[LINK] Make Australian Standards Open Access?

[Marghanita da Cruz]

Glen,

You raise some interesting issues.

ACIF is a industry self regulating instrument.

I am not entirely sure where to position SA or the ACS for that matter.

There are also issues with the standards such as...whether they are 
consumer or
guides for experts, when they should be  legislated vs best practice stuff..

In the case of AS8015-2005....it has been taken up by all sorts which is a
compliment (note i). AS4360 is also getting some recognition after a 
longer gestation period (I think upto revision 3)

I suspect more people would actually read the document, and complement
(note e in complement) if it were open source...which would be even better!

Marghanita
PS anyone confused check out
http://www.ramin.com.au/itgovernance/as8015.html

Glen Turner wrote:
> Tom Worthington wrote:
> 
>> If the Australian Government is willing to consider making its 
>> documents freely available on-line, it seems reasonable that Standards 
>> Australia should do likewise.
> 
> 
> More than reasonable. Many government regulations refer to
> Australian Standards. It's a basic principle of democracy
> that there are no secret laws. The cost of Australian
> Standards is so high for the common person that the law in
> many technical arenas is secret.
> 
> It's not as if these technical arenas are irrelevant to
> the common person -- they may wish to build their own
> house (or check upon the work of their builder), install
> their own swimming pool, etc.
> 
> 
> Personally, I view the move of the telecommunications
> cabling standard from Standards Australia to ACIF as
> a wonderful thing, as the ACIF standards are freely
> available to all.
> 
> Even though I don't encourage unlicensed cabling,
> having unlicensed cabling done safely is a social
> plus --- I've seen enough DIY cabling running alongside
> power cables for this lifetime. Also having the standard
> available allows unlicensed people to readily check the
> safety of work done by licensed installers. In an
> industry with a small but annoying "fly by night" element
> that is an important consumer protection.
> 
> I can't see why the Electrical Wiring Rules should not be
> as freely available.
> 
> 
> Finally, the split of Standards Australia into SA and
> SAI Global is nothing more that a case of socialising
> the costs and privatising the profits.
> 
> When that split occurred the government should have
> ended its arrangement with Standards Australia and
> created its own standards-coordinating secretariat.
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> 


-- 
Marghanita da Cruz
Phone: 0414-869202
http://www.ramin.com.au/itgovernance
http://www.ramin.com.au/linux
http://www.ramin.com.au/eco-sydney