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57-697: The World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly (WTSA), the sector's governing conference, convenes every four years. ITU-T has a permanent secretariat called the Telecommunication Standardization Bureau (TSB), which is based at the ITU headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland . The current director of the TSB is Seizo Onoe (of Japan), whose 4-year term commenced on 1 January 2023. Seizo Onoe succeeded Chaesub Lee of South Korea, who

114-420: A calendar issued by the TSB. SGs are augmented by Focus Groups (FGs), an instrument created by ITU-T, providing a way to quickly react to ICT standardization needs and allowing great flexibility in terms of participation and working methods. The key difference between SGs and FGs is that the latter have greater freedom to organize and finance themselves, and to involve non-members in their work, but they do not have

171-542: 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

228-442: 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: Abbreviations used for amendments are: Other abbreviations are: International Standards are developed by ISO technical committees (TC) and subcommittees (SC) by a process with six steps: The TC/SC may set up working groups  (WG) of experts for

285-416: A profusion of software firms around the world were still furiously competing to shape the future of the electronic office , and was completed in 1999 long after Microsoft Office 's then-secret binary file formats had become established as the global de facto standard. The ITU-T now operates under much more streamlined processes. The time between an initial proposal of a draft document by a member company and

342-548: A proposal to form a new global standards body. In October 1946, ISA and UNSCC delegates from 25 countries met in London 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 " was issued in 1951 as "ISO/R 1". ISO

399-436: 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 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

456-755: A similar form. At the initiative of Napoleon III , the French government invited international participants to a conference in Paris in 1865 to facilitate and regulate international telegraph services. A result of the conference was the founding of the forerunner of the modern ITU. At the 1925 Paris conference, the ITU created two consultative committees to deal with the complexities of the international telephone services, known as CCIF ( Comité Consultatif International Téléphonique ) and with long-distance telegraphy CCIT ( Comité Consultatif International des Communications Téléphoniques à grande distance ). In view of

513-472: A wide array of topics in the field of information and communication technologies (ICT) and attract high-ranking experts as speakers, and attendees from engineers to high-level management from all industry sectors. The technical work, the development of Recommendations, of ITU-T is managed by Study Groups (SGs), such as Study Group 13 for network standards, Study Group 16 for multimedia standards, and Study Group 17 for security standards, which are created by

570-637: Is "to develop worldwide Information and Communication Technology (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. As of 2022 , there are 167 national members representing ISO in their country, with each country having only one member. ISO has three membership categories, Participating members are called "P" members, as opposed to observing members, who are called "O" members. ISO

627-581: Is a fast-track approval procedure that was developed to allow standards to be brought to market in the timeframe that industry now demands. The AAP is defined in ITU-T Recommendation A.8. This dramatic overhaul of standards-making by streamlining approval procedures was implemented in 2001 and is estimated to have cut the time involved in this critical aspect of the standardization process by 80 to 90 percent. This means that an average standard that took around four years to approve and publish until

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684-414: 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 . A council with a rotating membership of 20 member bodies provides guidance and governance, including setting the annual budget of

741-464: 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 and so you end up with something being a standard that is not clear. International Workshop Agreements (IWAs) are documents that establish

798-517: Is an abbreviation for "International Standardization Organization" or a similar title in another language, the letters do not officially represent an acronym or initialism . 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

855-521: 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

912-615: Is followed by a period and the Recommendation number, which uniquely identifies the Recommendation within the series. Often, a range of related Recommendations are further grouped within the series and given adjacent numbers, such as "H.200-H.499: Infrastructure of audiovisual services" or "H.260-H.279: Coding of moving video". Many numbers are "skipped" to give room for future Recommendations to be adjacent to related Recommendations. Recommendations can be revised or "superseded" and keep their existing Recommendation number. In addition to

969-522: Is funded by a combination of: International standards are the main products of ISO. It also publishes technical reports, technical specifications, publicly available specifications, technical corrigenda (corrections), and guides. International standards Technical reports For example: Technical and publicly available specifications For example: Technical corrigenda ISO guides For example: ISO documents have strict copyright restrictions and ISO charges for most copies. As of 2020 ,

1026-455: Is now free of charge online. (About 30 specifications jointly maintained by the ITU-T and ISO/IEC are not available for free to the public.) ITU-T has moreover tried to facilitate cooperation between the various forums and standard-developing organizations (SDOs). This collaboration is necessary to avoid duplication of work and the consequent risk of conflicting standards in the market place. In

1083-425: 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

1140-617: Is restricted. 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 . The ISA was suspended in 1942 during World War II but, after the war, the ISA was approached by the recently-formed United Nations Standards Coordinating Committee (UNSCC) with

1197-602: The International Electrotechnical Commission . It is headquartered in Geneva , Switzerland. The three official languages of ISO are English , French , and Russian . The International Organization for Standardization in French is Organisation internationale de normalisation and in Russian, Международная организация по стандартизации ( Mezhdunarodnaya organizatsiya po standartizatsii ). Although one might think ISO

