Sustainability Criteria for Professional Services

As explained here over the past several years, the US education industry is a significant stakeholder in the development of international technical and business standards through the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). Now comes another opportunity to collaborate with the Standards Administration of the People’s Republic of China (SAC) through ANSI.  At the moment we are not advocating any #TotalCostofOwnership concepts for the safety and sustainability of the emergent #SmartCampus we feel that, given our tenure in infrastructure standards advocacy (see ABOUT) we should at least pass on what we know to education industry administrators, faculty, students and their supporting communities about other policy-oriented collaborations.  ANSI’s collaboration with the SAC is important to at least understand what is happening for the following reasons:

• Many students and faculty originate from China
• Many academic units, healthcare research and clinical delivery enterprises purchase Chinese products and services.
• Many research universities are stakeholders in intellectual property rights.
• The emergent #SmartCampus will be inspired by the Smart and Sustainable City initiatives undertaken by the International Organization for Standardization, the International Electrotechnical Commission, and the International Telecommunications Union which include China.

We cite the absence of the US education industry as a US TAG Administrator on the ISO Educational Organization Management standard as a primary example of US education industry indifference.  We have suggested that an industry which seeks international revenue — and can do a better job controlling its costs —  could transform itself in a fashion similar to the way the global automotive manufacturing industry transformed itself thirty-odd years ago with the deployment of the ISO-9000 series of management standards.  (Learn more HERE)

With or without the education industry then, the American National Standards Institute continues its discussions with the Standards Administration of the People’s Republic of China on enterprise standards on July 17th in Hangzhou, China.  Specifics are linked below:

ANSI-SAC Industry Roundtable on Enterprise Standards

ANSI’s update on international standards action can be found at this link: ISO/IEC/ITU coordination – New work items

We keep all international standards relevant to the education industry on the standing agenda of our Open Door teleconferences — every Wednesday, 11 AM Eastern time.  Everyone is welcomed.  CLICK HERE to log in.

Issue: [Various]

Category: Academics, International, Public Policy, #SmartCampus, US Department of Commerce, National Institute of Standards & Technology

Colleagues: Mike Anthony, Christine Fischer

S. Joe Bhatia explains the status of US education industry in a talk at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business in May 2016.

Posted January 12, 2018 (China Standardization Law)

The National People’s Congress of the People’s Republic of China officially promulgated China’s Standardization Law on November 4, 2017. The original Chinese version can be accessed on the China legislature site.

The American National Standards Institute(ANSI) has been closely monitoring the rollout of the reform of China’s standardization system, and has actively engaged the Chinese government throughout the process of updating the standardization law.

The Standardization Law serves as the legal underpinning for China’s system, and its revision (the first since 1988) is a major component of China’s ongoing standardization reform initiative. ANSI’s comments on the revisions issued in March 2016, May 2017, and September 2017 are available on the Institute’s Sharepoint library.

ANSI has prepared a reference translation for the final law, which tracked the changes since the last draft, as a courtesy available to ANSI members only.

Changes in the standardization law from the version released in September 2017 mainly comprise restructured provisions. There are some promising additions such as the state encouraging the extensive seeking of comments in the development of standards (Article 4), and the clarification that standards would be reviewed every five years (Article 29). However, ANSI believes that more can be done in addressing the following concerns which were conveyed in earlier comments:

– Referencing and upholding the World Trade Organization (WTO)’s Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) Agreement;

– Limiting and focusing the self-disclosure requirements for so-called “enterprise standards”;

– Including more language on fair and open participation in standards development activities;

– Clarifying the circumstances under which one type of standard might become another type of standard; and

– Referencing the copyright law.

With the law entering into force in 2018, ANSI will continue to reiterate these concerns to the Chinese government through ANSI’s China program and will continue to monitor the overall implementation of China’s standardization reform.

For more information on ANSI’s China program, please visit www.standardsportal.org. Questions may be directed to china@ansi.org.

Link to ANSI January 12, 2018 Update: (Click here)

Link to the original ANSI November 11, 2017 posting: (Click here)