ASC X3-A: strategic directions

Abstract

■ Commitment to the development and advancement of the use of voluntary consensus standards is an integral part of the Information Technology Industry Council’s (ITI) mission. Our members and staff devote considerable resources to the development of standards for voluntary use and regulations affecting both producers and users. e have sponsored the Accredited Standards Committee on Information Technology (ASC X3) since its founding in 1960. Our goal is to develop market-driven standards for media, programming languages, documentation, systems, intercommunication among computing devices and systems, and office products. We also serve as Administrator for the U.S. Technical Advisory Group (TAG) for the International Standards Organization’s and International Electrotechnical Commission’s Joint Technical Committee 1 (JTC 1) on Information Technology, and for a number of its subcommittee and working group TAGs. Each TAG is responsible for developing and advocating U.S. information technology (IT) positions in the international standards arena. Both X3 and the JTC 1 TAG are accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI).1 Ten staff members support the X3 and JTC 1 TAG activities and function as the administrative body, or secretariat, to the X3 enterprise. They monitor the activities of 76 X3 and JTC 1 TAG subgroups—nearly 3000 engineers working on over 1100 projects simultaneously. Today, nearly 70 percent of our work is directed at creating the global standards that will enable further development of IT applications, products, and services. There’s no question that these numbers indicate a clear and demonstrable need for IT standards and standards development activities. But X3’s continued success as a standards developing organization is by no means guaranteed. The IT industry is dynamic and marked by an ever-accelerating pace of technological innovation. Since 1960, X3 and our international standards activities have evolved almost constantly to meet these business and technological changes. As this evolution continues, we will use the following broad objectives to guide X3’s, JTC 1’s, and ITI’s other standards development activities: W ASC X3–A: Strategic Directions