[LINK] Civil Society Standards [ WAS Re: "We’ve a crazy system where publishers own and control knowledge"

[Roger Clarke]

> On 22/3/24 22:06, John Mann wrote:
>> While we are at it, can we please have free open access to Australian 
>> Standards?

On 23/3/2024 09:52, Tom Worthington replied:
> No. Standards Australia licensed distribution of its standards to a for 
> profit company. Who personally benefited from that is something which 
> would merit investigation. 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standards_Australia#Licensing_of_the_sale_of_standards
 >
> I suggested standards be made free, but got no support for the idea, so 
> stopped having anything to do with SA: 
> https://blog.tomw.net.au/2009/11/australian-and-international-standards.html

Like Tom, I tried to do the right thing and contribute to industry 
standards via Stds Aust.  (The fact is that some important ISO standards 
have started right here in Australia, and although they could be better 
than they are, some of them were real progress).

Like Tom, I pretty quickly became disenchanted by the system.

Being even uglier, less polite and less capable of skilful expression 
than Tom, I argued that we needed to beat the system at its own game.

Why should 'standards' published by one coalition of interests be the 
only game in town??  'If you can't lick 'em, join 'em'.


Civil Society Must Publish Standards Documents
http://www.rogerclarke.com/DV/CSSD.html

A great deal of energy is wasted by civil society anguishing over the 
harm done to people by corporations, governments and technologies. Far 
too little effort is invested by public interest NGOs in 'practical 
activism'. This paper argues that civil society must establish Standards 
and Process Descriptions which clearly communicate their expectations, 
and which provide benchmarks against which the inadequacies of processes 
and the unacceptable dangers of projects and schemes can be delineated. 
The paper provides several examples of policy statements and templates 
of the kind that it is argued need to be provided.

It concludes that "Community institutions must raise themselves from 
their torpor, stop wasting their time grizzling, adopt the well-proven 
technique of promulgating Standards, match the bravado with which 
business and government announce their initiatives, and attract the 
media into reporting the positions of civil society with the same 
enthusiasm that they show when they re-print media releases distributed 
by corporations and government agenies".


(One indicator of how successful my argument was in changing the world 
is that the paper was written 15 years ago).


-- 
Roger Clarke                            mailto:Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au
T: +61 2 6288 6916   http://www.xamax.com.au  http://www.rogerclarke.com

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Visiting Professorial Fellow                          UNSW Law & Justice
Visiting Professor in Computer Science    Australian National University