Explanation of the ISO “Fast-Track” process

The Fast-Track process for OpenXML is just now getting underway, and there about 6 more months of review before the ballots will be cast.

I got an e-mail yesterday asking why there was only a month for ISO to review the OpenXML submission and I figured I should clear this up. I've seen this misinformation in a number of blogs lately and it appears that certain parties have created some sort of panic that the formats are being pushed through ISO at a record breaking speed. This is absolutely false, and it's unfortunate that so much of the information out there is so inaccurate. Ecma submitted the OpenXML standard to ISO a few weeks ago (it's now officially called DIS29500), and it's currently in the fast-track process which is a 6 month review period.

• Purpose of Fast-Track – created by ISO as a way of allowing standards organizations to submit one of their existing standards for approval as an ISO standard. This can only happen with something that has already been reviewed and approved as a standard by that organization. When the organization decides to submit the standard, it starts in ISO/IEC at the DIS stage (Draft International Standard).  Ecma's Office Open XML formats are now officially DIS 29500.
• Who can submit a standard to ISO/IEC JTC1 through the fast-track process – The ISO/IEC JTC1 Permanent members (the National Standards organizations called National Bodies) such as ANSI in the US or BSI in the UK, plus standards organizations which have been granted A-Liaison status with JTC1, (for example, ITU-T and Ecma).
• Who votes – Each countries NB (national body) can vote on the DIS ballot. In the case of DIS 29500, the technical committee assigned to the work is JTC1/SC34, which is the same group that reviewed the ODF spec. Some countries have a single individual that works with SC34, some countries have larger groups of folks involved, and some countries don't participate at all. Regardless of the number of folks a country has involved in SC34 work though, each country only gets one vote.

The first month of review is a period when national Bodies can express "perceived contradictions" they may find between the proposed fast-track and existing ISO/IEC standards or ongoing JTC1 standardization projects. This is a quick review to make sure there isn't anything in the spec that would invalidate an existing ISO standard.

This is not the point where people raise technical objections, missing content, poor design, etc. Instead this is where you want to make sure that the approval of this ISO spec won't cause another ISO standard to break. In the case of OpenXML, there really can't be a contradiction because it's always possible to implement OpenXML alongside other technologies. For instance, OpenOffice will soon have support for ODF and OpenXML.

An example of a contradiction would be if there was a standard for wireless technology that required the use of a certain frequency. If by using that frequency you would interfere with folks using another standard that also leverages that frequency, then there may be a contradiction.

After the contradictory period is complete, the technical review begins. There are 5 months of review followed by a vote. In this time the national bodies for each country can pour through the spec and decide if there are any technical problems. At the end of the 5 month process, every country has the opportunity to submit a yes or no vote. With the vote they can include comments explaining why they voted yes or no.

No votes will be accompanied by proposed changes that, if accepted, would turn the no vote into a yes vote.

Votes are tallied under the ISO/IEC DIS rule. Irrespective of the tally, if comments have been submitted, there will be an effort to resolve them. This effort will be even stronger if the no votes have to be turned into yes votes in order for the fast-track to pass. In the case of OpenXML, SC34 will be the group to convene the ballot resolution meeting, which is the chance to get together and work through the votes and comments. The ideal goal of the ballot resolution meetings is for everyone to reach a consensus. Maybe more detail will be required for certain portions of the documentation, or maybe it will even be decided to remove parts of the standard. These can all be negotiated at the ballot resolution meeting, and at the end of the ballot resolution meeting, all national bodies will be asked to confirm their yes or no vote.

ODF went through the PAS process which allows them to skip the 1 month contradictory review and go straight into the balloting stage. Other than not having to go through the 1 month contradictory review though, the process is pretty much the same.

Well there you go. I tried to keep that really short. I know many of you are already aware of these processes, but I thought it might be good to write-up anyway.

-Brian

• Anonymous
  January 29, 2007
  Brian Jones has posted an overview of ISO Fast-Track certification that explains the various stages of

• Anonymous
  January 29, 2007
  Nice job! Next, try to construct some excuses for not using the ISO date format, non-documented backward-compatible feature that no one can implement, etc....

• Anonymous
  January 29, 2007
  Daniel, SpreadsheetML Dates: http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/archive/2006/10/25/spreadsheetml-dates.aspx Application Settings: http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/archive/2007/01/09/specifying-the-document-settings.aspx -Brian

• Anonymous
  January 30, 2007
  @Daniel If you can support ISO 8601 formats in spreadsheet then please explain how you would handle this example: Spreadsheets generally use an internal format for date calculations. It would be very difficult to maintain integrity between such an internal format and an ISO standard representaion in de document file. For instance when two date are subtracted in ISO that leaves a 'period' it would be something that is very weird implementing into a spreadsheet. Example Cel a contains 20070214T131031 Cel b contains 20070214T131030 Cel c contains 20070214T131030/20070214T131031 These are all correct ISO 8601 where in cell c there is effectivly a 1 second 'period' that corresponds with the difference between cell a and cell b. In an internal spreadsheet formula format that would represent as: Cel a 39127,548969907400 Cel b 39127,548958333300 Cel c 0,000011574113 This is an example of the internal Excel 1900 date format where in cell c also is a 1 second period that corresponds with the difference in cell a and cell b. However it is virtually impossible to go from ISO to internal format and then convert back to ISO without data loss.

• Anonymous
  January 30, 2007
  There's something odd about working on a feature in Office that one of the last things any average user

• Anonymous
  January 31, 2007
  I had a few interesting articles I thought folks might be interested in: Miguel de Icaza – The EU Prosecutors

• Anonymous
  February 01, 2007
  "For instance, OpenOffice will soon have support for ODF and OpenXML." when will office have ODF support?   surely a company with the resources of yours can implement such an inferior standard as ODF.

• Anonymous
  February 01, 2007
  James: http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/archive/2006/07/05/657510.aspx

• Anonymous
  February 04, 2007
  ok microsoft is trying to keep big organisation with office ...the odf format is a honest way to let concurrency betwen different actor, but microsoft doesn't want concurrency , just corruption an intrigue to get more money ..

• Anonymous
  February 07, 2007
  This morning, in my usual routine, I sipped a cup of coffee while reading the latest news around the

• Anonymous
  July 21, 2007
  For those of you not only reading my blog, but also the other content provided by the Info Support blog

• Anonymous
  September 04, 2007
  Голосование ISO по предложению Microsoft придать Open XML статус стандарта закончилось 2-го сентября.