International Organization for Standardization. The ISO is a voluntary, nontreaty organization founded in
1946. Its members are the national standards organizations of the 89 member countries, including
ANSI (
U.S.),
BSI (GB),
AFNOR (
France),
DIN (
Germany), et al. It has issed over 5000 standards (including the
OSI) and has almost 200
Technical Committees. Each TC has
subcommittees (SCs) that are further divided into Working Groups (WGs). Proposals may be made to establish a TC. Roughly 30,000 "volunteers" - experts in their fields - participate as national delegations, chosen by the ISO member for the country concerned. Most of these volunteers are either government officials who want their country's particular standard adopted or people who are assigned to this by their employers, who are trying to get their products standardized.
(1) One of the national standards orgs feel the need for an international standard in a certain
area.
(2) A Working Group is formed
(3) The Working Group establishes a Committee Draft (CD), which is circulated to all members, who then have 6 months for comments/criticism
(4) If approved, the revised document, called the [Draft International Standard (
DIS), is circulated for voting.
(5) The final text of the International Standard (IS) is approved and published. This process can take years (we're talking about
committees here).