On ISO (Was: Re: LAO LETTER FO SUNG and LAO LETTER FO TAM)

From: Erkki Kolehmainen (erkki.kolehmainen@kotus.fi)
Date: Tue Oct 25 2005 - 01:01:08 CST

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    Philippe Verdy wrote:

    >
    >
    > There are too few people involved in the voting process at the ISO
    > working group, whose work is too much opaque for the general public, as
    > it is only open to governmental representants. So if there are new votes
    > in the ISO 10646 pipe, I really suggest that some voting ISO members
    > publish the paper they have to vote on, to receive informed public
    > review before they can effectively vote.
    >

    The ISO working group (ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2) on the 10646 consists
    mainly of representatives from various ISO national bodies. AFAIK most
    of these national standards organizations are not-for-profit public
    organizations that finance their operation through membership fees and
    from the sales of standards (often with some support from the respective
    government, though). Some are government bodies, though.

    The national bodies have mirror groups that decide on how to vote and
    comment on the ballots - and also in the meetings on issues that are
    particularly relevant to them. The handling of the rest of the business
    at hand is usually trusted on the delegates participating in the
    meetings. The SC2/WG2 documents are publicly available on its web site.

    The structure for the development of the 10646/Unicode standards allows
    all interested parties to participate either through Unicode or their
    national bodies. In our particular case, the national mirror group, in
    addition to being an open group, also welcomes comments on its Finnish
    language website from all interested parties. The openness and
    transparency, however, vary from country to country.

    Sincerely,
    Erkki I. Kolehmainen
    Secretary of the Finnish Group on Cultural Diversity Issues in ICT



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