an
acronym An acronym is a type of abbreviation consisting of a phrase whose only pronounced elements are the initial letters or initial sounds of words inside that phrase. Acronyms are often spelled with the initial Letter (alphabet), letter of each wor ...
or
initialism An acronym is a type of abbreviation consisting of a phrase whose only pronounced elements are the initial letters or initial sounds of words inside that phrase. Acronyms are often spelled with the initial letter of each word in all caps wi ...
. The organization provides this explanation of the name:
Because 'International Organization for Standardization' would have different acronyms in different languages (IOS in English, OIN in French), our founders decided to give it the short form ''ISO''. ''ISO'' is derived from the Greek word ' (, meaning "equal"). Whatever the country, whatever the language, the short form of our name is always ''ISO''.
During the founding meetings of the new organization, however, the Greek word explanation was not invoked, so this meaning may be a
false etymology A false etymology (fake etymology or pseudo-etymology) is a false theory about the origin or derivation of a specific word or phrase. When a false etymology becomes a popular belief in a cultural/linguistic community, it is a folk etymology (or po ...
. (page 20) Both the name ''ISO'' and the ISO logo are registered trademarks and their use is restricted.


History

The organization that is known today as ISO began in 1926 as the International Federation of the National Standardizing Associations (ISA), which primarily focused on
mechanical engineering Mechanical engineering is the study of physical machines and mechanism (engineering), mechanisms that may involve force and movement. It is an engineering branch that combines engineering physics and engineering mathematics, mathematics principl ...
. The ISA was suspended in 1942 during
World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
but, after the war, the ISA was approached by the recently formed
United Nations The United Nations (UN) is the Earth, global intergovernmental organization established by the signing of the Charter of the United Nations, UN Charter on 26 June 1945 with the stated purpose of maintaining international peace and internationa ...
Standards Coordinating Committee (UNSCC) with a proposal to form a new global standards body. In October 1946, ISA and UNSCC delegates from 25 countries met in
London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...
and agreed to join forces to create the International Organization for Standardization. The organization officially began operations on 23 February 1947. ISO Standards were originally known as ''ISO Recommendations'' (''ISO/R''), e.g., "
ISO 1 ISO 1 is an international standard set by the International Organization for Standardization that specifies the standard reference temperature for geometrical product specification and verification. The temperature is fixed at 20  degree ...
" was issued in 1951 as "ISO/R 1".


Structure and organization

ISO is a voluntary organization whose members are recognized authorities on standards, each one representing one country. Members meet annually at a General Assembly to discuss the strategic objectives of ISO. The organization is coordinated by a central secretariat based in
Geneva Geneva ( , ; ) ; ; . is the List of cities in Switzerland, second-most populous city in Switzerland and the most populous in French-speaking Romandy. Situated in the southwest of the country, where the Rhône exits Lake Geneva, it is the ca ...
. A council with a rotating membership of 20 member bodies provides guidance and governance, including setting the annual budget of the central secretariat. The technical management board is responsible for more than 250 technical committees, who develop the ISO standards.


Joint technical committee with IEC

ISO has a joint technical committee (JTC) with the
International Electrotechnical Commission The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC; ) is an international standards organization that prepares and publishes international standards for all electrical, electronics, electronic and related technologies. IEC standards cover a va ...
(IEC) to develop standards relating to
information technology Information technology (IT) is a set of related fields within information and communications technology (ICT), that encompass computer systems, software, programming languages, data processing, data and information processing, and storage. Inf ...
(IT). Known as JTC 1 and entitled "Information technology", it was created in 1987 and its mission is "to develop worldwide
Information and Communication Technology Information and communications technology (ICT) is an extensional term for information technology (IT) that stresses the role of unified communications and the integration of telecommunications (telephone lines and wireless signals) and computer ...
(ICT) standards for business and consumer applications." There was previously also a JTC 2 that was created in 2009 for a joint project to establish common terminology for "standardization in the field of energy efficiency and renewable energy sources". It was later disbanded.


