Standards Development

Scope

This standard provides a methodology, and a listing of fields of (technical) activity, organized in groups and subgroups, for classifying standards publications. By inheritance, it provides a common, harmonized understanding of standards application domains - enabling interoperability, consistency, and semantic alignment across different systems and stakeholders, in the form of a foundational semantic enrichment of SMART standards.

Purpose

The ICS (International Classification for Standards) serves as a structure for catalogues of international, regional and national standards and other normative documents, and as a basis for standing-order systems for international, regional and national standards. It may also be used for classifying standards and normative documents in databases, libraries, etc.

The ICS facilitates the harmonization of information and ordering tools such as catalogues, selective lists, bibliographies, and databases on digital and optical media, thus promoting the world-wide dissemination of international, regional and national standards and other normative documents as well as content and data derived from these (SMART standards content and data).

The ICS has been in use for 30 years now. Much experience has been gained and its value for structuring standards collections is proven by practice. The past decade, however, as shown that the ICS also serves as a tool for identifying standards not only in existing fields of activity but also as an implement much appreciated when dealing with new and sometimes overarching fields of activity as e. g. Artificial Intelligence or Sustainable Development.

In this context it has become apparent that a consistent and up-to-date classification of ISO standards and other normative documents also serves as a “bridge” towards other organizations since it allows the rough mapping of ISO standards onto ordering systems or classifications used in other sectors. Being able to do this kind of mapping improves the responsiveness of the standards community when faced with new developments or new potential partners. Moreover, an internationally relevant and well maintained ICS taxonomy will make it easier for users, developers, regulators, and industry to find, understand, and apply the right standards

So by proposing

a) to update the existing ICS version 7 which hails from 2015 to the present state of the art and

b) to give it a new status as an ISO Technical Specification, thus gaining visibility and weight, the proposer intends to serve both standards creation, publication and downstream usage of (SMART) standards content as well as the political aim of facilitating cooperation of ISO and its Members with other relevant international cooperation partners.