AIIM Standards Watch

State of Standards

As a part of the AIIM 2006 State of the Industry survey, survey respondents were asked several questions about standards. The results of the survey show that consensus standards development processes like those promoted by ANSI (American National Standards Institute), ISO (International Organization for Standardization) and the many other organizations continue to be important largely because they are fairly well-understood. Surprisingly, of the end user respondents of this survey only 19% were familiar with the W3C (Worldwide Web Consortium) and 10% were familiar with OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) both of which are fairly well known among the IT community. [Note: W3C is developing web based standards and OASIS is largely responsible for standards in the area of XML, HTML, SOA, etc.] This tells us that there is a growing understanding of XML, .NET and web services standards that ultimately supports the new importance that SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) and interoperability play in end user plans to improve their businesses which supports AIIM's efforts in iECM. (More posts to come regarding iECM in the near future.)

DeFacto vs. DeJure Standards

There are two basic types of standards available in the industry - de facto and de jure. De Facto standards may also be know as market driven. Standards that are considered market driven or de facto are those that have received wide acceptance by the industry. Some examples of de facto standards include, Microsoft Windows that is widely accepted as a client operating system and is most often shipped with computers from the factory. PDF (Portable Document Format) and TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) are also considered de facto standards because they are widely used for transmitting doucmens in non-editable, non-revisable format.  De Facto standards result from many organizations adopting the use of them.

We also have de jure or formal standards that are developed by accredited standards organizations using rigid procedures that may periodically be audited. Formal standards development is based on openness and due process. Openness means that there are no obstacles to prevent an individual with a direct and material interest from expressing a viewpoint regardless of whether it is an affirmation or an objection to the discussion. This means that participation in the standards development activity is open to all persons. Due process ensures equity and fair play in the development process. The concepts of openness and due process are also found in the standards development efforts lead by coalitions and consortiums.

PDF/Archive

The US committee for PDF/A (PDF/Archive) will be meeting on Thursday, May 17 at the AIIM Headquarters in Silver Spring. The focus of this meeting will be on reviewing and producing comments for the PDF/A-2 which will become ISO 19005-2. ISO 19005-1 (PDF/A-1) was published in 2005 and is based on PDF Reference 1.4. This new version of PDF/A-2 will incorporate some new features that are in PDF Reference 1.7. This review process will produce comments on the new version of the standard which will be sent to ISO for the committee to discuss at its next international meeting which will be August 28-29 in Berlin, Germany.

Anyone who lives in the U.S. is welcome to participate on the US PDF/A committee and may attend the meeting this week. If you want to review the history of the PDF/A commtitee, you will find minutes from previous meetings at http://www.aiim.org/pdfa.

Welcome

Welcome to the AIIM Standards Watch Blog. For those of you who have been a member of AIIM, you may remember an eNewsletter called Standards Watch where we helped to keep you current on standard for document imaging and management. This blog will attempt to do that same thing but on a much more real-time basis. Let's start with an introduction to AIIM Standards for those of you who may not know.

AIIM is an ANSI accredited standards development organization and has been for over 25 years. In addition to ANSI standards, AIIM holds the secretariat of an ISO Technical Committee and Subcommittee on behalf of ANSI for ISO TC 171, Document Management Applications and TC171 SC2, Application Issues. Our focus is on ECM or Enterprise Content Management Standards which includes document management, digital and analog image management, workflow and business process management and analysis, metadata, interoperability, PDF, and many other topics that we will discuss in this blog in future postings. In addition to ANSI and ISO standards, our program also develops AIIM Recommended Practices (ARP), fast-track specifications to help users gain a better understanding of the technology. All are welcome to participate on our committees (and we have many). For additional information on the committees and to find out how you can participate, please send an email to bfanning@aiim.org. We look forward to your participation as we shape the industry and help others to make better use of the ECM technologies. For more information on AIIM Standards, please visit http://www.aiim.org/standards.