Membership

, there are 167 national members representing ISO in their country, with each country having only one member. ISO has three membership categories, * ''Member bodies'' are national bodies considered the most representative standards body in each country. These are the only members of ISO that have voting rights. * ''Correspondent members'' are countries that do not have their own standards organization. These members are informed about the work of ISO, but do not participate in standards promulgation. * ''Subscriber members'' are countries with small economies. They pay reduced membership fees, but can follow the development of standards. Participating members are called "P" members, as opposed to observing members, who are called "O" members.


Financing

ISO is funded by a combination of: * Organizations that manage the specific projects or loan experts to participate in the technical work * Subscriptions from member bodies, whose subscriptions are in proportion to each country's gross national product and trade figures * Sale of standards


International standards and other publications

International standards are the main products of ISO. It also publishes technical reports, technical specifications, publicly available specifications, technical
corrigenda An erratum or corrigendum (: errata, corrigenda) (comes from ) is a correction of a published text. Generally, publishers issue an erratum for a production error (i.e., an error introduced during the publishing process) and a corrigendum for an a ...
(corrections), and guides.The ISO directives are published in two distinct parts: * * International standards : These are designated using the format ''ISO IEC
ASTM ASTM International, formerly known as American Society for Testing and Materials, is a standards organization that develops and publishes voluntary consensus technical international standards for a wide range of materials, products, systems and s ...
Snnnnn p yyyTitle'', where ''nnnnn'' is the number of the standard, ''p'' is an optional part number, ''yyyy'' is the year published, and ''Title'' describes the subject. ''IEC'' for ''
International Electrotechnical Commission The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC; ) is an international standards organization that prepares and publishes international standards for all electrical, electronics, electronic and related technologies. IEC standards cover a va ...
'' is included if the standard results from the work of ISO/IEC JTC 1 (the ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee). ''ASTM'' (American Society for Testing and Materials) is used for standards developed in cooperation with
ASTM International ASTM International, formerly known as American Society for Testing and Materials, is a standards organization that develops and publishes voluntary consensus technical international standards for a wide range of materials, products, systems and s ...
. ''yyyy'' and ''IS'' are not used for an incomplete or unpublished standard and, under some circumstances, may be left off the title of a published work. Technical reports : These are issued when a technical committee or subcommittee has collected data of a different kind from that normally published as an International Standard, such as references and explanations. The naming conventions for these are the same as for standards, except ''TR'' prepended instead of ''IS'' in the report's name. For example: * ISO/IEC TR 17799:2000 Code of Practice for Information Security Management * ISO/TR 19033:2000 Technical product documentation – Metadata for construction documentation Technical and publicly available specifications : Technical specifications may be produced when "the subject in question is still under development or where for any other reason there is the future but not immediate possibility of an agreement to publish an International Standard". A publicly available specification is usually "an intermediate specification, published prior to the development of a full International Standard, or, in IEC may be a 'dual logo' publication published in collaboration with an external organization". By convention, both types of specification are named in a manner similar to the organization's technical reports. For example: * ISO/TS 16952-1:2006 Technical product documentation – Reference designation system – Part 1: General application rules (later withdrawn and replaced by ISO/TS 81346-3:2012, which was later withdrawn) * ISO/PAS 11154:2006 Road vehicles – Roof load carriers (later revised in ISO 11154:2023, which does not have the "PAS" abbreviation in its name) Technical corrigenda :When partnering with IEC in their joint technical committee, ISO also sometimes issues "technical corrigenda" (where "corrigenda" is the plural of corrigendum). These are amendments made to existing standards to correct minor technical flaws or ambiguities. ISO guides :These are meta-standards covering "matters related to international standardization". They are named using the format ''"ISO IECGuide N:yyyy: Title"''. For example: * ISO/IEC Guide 2:2004 Standardization and related activities – General vocabulary * ISO/IEC Guide 65:1996 General requirements for bodies operating product certification (since revised and reissued as ISO/IEC 17065:2012 Conformity assessment — Requirements for bodies certifying products, processes and services).


