Why Standards Matter

When the portal editors suggested I coordinate a regular feature focussing on standards I was enthusiastic. Standards are too often an afterthought rather than a starting point, so I welcome the opportunity to explain--over time, to a wide and influential audience--why standards must be front and center, rather than on the periphery. My plan for this feature is to begin with an overview of the standards landscape, and in subsequent features to invite practitioners to tell their standards stories and explore the role of standards in a variety of contexts. Standards have a reputation for being mind-numbing and making the eyes glaze over. Life experience has taught me, however, that any topic, no matter how fascinating, can have that same effect. So, I make no apologies for standards. The story is all in the telling and I will do my best to hold your interest.

Standards, Standards Everywhere

In my collection of standards memorabilia is a button that proclaims "THE WONDERFUL THING ABOUT STANDARDS IS THAT THERE ARE SO MANY TO CHOOSE FROM." How true! The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) sponsors almost 200 technical committees working on a startling variety of standards including shoes and footwear to fertilizers and chemicals, medical instruments to automotive engines. ANSI (American National Standards Institute) has accredited over 400 standards developers in the U.S., including one group that standardizes aerial acrobatics. And the last edition of the national directory of standards developers commissioned by NIST listed more than 700 standards developing groups operating as associations and consortia, in government and the private sector, in industrial and corporate settings, responsible for over 90,000 national standards.

Standards are a big business. We are surrounded by standards in all areas of our daily routine and our professional decision making. In the end, the test of any great standard is that it becomes so ingrained and "a part of the system" that the user does not give it a second thought. And therein lies the rub! Standards, I have learned, do not emerge without costs, without time, without effort and contributions from the individuals and businesses that embrace a vision and are committed to addressing and solving a problem they share.

Standards Evolution

The "big business" that standards represent today has evolved over two hundred years. Eli Whitney's contribution to the war effort in a newly launched United States illustrates how standards thinking was born:

In 1798, our (USA) government was in need of more and more arms. Jefferson, then Vice President, signed a contract which bound Eli Whitney to supply ten thousand muskets in two years. At the end of the first year, only five hundred had been delivered, a production of less than two a day. The two years expired and so did Whitney's contract. Necessity became the mother of invention. Urged by the government, Whitney submitted to a board of experts the assembly parts of ten muskets and in their presence assembled from ten identical barrels, ten identical stocks, and ten identical triggers, the first ten standardized rifles. By introducing the principle of interchangeable parts for armament production, he thus became the father of mass production for war purposes. ¹

As industry, business, and commerce boomed standards became more critical. At times the adoption of standards has created great debate and distress, such as the battles between the proponents of Alternating and Direct Current or, in recent years (with somewhat less consequence), the struggle between Beta and VHS. Within the bibliographic community the struggle between the ISSN and the CODEN as the identifier of choice for serials tested our profession's leadership and institutions.

Twentieth century business management thinking was fundamentally redirected by Edward Deming's proposition that standards are the critical component of quality business systems. Deming went on to prove his point by masterminding the rebuilding of the Japanese economy following World War II. It was no accident that the Japanese auto industry grew into a world-class...