Technical Standards Increasingly Important in Global Marketplace

Use your bank card at the nearest Automated Teller Machine and you've encountered a standard. The machine was built to certain specifications to perform a function when the debit card is inserted into the slot. Without compliance with numerous technical standards, including defining the very thickness of the debit card, the machine won't work. Technical standards are an increasingly important function of the global marketplace as the world becomes more technologically dependent.

Standards emerge from experimentation, competition, and market acceptance of services. Standards are often viewed as a "process" but can be defined as the documentation established by consensus and approved by a standards-forming body, using formal description techniques. Standards must be implementable, cooperative, and adhere to international business practices to be successfully adapted into the marketplace.

The International Center for Standards Research (ICSR) was founded in July 1998 as part of a Center of Excellence grant awarded to the University of Colorado's Interdisciplinary Telecommunications Program by the Colorado Commission on Higher Education. The grant provides seed funding to establish the Center over a five-year period.

The mission of the newly formed Center is to advance the theory and practice of standardization on a worldwide basis through unbiased, innovative research and education involving the engineering, business, policy, legal, economic, and social aspects of standards-related activities and products. The growing complexity and importance of standards requires that new standards education and research initiatives be undertaken and coordinated internationally.

In its first year, the ICSR developed a web site (www.standardsresearch.org) that provides an open, worldwide forum for supporting advanced standards research. The site is used by standards researchers from academia, industry, and governments to access and distribute timely and relevant information.

Now in its second year, the ICSR is ready to enter into joint ventures with public and private entities to conduct projects of mutual benefit. Improved interaction between educators and practitioners will produce project proposals on such topics as standards and collaborative decision-making processes, information technologies, intellectual property, public policy, research methodology, strategic planning, systems engineering, or telecommunications.

In addition, the ICSR is gearing up to host the 2nd IEEE Conference on Standardization and Innovation in Information Technology, in March 2001. The multidisciplinary conference will bring together researchers and practitioners from the disciplines of telecommunications, technology studies, economics, business studies, management sciences, politics, and computer science, as well as Information Technology users. See conference details as they develop and look for the first call for papers on the web site at www.SIIT2001.org.

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