Document copyright

ISO documents have strict copyright restrictions and ISO charges for most copies. , the typical cost of a copy of an ISO standard is about or more (and electronic copies typically have a single-user license, so they cannot be shared among groups of people). Some standards by ISO and its official U.S. representative (and, via the U.S. National Committee, the
International Electrotechnical Commission The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC; ) is an international standards organization that prepares and publishes international standards for all electrical, electronics, electronic and related technologies. IEC standards cover a va ...
) are made freely available.


Standardization process

A standard published by ISO/IEC is the last stage of a long process that commonly starts with the proposal of new work within a committee. Some abbreviations used for marking a standard with its status are: * PWI – Preliminary Work Item * NP or NWIP – New Proposal / New Work Item Proposal (e.g., ISO/IEC NP 23007) * AWI – Approved new Work Item (e.g., ISO/IEC AWI 15444-14) * WD – Working Draft (e.g., ISO/IEC WD 27032) * CD – Committee Draft (e.g., ISO/IEC CD 23000-5) * FCD – Final Committee Draft (e.g., ISO/IEC FCD 23000-12) * DIS – Draft International Standard (e.g., ISO/IEC DIS 14297) * FDIS – Final Draft International Standard (e.g., ISO/IEC FDIS 27003) * PRF – Proof of a new International Standard (e.g., ISO/IEC PRF 18018) * IS – International Standard (e.g., ISO/IEC 13818-1:2007) Abbreviations used for amendments are: * NP Amd – New Proposal Amendment (e.g., ISO/IEC 15444-2:2004/NP Amd 3) * AWI Amd – Approved new Work Item Amendment (e.g., ISO/IEC 14492:2001/AWI Amd 4) * WD Amd – Working Draft Amendment (e.g., ISO 11092:1993/WD Amd 1) * CD Amd / PDAmd – Committee Draft Amendment / Proposed Draft Amendment (e.g., ISO/IEC 13818-1:2007/CD Amd 6) * FPDAmd / DAM (DAmd) – Final Proposed Draft Amendment / Draft Amendment (e.g., ISO/IEC 14496-14:2003/FPDAmd 1) * FDAM (FDAmd) – Final Draft Amendment (e.g., ISO/IEC 13818-1:2007/FDAmd 4) * PRF Amd – (e.g., ISO 12639:2004/PRF Amd 1) * Amd – Amendment (e.g., ISO/IEC 13818-1:2007/Amd 1:2007) Other abbreviations are: * TR – Technical Report (e.g., ISO/IEC TR 19791:2006) * DTR – Draft Technical Report (e.g., ISO/IEC DTR 19791) * TS – Technical Specification (e.g., ISO/TS 16949:2009) * DTS – Draft Technical Specification (e.g., ISO/DTS 11602-1) * PAS – Publicly Available Specification * TTA – Technology Trends Assessment (e.g., ISO/TTA 1:1994) * IWA – International Workshop Agreements (e.g., IWA 1:2005) * Cor – Technical Corrigendum (e.g., ISO/IEC 13818-1:2007/Cor 1:2008) * Guide – a guidance to technical committees for the preparation of standards International Standards are developed by ISO technical committees (TC) and subcommittees (SC) by a process with six steps: * Stage 1: Proposal stage * Stage 2: Preparatory stage * Stage 3: Committee stage * Stage 4: Enquiry stage * Stage 5: Approval stage * Stage 6: Publication stage The TC/SC may set up
working group A working group is a group of experts working together to achieve specified goals. Such groups are domain-specific and focus on discussion or activity around a specific subject area. The term can sometimes refer to an interdisciplinary collab ...
s (WG) of experts for the preparation of a working drafts. Subcommittees may have several working groups, which may have several Sub Groups (SG). It is possible to omit certain stages, if there is a document with a certain degree of maturity at the start of a standardization project, for example, a standard developed by another organization. ISO/IEC directives also allow the so-called "Fast-track procedure". In this procedure, a document is submitted directly for approval as a draft International Standard (DIS) to the ISO member bodies or as a final draft International Standard (FDIS), if the document was developed by an international standardizing body recognized by the ISO Council. The first step, a proposal of work (New Proposal), is approved at the relevant subcommittee or technical committee (e.g., SC 29 and JTC 1 respectively in the case of MPEG, the
Moving Picture Experts Group The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) is an alliance of working groups established jointly by ISO and IEC that sets standards for media coding, including compression coding of audio, video, graphics, and genomic data; and transmission and ...
