Standardization in a consortia

Up to this point, one can already sense that the process of standardization in a consortia involves all the partners involved and differs from the one in a formal organization body.

In order to understand the concept of a consortia I have tried to find a definition for it. Unfortunately, I have found that for this type of organization it is very difficult to have a fixed definition since it strongly depends on the area that they are working on and how the consortia came together. However, in this paper I found a reference to a characterization of consortia, as seen by de Vrie in his book on Standardization, published in 1999. Since I consider that these characteristic nicely summarize what a consortia is and its purposes I will share them with you:

• Organizations that do not develop standards themselves, but in one-way or another perform standardization-related activities in relation to SDOs (standards developing organizations).
• Specialised standardization organisations such as industry sector groups, whose purpose is to develop standards. The membership is sometimes open to all interested corporations, universities and governmental agencies.

•  A form of co-operation between competitors to agree on standards: a broad grouping of different companies pursuing a common objective, usually in a particular technology field. 

•  Organizations that companies co-operate in R&D to share cost and, as part of the project, agree on standards.

I consider that the TOBI project is fairly described by the first and last characteristics, since its purpose is not the standardization process itself, but all means of providing useful tools in BCI. However, this is just a personal opinion and I could not find any details on how did the standards presented in my previous post emerged and what kind of mechanism was inside the consortia. The information available on the project does not provide clear information on the process, such as if there was a voting process or not, if all partners had an equal vote or how they dealt with negative votes (if that was the case).

Regarding the standardization regime of TOBI I think it is safe to say that it was a voluntary standardization, open and consensus like we have seen that is the case in these type of European projects.  Moreover, the consortia seems to be market orientated with no government influence at the national level of any of the partners.


References:

• M. Kajiura, A change by the Consortium in ICT Standardization, World Academy of Science, Engineering and Technology, 2008
• H. de Vries, Standardization, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1999