We find a few ANSI-accredited financial service standards developers with meaningful effect upon #TotalCostofOwnership of the real assets of the education industry; though consortia* are the rule, rather than the exception. Education community use of public money requires rigorous oversight; with some of the nuttiest party/counterparty regimes imaginable.
That much said we find that the existing suite of financial service standards coming from Geneva are too high level to have direct perceptible effect on money flows through the $300 billion education facility industry. Still, the best practice originating from ISO administration are noteworthy as prospective policy templates.
Vocabulary, instrument lexicon and data exchange issues are important; especially for a global industry (CLICK HERE for ISO TC/68 titles).
We limit our interest to the arcane and rather dreary world of tax-free bonds that school districts, colleges and universities rely upon to fund capital improvements and “continuing operations”. We see the prospect of disruption on the horizon as distributed ledger technologies roll out; the topic of our monthly Blockchain teleconferences. See our CALENDAR for the next online meeting; open to everyone.
For the moment, let us acknowledge Technical Committee 68 of the International Standardization Organization for which the American National Standards Institute is the Global Secretariat. The prospectus of this standardization project is linked below:
ISO/TC 68 Financial services: Background, structure and information
For obvious reasons, because the finance sector runs on the order of 20 percent of any economy there are many nations involved and a respectable number of published standards.
This section of the ISO catalog may interest business school and/or international studies students. We are happy to point students in the right direction any day during our 11 AM/ET “open office hours” teleconferences.
Finance staff on the business side of the education industry, who would like to keep pace with the rollout of smart contracts in grant and infrastructure enterprises, are encouraged to communicate directly with Accredited Standards Committee X9, Inc. for more information about the US Technical Advisory Group. Janet Busch is listed as the contact person (janet.busch@x9.org). Our colleagues in other nations interested in participating should communicate directly with Stefan Marinkovic at the ISO Offices in Geneva (marinkovic@iso.org)
We keep all ISO standards on the standing agenda of our International and Finance standards monthly teleconferences. See our CALENDAR for the next online meeting.
Issue: [16-135]
Category: Finance, International, Blockchain
Colleagues: Mike Anthony, Christine Fischer, Richard Robben
