The mail note exchange points to a number of issues. The growing literature on IT standardization provides some assistance in the development of an analytic framework for carrying the discussion forward. For example, it is interesting to note the evolution of focus in the major treatises on IT standardization. Cerni[9] provides an early analysis which focuses on the technological choices. Cargill[8] acknowledges the technological choices but provides a strong focus on the business imperatives in IT standardization. The most resent contribution by Libicki[17] looks at the political forces that are involved. The interested reader will benefit from a review of the numerous descriptive treatments of the standardization process[1,7,12,16,19,21,22,25,26]. In this mix, it is most interesting to note again the shift from the description of a technical process[22] to a much more political process[21]. In addition, there are many conceptual analyses, most of which use economic models[2,3,4,10,11,14,15], but increasingly, analyses look at the issues from other perspectives as well[5,13,27]. Lastly, there is a growing body of empirical research beginning with work at CMU under the direction of Marvin Sirbu and at Stanford under the direction of Paul David as well as by Bob Toth as a part of his broad ranging consulting efforts[24,23,31]. More recently, work has been undertaken by Spring and Weiss at the University of Pittsburgh and by Lehr at Columbia, Economides at NYU and others.[35,29,16,32].
Perhaps most relevant to this
current discussion has been the contribution of Linda Garcia through her study on
Global Standards prepared for the Congress as a study of the Office of Technology
Assessment[33]. Garcia suggested several possible mechanisms by which the
government might collaborate with private industry so as to maintain the best
practices that have evolved in US standardization while responding in some way to
the increased pressures produced by global competition. While the reactions to
the OTA study were strongly opposed to any form of government intercession, one
legacy of the study seems to be a more open discussion of the fact that
it may be useful (or even necessary) to find some means to
gain increased government support of the process.
In carrying forward the discussion,
we endeavored to identify the critical operational issues
and to suggest some ways in which the process might be improved in
the US with an eye to the US role in regional and international standardization.
Collectively, the authors have had experience with all of the various types of
standards organizations operating at both national and international levels.
The goal of this collaboration has been to take the time to examine our
situation and come to some consensus about where we think we should be going.
This discussion does not represent the views of any one individual, nor does
it take the position of the various corporate organizations or standards
bodies with which the authors are affiliated. Given the freedom of an
academic position, Spring
assumed responsibility to formulate the final
phrasing of the discussion. This is not to suggest that
this is simply an academic polemic. Nor does this suggest that the
discussion which follows is less than a consensus of all the authors. Every
effort has been made in the best tradition of standardization to arrive at a
position that reflects the shared opinion of the group as to the best technical
solution to the problem. While most
comments are attributed to one or another of the authors to
establish the context or clarifying a relation, not all statements are
attributed, particularly where such attribution appeared to conflict with the
goal of exposition.