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1254-850: The Plenipotentiary Conference (the top policy-making conference of ITU) saw a reform of ITU, giving the Union greater flexibility to adapt to an increasingly complex, interactive and competitive environment. The CCITT was renamed the Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T), as one of three Sectors of the Union alongside the Radiocommunication Sector ( ITU-R ) and the Telecommunication Development Sector ( ITU-D ). Historically,

1311-642: The World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly (WTSA) which is held every four years. As part of the deliberations, WTSA has instructed ITU to hold the Global Standards Symposium , which unlike WTSA is open to public for participation. The people involved in these SGs are experts in telecommunications from all over the world. There are currently 11 SGs. Study groups meet face to face (or virtually under exceptional circumstances) according to

1368-574: The Conference, WCIT-12, was then held in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, during the period 3–14 December 2014. The Standardization Sector of ITU also organizes AI for Good , the United Nations platform for the sustainable development of Artificial Intelligence. Except World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly The World Telecommunication Standardization Assembly ( WTSA ) is

1425-694: The ISO Statutes. ISO was founded on 23 February 1947, and (as of July 2024 ) 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 standards 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 and electronic engineering are instead handled by

1482-867: The ITU-T Recommendations, which have non-mandatory status unless they are adopted in national laws, ITU-T is also the custodian of a binding international treaty, the International Telecommunication Regulations. The ITRs go back to the earliest days of the ITU when there were two separate treaties, dealing with telegraph and telephone. The ITRs were adopted, as a single treaty, at the World Administrative Telegraphy and Telephone Conference held in Melbourne, 1988 (WATTC-88). The ITRs comprise ten articles which deal, inter alia , with

1539-473: The ITU-T are referred to as " Recommendations " (with the word capitalized to distinguish its meaning from the common parlance sense of the word "recommendation"), as they become mandatory only when adopted as part of a national law. Since the ITU-T is part of the ITU, which is a United Nations specialized agency, its standards carry more formal international weight than those of most other standards development organizations that publish technical specifications of

1596-522: The Recommendations of the CCITT were presented at plenary assemblies for endorsement, held every four years, and the full set of Recommendations were published after each plenary assembly. However, the delays in producing texts, and translating them into other working languages, did not suit the fast pace of change in the telecommunications industry. The rise of the personal computer industry in

1653-476: The SG chairman, in consultation with TSB, sets up a comment resolution process by the concerned experts. The revised text is then posted on the web for an additional review period of three weeks. Similar to the last call phase, in additional review the Recommendation is considered as approved if no comments are received. If comments are received, it is apparent that there are some issues that still need more work, and

1710-576: The amendment of ITRs through a World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT). Accordingly, in 1998 there began a process of review of the ITRs; and in 2009 extensive preparations began for such a conference, WCIT-12. In addition to "regional preparatory meetings", the ITU Secretariat developed 13 "Background Briefs on key issues" that were expected to be discussed at the conference. Convened by former ITU secretary-general Hamadoun Touré,

1767-429: The approval process by providing equal opportunities for both sector members and member states in the approval of technical standards. A panel of SG experts drafts a proposal that is then forwarded at an SG meeting to the appropriate body which decides if it is sufficiently ready to be designated a draft text and thus gives its consent for further review at the next level. After this Consent has been given, TSB announces

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1824-594: The authority to approve Recommendations. Focus Groups can be created very quickly, are usually short-lived and can choose their own working methods, leadership, financing, and types of deliverables. Current Focus Groups include the ITU-WHO Focus Group on Artificial Intelligence for Health (FG-AI4H) as well as Machine Learning for 5G (which developed Y.3172 ), Quantum Information Technologies for Networks , and Artificial Intelligence for Assisted and Autonomous Driving . The Alternative Approval Process (AAP)

1881-710: The basic similarity of many of the technical problems faced by the CCIF and CCIT , a decision was taken in 1956 to merge them into a single entity, the International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Committee ( CCITT , in French : Comité Consultatif International Téléphonique et Télégraphique ). The first Plenary Assembly of the new organization was held in Geneva, Switzerland in December 1956. In 1992,

1938-491: The case of MPEG, the Moving Picture Experts Group ). 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

1995-418: The central secretariat. The technical management board is responsible for more than 250 technical committees , who develop the ISO standards. ISO has a joint technical committee (JTC) with the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) to develop standards relating to information technology (IT). Known as JTC 1 and entitled "Information technology", it was created in 1987 and its mission

2052-421: The confidence people have in the standards setting process", and alleged that ISO did not carry out its responsibility. He also said that Microsoft 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

2109-521: The definition of international telecommunication services, cooperation between countries and national administrations, safety of life and priority of telecommunications and charging and accounting principles. The adoption of the ITRs in 1988 is often taken as the start of the wider liberalization process in international telecommunications, though a few countries, including United States and United Kingdom, had made steps to liberalize their markets before 1988. The Constitution and Convention of ITU provides for

