On February 27th of this year, a Federal Register notice called for comment on a petition filed by a group of academics. This petition would amend the OMB Circular A-119, “Federal Participation in the Development and Use of Voluntary Consensus Standards and in Conformity Assessment Activities.”
The Circular has been instrumental in directing Federal regulators, including the Department of Defense specifications and standards program, to move from government developed and maintained standards to the adoption of industry standards. It has had a huge impact on the entire process of developing and implementing standards for both industry and government.
The usual process for government adoption of standards for regulatory processes is for industry standard in question to be called out by number, including date, in the applicable volume of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR’s). There are over 9,000 such references in federal regulations at this time.
In the main, these industry documents must be purchased by those needing to comply with the law. This allows the standards organization that develop, monitor, and revise the standards to fund the costs associated with this caretaking activity.
Indeed, the original impetus for the Circular in the first place was to reduce government expense by avoiding duplicate activity within both the private and public sector. It was intended to pave the way for more government participation in industry standards-making processes, including the costs involved in such participation. However, it must be remembered that those costs are not only borne by those who develop the standards, but also by those who use them through the vehicle of the purchase price. Further, industry standards are normally copyright material, with the full protection afforded by that coverage.
The petition by the academics seeks to make standards that are referenced in the CFR’s available on the Internet at no charge. “Today, binding law cannot be regarded as ‘reasonably available’ if it cannot freely be found in or through an agency’s electronic library.” The petition goes on to suggest that perhaps this could be provided through a licensing agreement between the agencies involved and the standards associations themselves.
Of course, there is the further question of how such free, public availability of certain standards would impact revenue from sales that are not related to the use of the regulation itself. My own use of search engines to find specific standards has lead me to find approximately a half-dozen illegal sites involved in the unauthorized sale of copyright material. This suggests that the public is still interested in inexpensive or free standards without regards to the economic impact of such transactions.
As one would expect, the standards community in the U.S. is very interested in the results such a change would have on the entire standards process. ANSI is accepting a leadership role in voicing the concerns of Standards Developing Organizations (SDO’s) to the issues raised by the petition.
Document Center Inc. monitors such activity on a regular basis and is also concerned about how this petition would change the financial structure for SDO’s. We’ll cover the ANSI response to the call for comments in a blog next week. Meantime, if you have comments, please let us know.