Norway and Germany, There Are No Irregularities

In religion and politics, people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second hand, and without examination.  – Mark Twain

While people have been waiting for the official results from ISO the blogosphere has been buzzing with all sorts of stories about what did and didn’t happen in a few of the countries as they decided upon their final positions for DIS29500.

Two of the countries that seem to have got the most airtime are Germany and Norway, and we’ve seen both of those standards bodies come out with statements over the last 48 hours.

When this process began I remember receiving some very sage advice from one employee of a national body here in the region, she talked to be about how her organization was highly skilled in dealing with extreme conflict as they made very complex decisions.

At the time I remember thinking that she was exaggerating a little, but having witnessed some of the upset expressed by individuals who didn’t get the result that they wanted over the last few days, and the crowds of people willing to take their words as gospel, I now fully understand the advice she was sharing with me.

So, here are links to two of the standards bodies who have posted releases over the last few days explaining their process and the how they reached their final decision.

First of all DIN in Germany, I mentioned their press release in my last post. They begin with;

The reports currently circulating the Internet regarding voting procedures in DIN’s Standards Committee on Information Technology and Selected IT Applications (NIA) on ISO/IEC DIS 29500 “Office Open XML file formats” are false and misleading.

… and they go on to say;

On 11 March 2008 the NIA working committee responsible for technical aspects of ISO/IEC DIS 29500 held a vote to decide whether the “YES with comments” vote of September 2007 should be maintained as a “YES” vote or changed to a “NO” vote, taking the results of the Ballot Resolution Meeting held in February as a basis for their decision. As correctly reported by an unofficial source, the result of the March 11 vote was 14 to 5 in favour of adopting ISO/IEC DIS 29500 as an ISO Standard. Only the external experts who make up the responsible working committee voted on this matter; DIN as such has no vote on technical content in working committees.

NIA’s Steering Committee was NOT called upon to review, and possibly override, the working committee’s technical decision – it does not have the authority to do so. It was, however, involved in a decision as to whether or not the voting procedure at ISO correctly adhered to the formal criteria. Because the Steering Committee’s decision did not relate to any technical issues or the content of the standard itself, but dealt solely with the formalities of the JTC 1 “fast track” procedure, i.e. adherence to procedural rules in the standardization process, DIN felt it was necessary to take a position on this matter. This is the reason the DIN staff member participated in the voting procedure and did not abstain, as is the rule in questions of technical content.

On 27 March 2008 the NIA Steering Committee members who were entitled to vote did NOT vote on approval or non-approval of ISO/IEC DIS 29500 as an International Standard, but SOLELY on the regularity of the voting procedure itself. With a majority of 7 to 6, and 7 abstentions, the Steering Committee deemed the procedure as being in conformity with the rules, and thus had no reason to override the working committee’s “YES” vote. Had the majority of the Steering Committee been convinced that the procedures for developing and voting on ISO/IEC DIS 29500 were in any way irregular, the German vote would have been changed to “ABSTAIN”.

The second, and most recent release comes from Standards Norge in a press release titled “Standard Norges behandling av OOXML for avstemming i ISO“.

Updated 4/4/08, 8am: Stephen McGibbon has a translation, he tells me that he will replace this text if there is an official English version published by Standards Norge – watch his blog for updates.

Stephen has now updated his post with a translation directly from Standards Norge, you will find it here, or directly from Standards Norge here.

The original text that he and I had both posted has been moved to a seperate page here.

As it turns out making decisions around supporting or not supporting a standard is a complex business.

If you’re interested in reading further, Jan van den Beld talks at length in his most recent post about the value of standardization bodies and why they operate the way that they do.

Related posts: Jason Matusow