2166-413: 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

2223-599: The draft text and all comments are sent to the next Study Group meeting for further discussion and possible approval. Those Recommendations considered as having policy or regulatory implications are approved through what is known as the Traditional Approval Process (TAP), which allows a longer period for reflection and commenting by member states. TAP Recommendations are also translated into the six working languages of ITU (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish). ITU-T Recommendations are

2280-505: The early 1980s created a new common practice among both consumers and businesses of adopting " bleeding edge " communications technology even if it was not yet standardized. Thus, standards organizations had to put forth standards much faster, or find themselves ratifying de facto standards after the fact. One of the most prominent examples of this was the Open Document Architecture project, which began in 1985 when

2337-411: The final approval of a full-status ITU-T Recommendation can now be as short as a few months (or less in some cases). This makes the standardization approval process in the ITU-T much more responsive to the needs of rapid technology development than in the ITU's historical past. New and updated Recommendations are published on an almost daily basis, and nearly all of the library of over 3,270 Recommendations

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2394-662: The future of ICT standardization. WTSA-24 is planned to take place from 15 to 24 October 2024 in New Delhi , India . WTSA-20 was scheduled to be held in Hyderabad , India in 17-27 November 2020. It was rescheduled to 1-9 March 2022 at CICG, next to ITU headquarters in Geneva , Switzerland , due to the COVID-19 pandemic . WTSA-16 was held from 25 October until 3 November 2016 in Hammamet , Tunisia . WTSA-12

2451-940: The governing conference of the ITU Standardization Sector (ITU-T), one of the three world conferences of the International Telecommunication Union , and as such, the United Nations system. The quadrennial conference decides the working methods for ITU-T for the next Study Period. It also creates the Telecommunication Standardization Advisory Group (TSAG) and the ITU-T Study Groups (such as ITU-T Study Group 16 ) and elects their management teams. The Recommendations and resolutions that are approved at WTSA shape

2508-518: The mid nineties, and two years until 1997, can now be approved in an average of two months, or as little as five weeks. Besides streamlining the underlying procedures involved in the approval process, an important contributory factor to the use of AAP is electronic document handling. Once the approval process has begun the rest of the process can be completed electronically, in the vast majority of cases, with no further physical meetings. The introduction of AAP also formalizes public/private partnership in

2565-421: The names given to telecommunications and computer protocol specification documents published by ITU-T. ITU-T assigns each Recommendation a name based on the series and Recommendation number. The name starts with the letter of the series the Recommendation belongs to. Each series encompasses a broad category of Recommendations, such as "H-Series Recommendations: Audiovisual and multimedia systems". The series letter

2622-721: 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 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 to obtain approval of OpenDocument as an ISO/IEC standard (ISO/IEC 26300, approved in May 2006). As

2679-619: The networks and creating the Internet: Commercialization, privatization, broader access leads to the modern Internet: Examples of Internet services: The International Organization for Standardization ( ISO / ˈ aɪ s oʊ / ) is an independent, non-governmental , international standard development organization composed of representatives from the national standards organizations of member countries. Membership requirements are given in Article 3 of

2736-492: 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

2793-411: 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,

2850-472: The short form ISO . ISO is derived from the Greek word isos ( ίσος , 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 . Both the name ISO and the ISO logo are registered trademarks and their use

2907-549: The start of the AAP procedure by posting the draft text to the ITU-T website and calling for comments. This gives the opportunity for all members to review the text. This phase, called last call , is a four-week period in which comments can be submitted by member states and sector members. If no comments other than editorial corrections are received, the Recommendation is considered approved since no issues were identified that might need any further work. However, if there are any comments,

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2964-509: 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

3021-414: The typical cost of a copy of an ISO standard is about US$ 120 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 ) are made freely available. A standard published by ISO/IEC is the last stage of

3078-636: The work of standardization, ITU-T cooperates with other SDOs, e.g., the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Most of the work of ITU-T is carried out by its Sector Members and Associates, while the Telecommunication Standardization Bureau (TSB) is the executive arm of ITU-T and coordinator for a number of workshops and seminars to progress existing work areas and explore new ones. The events cover

3135-400: Was director from 1 January 2015 until 31 December 2022. The ITU-T mission is to ensure the efficient and timely production of standards covering all fields of telecommunications and Information Communication Technology (ICTs) on a worldwide basis, as well as defining tariff and accounting principles for international telecommunication services. The international standards that are produced by

3192-661: Was held in Dubai , United Arab Emirates from 20 to 29 November 2012. WTSA-08 was held from 21 to 30 October 2008 in Johannesburg , South Africa . WTSA-04 was held in Florianópolis , Brazil from 5 to 14 October 2004. WTSA-2000 was held from 27 September to 6 October 2000 in Montréal , Canada . International Organization for Standardization Early research and development: Merging

3249-517: 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 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

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