Publicatie van de Maand: September 2000 (2) |
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Tekst
overgenomen met toestemming van:
ISO-BULLETIN, september 2000 (COMMENT)
Geschreven door:
Gene Hutchinson,
Chair DEVCO (ISO Committee for Developing Countries and Managing
Director BOBS (Botswana)
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IT helps us if you help
it
FORMAL
standardization is new to Botswana, but it seems to me somewhat easier
to sell the need for international standardization and the concept
that standards facilitate trade in Botswana in 2000 than it was in
Trinidad and Tobago in 1974 when I began out there...
Botswana is an active member of the Southern African Development
Community (SADC) and, while it is very large, travel from Botswana to
its four immediate neighbours (Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and
Zimbabwe) is comparatively easy. Cellular phones with roaming
capabilities, PCs with modems and access to the Internet (and
e-commerce) and satellite television (all of which are available in
Botswana) make the concepts of the global village and global
competition, very, very relevant. In talking to the Small and Medium
Size Enterprises (SME) sector, this ease of access helps them to
recognize the validity of the statement that a local standard gives
them a target market of only 1,36 million people. A SADC (regional)
standard would increase that market to 195 million, while adopting an
international standard would give a potential market of 6 billion
people.
Botswana is faced with the task of catching up with the neighbouring
countries that use standards and getting its far-flung population to
become involved in standardization. We do not have the luxury of time
to follow slavishly all the steps that the developed countries took to
reach where they are now. We must skip many of those steps and go
directly to the present, indeed to the future. Fortunately we live in
a time when information technology (IT) can facilitate such a strategy.
The Botswana Bureau of Standards has embarked on a programme to make
itself capable of receiving information from around the world (and
across Botswana) in electronic form and responding in like manner. But
if this programme is to be really successful then the national and
international standardization communities must actively and
consistently push for the use of IT in their proceedings, right down
to the working group levels. We cannot receive, if nobody is sending,
and to whom will we send if no one can receive? There is need for us
all to rethink the way we work. The electronic distribution of papers
and collection of comments imposes on us the need for discipline, to
seriously consider the matters before we leave home, not read them in
the plane on the way to the meeting, nor wait for a remark in the
meeting to trigger a response. If a seven person international working
group (or a national technical committee) uses e-mail for the
distribution of papers and the collection of comments, what is the
quorum for the meeting?
NetMeeting
or similar software should be used for meetings so that members from
different parts of the world can take part in the meetings in
real-time, if not in person, and the meetings need sometimes to be
scheduled at 09:00 hours Sydney, Australia time (or Pretoria, Seoul or
Los Angeles time). Is there any technical impediment to ISO doing a
web cast of its meetings, so that the staff of the NSB whose CEO goes
off annually to the meetings in different parts of the world can share
electronically in the event in real time? Why is it that the members
from countries that can best afford to pay to attend meetings in
far-off places, in fact spend the least amount to attend the meetings
(because the meetings are held in nearby countries)? If it costs twice
as much for you to attend meetings, should they not be held in your
neck of the woods more often than once in a blue moon? I look forward
to the time when one of my staff can sit at her desk and, with the
help of a committee member in Francistown or Harare contribute to a
meeting in Seattle, Washington. |
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