ISO

International Organization for Standardization, a voluntary, non-treaty, non-governmental organization, established in 1947, with voting members that are designated standards bodies of participating nations and non-voting observer organizations. (Compare: ANSI, IETF, ITU-T, W3C.)

Tutorial: Legally, ISO is a Swiss, non-profit, private organization. ISO and the IEC (the International Electrotechnical Commission) form the specialized system for worldwide standardization. National bodies that are members of ISO or IEC participate in developing international standards through ISO and IEC technical committees that deal with particular fields of activity. Other international governmental and non-governmental organizations, in liaison with ISO and IEC, also take part. (ANSI is the U.S. voting member of ISO. ISO is a class D member of ITU- T.)

The ISO standards development process has four levels of increasing maturity: Working Draft (WD), Committee Draft (CD), Draft International Standard (DIS), and International Standard (IS). (Compare: "Internet Standards Track" under "Internet Standard".) In information technology, ISO and IEC have a joint technical committee, ISO/IEC JTC 1. DISs adopted by JTC 1 are

circulated to national bodies for voting, and publication as an IS requires approval by at least 75% of the national bodies casting a vote.