[LINK] Australian standards blocked from open access

[Marghanita da Cruz]

Jan Whitaker wrote:
> At 09:12 AM 8/07/2009, Tom Worthington wrote:
>> The agreement between SA and SAI Global seems to preclude open access
>> to standards, even where those standards were made by an independent
>> body and then put through the SA process. I will therefore be
>> declining to take part in any standards making through Standards
>> Australia. I recommend that my colleagues in the ICT industry also
>> consider withdrawing support for SA processes, due to the detrimental
>> effect this closed process will have on the Australian ICT industry.
> 
> Here here. I did this personally about 5 years ago when I asked for a 
> copy of the standard for which I had contributed. I was appalled when 
> I was turned down and let them know it. "Free" consulting was just 
> not on my plate if I couldn't even see the result.

One of the problems is also communication between committees and integration of
standards.  The game of trying to make committee members buy standards is
amusing, I think the situation with access to standards by committee members has
changed - or at least it did briefly.
> 
> I fully support this position of withdrawing participation and being 
> vocal about it, particularly from professional associations.
> 
<snip>

This is all very well...but if the associations continue to be
"Members" of Standards Australia (and nominate representatives)
then it becomes a farce!
<http://standards.org.au/cat.asp?catid=55>

Ofcourse, facilitating the drafting and adoption of standards is not a
trivial task and it is why I am excited about the work Kate and Pia are
doing with the public sphere wiki in particular.
<http://wiki.katelundy.com.au/PublicSphere2>

This contrasts with the approach W3c takes of having an editor see,
but be warned, this is a large HTML webpage:
<http://www.w3.org/html/wg/html5/>

Marghanita
-- 
Marghanita da Cruz
http://www.ramin.com.au
Phone: (+61)0414 869202