Types of Standards

In the field of RFID there are a large number of standard development organisations and standardisation activities. According to this there are a large number and different kinds of deliverables from these SDOs. Deliverables produced by ISO can be divided into the following types:

• International Standard (IS)
• Publicly Available Specification (PAS),
• Technical Specification (TS),
• Technical Report (TR),
• International Workshop Agreement (IWA).

An international standard is an agreement between the ISO member bodies. Each developed standard has to be transmitted by vote of the member bodies from a draft standard into an international standard. During the development process each member has the possibility to give comments on the standard. If the final vote is negative, the supposed international standard is given back to the experts group for review.

A PAS (Publicly Available Specification) is a normative document which represents the consensus within a working group. At the beginning of the development process the TC/SC may decide that a particular work item should result in publication of a PAS. Normally this decision should be agreed simultaneously with approval of the New Work Proposal Item (NP). The document is developed during the prepatory stage within the working group. The acceptance of the document as a PAS requires the simple majority of the P-members of the responsible TC/SC. A PAS shall be reviewed at least every three years to decide either to confirm the PAS for a further three years, revise the PAS, process the PAS further to become either a technical specification or an international standard, or to withdraw the PAS.

An ISO/TS – Technical Specification is an understated form of an International Standard. The TC/SC can decide straight at the beginning of the development to deliver a technical specification, but usually a Technical Specification is produced if the TC/SC discovered that there was insufficient support for the publication of a standard.

An ISO/TR - Technical Report is an informative document containing information of a different kind from those normally published in a normative document. There are three types of ISO Technical Reports:

The first one are documents which had been intended to become a standard but for which the required votes could not be collected. The second one are Technical Reports which describe either the directions of standardisation in particular fields or in some instances to make available an experimental standard for trial use. The third report is for information only.

An IWA – International Workshop Agreement represents a technical document developed by a workshop outside of the technical structure of ISO with administrative support from a designated member body. The publication of these documents will include an indication of the participating organisations involved in the development of an IWA. The main benefit of the workshop mechanism is that it enables a more rapid response to requirements for standardisation in areas where ISO does not have existing technical structures or experts.

In general it is very useful to divide the deliverables into different types. The most used and important types in the field of RFID standardisation are Formal Standards, Technical Specifications and Technical Reports.