). A working group (WG) of experts is typically set up by the subcommittee for the preparation of a working draft (e.g., MPEG is a collection of seven working groups as of 2023). When the scope of a new work is sufficiently clarified, some of the working groups may make an open request for proposals—known as a "call for proposals". The first document that is produced, for example, for audio and video coding standards is called a verification model (VM) (previously also called a "simulation and test model"). When a sufficient confidence in the stability of the standard under development is reached, a working draft (WD) is produced. This is in the form of a standard, but is kept internal to working group for revision. When a working draft is sufficiently mature and the subcommittee is satisfied that it has developed an appropriate technical document for the problem being addressed, it becomes a committee draft (CD) and is sent to the P-member national bodies of the SC for the collection of formal comments. Revisions may be made in response to the comments, and successive committee drafts may be produced and circulated until consensus is reached to proceed to the next stage, called the "enquiry stage". After a consensus to proceed is established, the subcommittee will produce a draft international standard (DIS), and the text is submitted to national bodies for voting and comment within a period of five months. A document in the DIS stage is available to the public for purchase and may be referred to with its ISO DIS reference number. Following consideration of any comments and revision of the document, the draft is then approved for submission as a Final Draft International Standard (FDIS) if a two-thirds majority of the P-members of the TC/SC are in favour and if not more than one-quarter of the total number of votes cast are negative. ISO will then hold a ballot among the national bodies where no technical changes are allowed (a yes/no final approval ballot), within a period of two months. It is approved as an International Standard (IS) if a two-thirds majority of the P-members of the TC/SC is in favour and not more than one-quarter of the total number of votes cast are negative. After approval, the document is published by the ISO central secretariat, with only minor editorial changes introduced in the publication process before the publication as an International Standard. Except for a relatively small number of standards, ISO standards are not available free of charge, but rather for a purchase fee, which has been seen by some as unaffordable for small
open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...
projects. The process of developing standards within ISO was criticized around 2007 as being too difficult for timely completion of large and complex standards, and some members were failing to respond to ballots, causing problems in completing the necessary steps within the prescribed time limits. In some cases, alternative processes have been used to develop standards outside of ISO and then submit them for its approval. A more rapid "fast-track" approval procedure was used in
ISO/IEC JTC 1 ISO/IEC JTC 1, entitled "Information technology", is a joint technical committee (JTC) of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). Its purpose is to develop, maintain an ...
for the standardization of Office Open XML (OOXML, ISO/IEC 29500, approved in April 2008), and another rapid alternative "publicly available specification" (PAS) process had been used by
OASIS In ecology, an oasis (; : oases ) is a fertile area of a desert or semi-desert environmentOpenDocument The Open Document Format for Office Applications (ODF), also known as OpenDocument, standardized as ISO 26300, is an open file format for word processor, word processing documents, spreadsheets, Presentation program, presentations and ...
as an ISO/IEC standard (ISO/IEC 26300, approved in May 2006). As was suggested at the time by Martin Bryan, the outgoing convenor (chairman) of working group 1 (WG1) of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34, the rules of ISO were eventually tightened so that participating members that fail to respond to votes are demoted to observer status. The computer security entrepreneur and
Ubuntu Ubuntu ( ) is a Linux distribution based on Debian and composed primarily of free and open-source software. Developed by the British company Canonical (company), Canonical and a community of contributors under a Meritocracy, meritocratic gover ...
founder, Mark Shuttleworth, was quoted in a ZDNet blog article in 2008 about the process of standardization of OOXML as saying: "I think it de-values the confidence people have in the standards setting process", and alleged that ISO did not carry out its responsibility. He also said that
Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...
had intensely lobbied many countries that traditionally had not participated in ISO and stacked technical committees with Microsoft employees, solution providers, and resellers sympathetic to Office Open XML:
When you have a process built on trust and when that trust is abused, ISO should halt the process... ISO is an engineering old boys club and these things are boring so you have to have a lot of passion ... then suddenly you have an investment of a lot of money and lobbying and you get artificial results. The process is not set up to deal with intensive corporate
lobbying Lobbying is a form of advocacy, which lawfully attempts to directly influence legislators or government officials, such as regulatory agency, regulatory agencies or judiciary. Lobbying involves direct, face-to-face contact and is carried out by va ...
and so you end up with something being a standard that is not clear.


