MEMO 2: International Standards Organisation (ISO) ICT support for Developing Nations

Overview of the ISO

Origins: The ISO is a non-governmental organisation consisting of 157 member countries that was established through the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) in 1906 and is co-ordinated by the Central Secretariat in Geneva, Switzerland.


Current Objectives: The ISO has built a strategic partership with the ITU, IEC and WTO with the common goal in synergising the movement towards a free and fair global trading system.


Structure of the ISO







The Essence of Development: Development can be defined as the process of improvement characterized by the change from simple to more complex [2]. True to this definition the ISO is a vast resource encapsulating over 16,000 distinct standards, and its plans for developing nations with scarce resources is to engage them in a process of development, as they stand a chance to grow rapidly standing on the shoulders of the ISO giant. This transfer of state-of-the-art technological know how is the center of the ISO's plan of action.


The ISO's Policy Committee for developing nations, DEVCO, has slated out the following plan of action to specifically permit developing nations to hit the ground running in the international trade arena.

• It provides special publications that allows developing nations to more fully participate and facilitate the change towards building up their standardization infrastructures
• It lists the benefits to developing countries of implementing International Standards.
• It details specific training programmes for developing nations in order to promote this change.

REFERENCE:


www.iso.org
www.dictionary.com