Hello Christopher,
I know nothing of the shenanigans that go on inside such places so I cannot comment. All the same thanks for the fascinating insider story; if they let you into another meeting I'd certainly be interested in hearing about it.
For interest can you give an example or two - how was this displayed?
Regards,
Simon
On that subject, I would love to hear the comments of someone from a UK standards drafting body. Any takers?
Regarding the comments, I'll give a few examples.
One TAG member said, "The US shows up at international meetings to draft standards. The Europeans show up to play politics." This was an indefensible remark, especially given the overwhelming evidence of politics at work within the US standards drafting body.
The leadership of the TAG often lumps "the Brits" and "Geneva" into its criticisms of the two leading ISO standards countries, UK and Switzerland. I've noticed that when arguments are to be made that ISO and the international standards development process are lumbering, slow-moving and ineffective monsters, sometimes theleadership will lay the blame at the feet of "the British" (as was done at this last meeting) and sometimes blaming "Geneva" or "the Swiss." It's so outlandish an accusation that it's cartoonish, but no one stands up and says, hey, these are our international partners; let's respect them.
You never hear anything about, say, the Spanish, or South Americans, or French (which, given the popularity of France-bashing in the US, is surprising.) And developing countries are almost always referred to with a condescending, paternal attitude that relegates them to "quaint" little countries. (Although during one keynote address, West made the faux pas of saying such countries were holding back progress on 9001/14000 alignment because "they aren't as mature as we are" or something to that effect. Ouch.)
Presumably much of the criticism of the UK is aimed at BSI. Some negative comments were tossed around (out of session) about the UK's (read: BSI's) development of OHSAS 18000, which (as I understand it) was done because ISO couldn't get its act together on occupational safety and health. There were comments that seemed to indicate this was an arrogant move on the part of BSI; suffice to say that when the US develops a domestic standard outside of the auspices of ISO, it's not arrogant, it's "in response to user needs."
The British are also often the foil of US improvement efforts, allegedly. Some ideas floated at various meetings in the past few years -- at meetings I attended, and from reports and speeches made about meetings where I didn't attend, but still have info on -- were shot down because "it will never pass the British." I'm not up on UK politics, but in the US it is common for good ideas to never make it into law because of expected failure in the Congress. This kind of thing is being used in the TAG, too. Whether it's true, or whether the UK is being used as a scapegoat, is uncertain. My view is that if we have a good idea, and the US members agree on it, we use our position on TC 176 to push for it. We don't limit our progress based on the PERCEIVED opposition of anyone.
In the end, though, I think this is just a way for the leadership to resist dramatic change, and instead keep things simple on themselves. Eventually, a few of the regular TAG guys are the ones who have to write the draft, and introducing radical ideas would mean more work -- at no pay -- for them.
I have some notes from previous meetings and speeches; I'll look them over to see if I have additional examples.
