scope:

Foreword

The ISO/IEC Directives are published in two parts:

Part 1: Procedures for the technical work

Part 2: Rules for the structure and drafting of International Standards

Furthermore, ISO, IEC and ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee (JTC) 1 have published independent supplements to Part 1, which include procedures that are not common.

This part sets out the procedures to be followed within the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) in carrying out their technical work: primarily the development and maintenance of International Standards through the activities of technical committees and their subsidiary bodies.

ISO, IEC and ISO/IEC JTC 1 provide additional guidance and tools to all th ose concerned with the preparation of technical documents on their respective websites (www.iso.org/directives; http://www.iec.ch/members_experts/refdocs/ and http://www.jtc1.org).

This ninth edition incorporates changes agreed by the respective technical management boards since publication of the eight edition in 2011. Procedures which are not common to the ISO/IEC Directives are published separately in the ISO Supplement (also referred to as the Consolidated ISO Supplement) , the IEC Supplement or the ISO/IEC JTC 1 Supplement , respectively. The Supplements are to be used in conjunction with this document.

The following is a list of the principal changes with respect to the previous edition. The track changes version of this ninth edition should be consulted for the details of the changes made.

a) addition of Joint Project Committees (JPC) (see 1.3.2);

b) addition of project committee in the list of those who may submit proposals for work in new fields (see 1.5.3);

c) addition to the requirements for proposals for new fields of technical activity - further to the recommendations of the ISO/IEC Market Relevance Task Force or "MRTF" (see 1.5.4, 1.5.5 and 1.5.6);

d) clarification of the actions to be taken where P-members fail to participate actively (see 1.7.4);

e) addition to the requirements for a project committee wishing to be transformed into a technical committee (see 1.10);

f) addition to the requirements for new work item proposals - further to the recommendations of the MRTF (see 2.3.4);

g) clarification of the acceptance criteria for new work item proposals - further to the recommendations of the MRTF (see 2.3.5);

h) for ISO, reduction of voting period at the enquiry stage (see 2.6.1);

i) for ISO, addition that FDIS is optional where the approval criteria in 2.6.3 are met (see 2.6.4);

j) clarification and limitations for the issuance of technical corrigenda and amendments (see 2.10);

k) significant modifications to Annex C - further to the recommendations of the MRTF) ;

l) editorial update in Annex D (see f);

m) reference to the ISO and IEC Supplements for the acceptance of Publicly Available Specifications (see F.1);

n) modifications to the Guidelines for Implementation of the Common Patent Policy for ITU-T/ITU-R/ISO/IEC (see Annex I); and

o) clarification of the responsibility for the maintenance of standard(s) where the project committee has been transformed into a technical committee (see K.7).

p) addition of subcommittee in clause F.2.1.1 (see Annex F).

These procedures have been established by ISO and IEC in recognition of the need for International Standards to be cost-effective and timely, as well as widely recognized and generally applied. In order to attain these objectives, the procedures are based on the following concepts.