Text of a letter sent by the TC67 Secretary in late 1997

To: ISO/TC 67 P-Members
        ISO/TC 67 Subcommittee Chairs and Secretaries
        ISO/TC 67 Working Group Convenors
        ISO/TC 67 Joint Working Group Convenors
        ISO/TC 67 Advisory Group Members
        ISO/TC 67/SC 4 Working Group Convenors and Project Leaders

Cc: ISO/TC 67 O-Members
        J.R. Alessi - ISO CS

Re: Process Clarification for "Freezing" and "Unfreezing" Work Items

As requested by resolution TC 67/AG-3 Jakarta 3, the ISO/TC 67 Secretariat is providing the following information.

We will now be using the term "Frozen" in place of the terms "on hold" or "postponed." ISO/CS recognizes projects as "frozen" by the designation of 00.20. Thus, a project listed at 30.00, or CD-stage, when approved as "frozen" would list its next stage as "00.20" until such time as it is "re-vitalised" to its previous stage of 30.00.

How is this done and what justification is required? When the normal standards development process needs to be suspended so that other types of activity, such as unforeseen round-robin tests, can be carried out; a Subcommittee or Standing Working Group can approve "freezing" a project by means of either a letter ballot of all P-Members of the TC or SC, or a formal resolution developed at a meeting. In each case approval of the action is based on a simple majority of voting P-Members. A simple majority of P-members is also required to re-designate a project as "active".

A decision to "freeze" (and to subsequently re-activate) a project needs to be reported to ISO/CS, who will include a note in the project record to that effect. An example of such a note in ISO/CS’ database would be words such as: "project frozen pending progression of Part 1 and availability of xxx method."

"Freezing" a project is not intended to hide or mask those projects that are poorly defined or lack project leaders. ISO/CS recognizes proper justification as: the need to organize collaborative testing to validate new procedures or test methodologies; surveys to obtain precision data; unforeseen need for round-robin tests; or changes in the priority of a project, perhaps due to changes in availability of resources. In each case where projects have missed their target dates, the ISO/TC 67 Secretariat must present proper justification to ISO/CS for its determination whether a project will be listed as "frozen" or automatically cancelled.

Please note that items balloted as PWI’s, i.e. those not previously listed in another stage, are recorded by the TC Secretariat and may be reported to the ISO/CS for recording and consolidation with the listing of approved projects. As for any work item, preliminary work items may also be abandoned if they prove to be non-viable.

Attached for your use are two pages from the ISO/CS training presentation:: Getting Standards out Faster...From Molasses to Quicksilver. The full presentation is available on our TC 67 Web Site (under the icon labelled "Virtual Library") at: http://www.api.org/iso/tc67.

Sincerely,

 Diana T. Artemis
Secretary to ISO/TC 67