About

We are all aware of the existence of "standards". They form the fundamentals of trade and economy. Today, vast libraries of ‘standards’ are offered by international organisations such as ISO, IEC, ETSI or by NBN in Belgium, covering a wide range of trades and domains to help businesses shape their products and organisations. "Standards are the distilled wisdom of people with expertise in their subject matter", as ISO describes it. 

For ICT as well, standards can be a source of knowledge and expertise. In a recent ISO report on future trends, technology areas like Smart cities, 5G, IoT, Edge computing, artificial intelligence, etc… are already subject to standardization initiatives. They offer not only blueprints and best practices from a technological and operational point of view but also management and even ethical guidelines on the use of new technologies.

Once upon a time, these standards came on paper. Then they came on PDF and XML. Today they are offered in state-of-the-art knowledge platforms. Moreover, projects are running to make them "SMART": "Standards that are Machine Applicable Readable and Transferable". This project is about making the "traditional" content of standards readable by your machines and IT systems so that users can do all kinds of tech-savvy things with them.

The project is still in its infancy, and users and industry practice will be an essential guide for its further evolution...