In the midst of grim and troubling news about outbreaks of violence against Zimbabweans and Mozambicans, there is a good reason to be proud of being South African today.
The South African Standards Bureau, which is the South African authority which both deals with standards nationally but also represents South Africa at the International Standards Organisation (ISO). SABS has appealed against the process which led to OOXML (or DIS 29500 in ISOspeak) being designated as an ISO standard.
It has been a controversial process, with the resignation of the chairperson of the Norwegian Committee, allegations of interference with the committee in France, and legal review in the United Kingdom. South Africa has taken the lead, as the first country to appeal against the outcome of that process.
SABS made the appeal in a letter in which the standards authority expressed South Africa’s “deep concern over the increasing tendency of international organizations to use the JTC 1 processes to circumvent the consensus-building process that is the cornerstone of the success and international acceptance of the ISO and IEC standards. The ability of large multi-national organization to influence many national bodies, with the resultant block-voting over-riding legitimate issues raised by other countries, is also of concern.”
The result of a flawed process is a flawed standard. The letter concludes: “we challenge the validity of a process that, from beginning to end, required all parties involved to analyze far too much information in far too little time, involved a BRM [BRM = Ballot Resolution Meeting] that did not remotely provide enough time to preform the appointed purpose of that procedure, and for which an arbitary time limitation was imposed to discuss and resolve a significant number of substantial responses, despite the Directives not requiring any such limitation as to duration.”
Local and international media have already picked up the significance of the appeal.
