Halfway down the Stairs: Possible Roles for Regional Standards Bodies

1999-10-14

When I think about regional standards bodies such as PASC and COPANT, I’m sometimes reminded of a poem by A. A. Milne, the creator of Winnie the Pooh:

Halfway down the stairs
Is a stair
Where I sit.
There isn't any
Other stair
Quite like
It.
I'm not at the bottom,
I'm not at the top;
So this is the stair
Where
I always
Stop.

In some ways, regional standards bodies are "halfway down the stairs". They sit between the national and international bodies, and we’re not quite sure how to describe their position. But we’ve added them to our standards stairs, expecting them to make it easier for us to climb up or down.

Standardization is more complicated than climbing the stairs, however, so it’s not always clear just how that halfway-down stair is going to help. Even regional standards bodies don’t seem to agree on what their role is. COPANT develops standards, for example, while PASC does not.

What I’d like to do in this article is to present several suggestions on what the role of regional standards bodies could be.

The most successful example of regional standardization is, of course, Europe. The European Union (EU) is well on the way to having a unified regional standards development and conformity assessment system, and there is a lot we can learn from its experience.

At the same time, we should keep in mind that what works in Europe may not necessarily work in other areas. The EU countries enjoy roughly similar levels of economic, social, political and technological development.

The same can’t be said for the Americas or the Pacific Rim. This greater diversity presents different challenges, and different opportunities, for standards bodies in these regions.

One role that regional standards bodies already fulfil admirably is serving as a forum for sharing information and experiences. In fact, that was the theme of PASC and COPANT’s special joint session in April 1999: "Bringing together experiences to improve."

By bringing together developed and developing countries, regional bodies can help the latter to build up their standards development and conformity assessment infrastructures. Canada, for example, has helped Trinidad and Guatemala with the development of their WTO/NAFTA Enquiry Points.

Along the same lines, regional bodies could play a role in adapting international standards to local conditions. While this is usually regarded as the job of national bodies, regional body members often share a language or common technical practices. Doing this adoption at the regional level could save effort and expense, and might even make international standards available to countries that don’t have the resources to adopt them on their own. If several Spanish-speaking countries want to adopt an international standard, for example, why not have it translated just once rather than several times?

Regional bodies may also need to develop regional standards. It can sometimes be difficult to generate interest or support at the international level for a standard that satisfies a regional need.

For example, it took some time for developing countries to persuade the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) to begin development of an international standard for hand-operated water pumps. Perhaps a regional standards development body would have acted more quickly.

Regional standards can also serve as an intermediate step to harmonization with international standards. Canada, the U.S. and Mexico, for example, have had some success in the development of trinational electrical product standards.

The idea here is not, of course, to develop regional standards that are incompatible with the rest of the world. Instead, regional standards development could become part of the international process. We’ve seen this happen in a formal way in the relationship between ISO, IEC, the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) and the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC), in which the European bodies develop a document that becomes both the European and the international standard.

Once they have a proven track record, other regional standards bodies could be accorded the same privilege. In a similar manner, regional bodies could also serve as the place where new concepts in standardization are developed and "field-tested" prior to implementation at the international level. For example, a number of countries, including Canada, have developed standards-based privacy codes.

While ISO members have decided not to begin international work at the moment, the successful application of these codes at the national level may lead to greater support for ISO activity in the future.

Implementing new standards at the regional rather than the national level could provide even more impetus for their eventual international adoption by demonstrating their effectiveness under a wider variety of conditions.

Where I believe regional standards bodies have the greatest potential, however, is in their ability to serve as stepping-stones to international standards bodies.

Regional bodies may be able to help individual countries take part in international initiatives. For example, the Pacific Accreditation Cooperation (PAC), an organization of accreditation bodies from the Pacific Rim, has signed a multilateral agreement on the recognition of accredited ISO 9000 registrars developed by the International Accreditation Forum (IAF). That gives PAC members the benefits of membership in the IAF agreement, without the expense of participating in an international forum.

Regional bodies may also increase the influence of people and organizations that don’t get to take part in international standards development. One of the most vexing problems for international standards bodies is the issue of balance on standards committees. Multinational companies play a large role in ISO and IEC, while the role of small businesses, governments, non-governmental organizations and consumers is often limited due to the cost of participation.

Regional bodies may help to resolve this problem. The Standards Council of Canada has found that bilateral or regional bodies are often more accessible for small businesses and regulators than international bodies. When we looked at who participated in which committees, we found that small and medium sized businesses provide one out of every four Canadian members of Canada-U.S. standards development committees, compared to one in ten at the international level.

Developing countries are often as disadvantaged as small businesses or consumers when it comes to taking part in international activity. These countries often lack the influence to make their voices heard in international forums — that’s if they have the resources to participate at all. Regional standards bodies may provide a solution: one vote among 24 carries more weight than one among more than a hundred, and the plane fare from, say, Bolivia to Colombia is a lot less than the fare to Geneva.

Effective regional representation at the international level might relieve some countries of the effort and expense of international participation altogether.

If you know that your regional body is going to present your concerns to ISO or IEC, perhaps with more influence than you could, there may be better ways to allocate your limited resources.

The opportunities for strategic action and coordination don’t end with the presentation of a united front, however. Regional bodies could also coordinate the allocation of international chairs or secretariats within the region, support members’ bids for leadership positions, share the resources necessary to operate a secretariat, or perhaps even hold secretariats themselves.

In time, perhaps ISO and IEC will become federations of regions rather than of individual countries. How can we further explore these ideas?

Both Canada and the United States are currently in the process of developing national standards strategies — documents that will serve as standardization roadmaps for the 21st century. As part of this process, participants are intently examining the Standards Council of Canada’s role as Canada’s national standards body, and the roles of all other participants in our National Standards System.

It’s a pretty demanding exercise, but one from which we expect to emerge as a much more focused and coordinated national system. Perhaps we should consider a regional standards strategy as well.

Halfway down the stairs can be a good place to sit, once you know why you’re there.

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This article first appeared in Volume 26, Number 6, of CONSENSUS Magazine, 1999.  The information it contains was accurate at the time of publication but has not been updated or revised since, and may not reflect the latest updates on the topic.  If you have specific questions or concerns about the content, please contact the Standards Council of Canada.

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