International Workshop Agreements

International Workshop Agreements (IWAs) are documents that establish a collaboration agreement that allow "key industry players to negotiate in an open workshop environment" outside of ISO in a way that may eventually lead to development of an ISO standard.


Products named after ISO

On occasion, the fact that many of the ISO-created standards are ubiquitous has led to common use of "ISO" to describe the product that conforms to a standard. Some examples of this are: * Disk images ending in the file extension "
ISO The International Organization for Standardization (ISO ; ; ) is an independent, non-governmental, international standard development organization composed of representatives from the national standards organizations of member countries. Me ...
" to signify that they are using the ISO 9660 standard file system as opposed to another file system—hence disc images commonly being referred to as "ISOs". * The sensitivity of a photographic film to light (its "
film speed Film speed is the measure of a photographic film's sensitivity to light, determined by sensitometry and measured on various numerical scales, the most recent being the ISO system introduced in 1974. A closely related system, also known as IS ...
") is described by ISO 6, ISO 2240, and ISO 5800. Hence, the speed of the film often is referred to by its ISO number. * As it was originally defined in ISO 518, the flash hot shoe found on cameras often is called the "ISO shoe". * ISO 11783, the communication protocol for the agriculture industry, which is marketed as ISOBUS. * ISO 13216, the standardized attachment points for child safety seats, which is marketed as ISOFIX. * ISO 668, the standardized intermodal containers, sometimes called "ISO containers".


ISO awards

ISO presents several awards to acknowledge the valuable contributions made in the realm of international standardization: * The Lawrence D. Eicher Award: This award acknowledges outstanding standards development. It is available to all ISO and ISO/IEC technical committees. * The ISO Next Generation Award: Aimed at young professionals from ISO member nations, this award highlights those who advocate for sustainability-centric standardization and emphasize the importance of partnerships. * The ISO Excellence Award: Dedicated to recognizing the endeavors of ISO's technical professionals, any individual nominated as an expert, project leader, or convenor in a committee working group is eligible for this award.


See also

* * * * – for sustainability information and linking up with reporting on their 17# GlobalGoals indicators * – a set of technical standards maintained by the Euro-Asian Council for Standardization, Metrology, and Certification * * * – the Interface Marketing Supplier Integration Institute * * * * * * * * * *


ISO divisions

Some of the 834 Technical Committees of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) include: * ISO/TC 37 - ''Language and terminology'' – Terminology and other language content resources * ISO/TC 46 - ''Information and documentation'' - Libraries, archives, indexing and information science * ISO/TC 68 - ''Financial services'' - Banking, securities and financial services * ISO/TC 176 - ''Quality management and quality assurance'' * ISO/TC 211 - ''Geographic information/Geomatics'' - Geographic data and information * ISO/TC 215 - ''Health informatics'' - Health-related data/information * ISO/TC 262 - ''Risk management'' -
Risk management Risk management is the identification, evaluation, and prioritization of risks, followed by the minimization, monitoring, and control of the impact or probability of those risks occurring. Risks can come from various sources (i.e, Threat (sec ...
* ISO/TC 289 - ''Brand evaluation'' -
Brand A brand is a name, term, design, symbol or any other feature that distinguishes one seller's goods or service from those of other sellers. Brands are used in business, marketing, and advertising for recognition and, importantly, to create and ...
evaluation and valuation * ISO/TC 292 - ''Security and resilience'' - Security of society


References


Further reading

* *
''MIT Innovations and Entrepreneurship Seminar Series''


External links

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