International Program

INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATION FOR STANDARDIZATION (ISO)

ISO is a global network of national standards bodies that identifies what International Standards are required by business, government, and society; develops them in partnership with the sectors that will put them to use; adopts them by transparent procedures based on national input; and delivers them for implementation throughout the world.

ISO/IEEE Partner Standards Development Organization (PSDO) Cooperation Agreement
ISO and IEEE have an agreement in place to increase their cooperation in developing international standards. The PSDO cooperation agreement provides new opportunities to adopt and jointly develop international standards to serve the global marketplace. The agreement currently focuses on the following technical areas:

• ISO/TC 204 - Intelligent Transportation Systems
• ISO/TC 215 - Health Informatics
• ISO/IEC JTC 1
  • SC6 - Telecommunications and Information Exchange Between Systems
  • SC7 - Software & System Engineering
  • SC22 - Programming Languages, their Environments and System Software Interfaces
  • SC25 - Interconnection of Information Technologies
  • SC31 - Automatic identification and data capture techniques
  • SC36 - Information Technology for Learning, Education, and Training (ITLET)
• IEEE documents adopted/jointly developed under the ISO/IEEE PSDO Cooperation Agreement

The ISO/IEEE PSDO cooperation agreement aims to optimize stakeholder resources in the development of standards where both ISO and IEEE have expertise, and to shorten time-to-market. The agreement facilitates processes for the joint development of standards and for the adoption of standards.

The ISO Council consists of the principal officers of ISO and eighteen elected member bodies, including ANSI for the USA. ANSI is one of five permanent members to the ISO Council. The ISO Council meets twice a year and is responsible for the development of ISO’s multi-year strategic plan, the development of the ISO annual budget, ISO’s relations with other external organizations, and other political/strategic decisions, and the general operations of ISO.

For more information about IEEE's participation on the ANSI ISO Council, contact the International Program Office via email.

Additional Information about ISO

• Overview of the ISO System
• ISO in Brief gives a description about the organization.

ISO Procedures
There are three core documents describing basic procedural rules to be followed by ISO committees:

• ISO/IEC Directives, Part 1 (Procedures for the technical work) (2011, 8th ed.) - Procedures to be followed within ISO and IEC in carrying out their technical work; primarily the development and maintenance of International Standards through the activities of technical committees and their subsidiary bodies.
• ISO/IEC Directives, Part 2, Rules for the structure and drafting of International Standards (2011, 6th edition) - Rules for the structure and drafting of documents intended to become International Standards, Technical Specifications or Publicly Available Specifications.
• Supplement - Procedures specific to ISO (the "ISO Supplement") 2nd edition - Basic procedures to be followed in the development of International Standards and other publications.

ISO Technical Committees

• List of Technical Committees