A Collaborative Network Model for the Standards Community

Standards, as agreed-upon norms and requirements about systems, are essential pillars of enterprise and network operation and interoperability. However, standards themselves often display interoperability, inconsistency and overlap problems partly due to the custodian work groups’ heterogeneity, the politics involved and limited communication and cooperation. This paper proposes and investigates the use of a Collaborative Network (CN) model in the standards community so as to take advantage of the wealth of knowledge accumulated in this domain, the artefacts built and the lessons learned in practice. Following an introduction and a review of the current issues in standards development, the paper presents the specific features of the CNs and the Virtual Organisations (VOs) they would create in order to tackle standards creation and revision in an integrated and synergistic way. A case study is also used to describe a possible implementation of the CN / VO model in practice and to illustrate the benefits of the proposed approach.