| ISO/IEC JTC 1 - Information Technology | |
| Formation: | 1987 |
| Type: | Standards organization |
| Purpose: | Development of worldwide information and communications technology (ICT) standards for business and consumer applications |
| Location: | Washington, D.C. |
| Region Served: | Worldwide |
| Leader Title: | Chairperson |
| Leader Name: | Phil Wennblom[1] |
| Parent Organization: | International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) |
ISO/IEC JTC 1, entitled "Information technology", is a joint technical committee (JTC) of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). Its purpose is to develop, maintain and promote standards in the fields of information and communications technology (ICT).
JTC 1 has been responsible for many critical IT standards, ranging from the Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) image formats and Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) audio and video formats to the C and C++ programming languages.
ISO/IEC JTC 1 was formed in 1987 as a merger between ISO/TC 97 (Information Technology) and IEC/TC 83, with IEC/SC 47B joining later. The intent was to bring together, in a single committee, the IT standardization activities of the two parent organizations in order to avoid duplicative or possibly incompatible standards. At the time of its formation, the mandate of JTC 1 was to develop base standards in information technology upon which other technical committees could build. This would allow for the development of domain and application specific standards that could be applicable to specific business domains, while also ensuring the interoperation and function of the standards on a consistent base.
In its first 15 years, JTC 1 brought about many standards in the information technology sector, including standards in the fields of multimedia (such as MPEG), IC cards (or "smart cards"), ICT security, programming languages, and character sets (such as the Universal Character Set).[2] In the early 2000s, the organization expanded its standards development into fields such as security and authentication, bandwidth/connection management, storage and data management, software and systems engineering, service protocols, portable computing devices, and certain societal aspects such as data protection and cultural and linguistic adaptability.
For more than 25 years, JTC 1 has provided a standards development environment where experts come together to develop worldwide Information and Communication Technology (ICT) standards for business and consumer applications. JTC 1 is also addressing such critical areas as teleconferences and e-meetings, cloud data management interface, biometrics in identity management, sensor networks for smart grid systems, and corporate governance of ICT implementation. As technologies converge, JTC 1 acts as a system integrator, especially in areas of standardization in which many consortia and forums are active. JTC 1 provides the standards approval environment for integrating diverse and complex ICT technologies. These standards rely upon the core infrastructure technologies developed by JTC 1 centers of expertise complemented by specifications developed in other organizations.[3] [4] There are over 2,800 published JTC 1 standards developed by about 2,100 technical experts from around the world, some of which are freely available for download while others are available for a fee.[5] [6]
In 2008, Ms. Karen Higginbottom of HP was elected as chair.[7] In a 2013 interview, she described priorities, including cloud computing standards and adaptations of existing standards.[8] After Higginbottom's nine-year term expired in 2017, Mr. Phil Wennblom of Intel was elected as chair at the JTC 1 Plenary meeting in Vladivostok, Russia.
JTC 1 has implemented a process to transpose "publicly available specifications" (PAS) into international ISO/IEC standards. The PAS transposition process allows a PAS to be approved as an ISO/IEC standard in less than a year, as opposed to a full length process that can take up to 4 years. Consortia, such as OASIS, Trusted Computing Group (TCG), The Open Group, Object Management Group (OMG), W3C, Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF), Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA), Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), GS1, Spice User Group, Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF), NESMA, Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), Khronos Group, or Joint Development Foundation use this process to transpose their specifications in an efficient manner into ISO/IEC standards.[9]
The scope of ISO/IEC JTC 1 is "International standardization in the field of information technology". Its official mandate is to develop, maintain, promote and facilitate IT standards required by global markets meeting business and user requirements concerning:
JTC 1 has a number of principles that guide standards development within the organization, which include:[10]
Like its ISO and IEC parent organizations, members of JTC 1 are national standards bodies. One national standards body represents each member country, and the members are referred to within JTC 1 as "national bodies" (NBs). A member can either have participating (P-member) or observing (O-member) status, with the main differences being the ability to participate at the working group level in the drafting of standards and to vote on proposed standards (although O-members may submit comments). As of May 2021, JTC 1 has 35 P-members and 65 O-members, and thus 100 member NBs.[11] The secretariat of JTC 1 is the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), which is the national standards body for the United States member NB.
Other organizations can participate as Liaison Members, some of which are internal to ISO/IEC and some of which are external. Liaison relationships can be established at different levels within JTC 1 – i.e., at the JTC 1 level, the subcommittee level, or at the level of a specific working group within a subcommittee. Altogether, as of May 2021, there are about 120 external organizations that are in liaison with JTC 1 at one level or another.[12] The liaison relationships established directly at the JTC 1 level are:
Most work on the development of standards is done by subcommittees (SCs), each of which deals with a particular field. Most of these subcommittees have several working groups (WGs). Subcommittees, working groups, special working groups (SWGs), and study groups (SGs) within JTC 1 are:[13]
| Advisory Groups | Title | |
|---|---|---|
| ISO/IEC JTC 1/JAG | JTC 1 advisory group | |
| ISO/IEC JTC 1/AG 1 | Communications | |
| ISO/IEC JTC 1/AG 2 | JTC 1 Emerging Technology and Innovation (JETI) | |
| ISO/IEC JTC 1/AG 6 (disbanded) | Autonomous and Data Rich Vehicles | |
| ISO/IEC JTC 1/AG 8 | Meta Reference Architecture and Reference Architecture for Systems Integration | |
| ISO/IEC JTC 1/AG 10 | Outreach | |
| ISO/IEC JTC 1/AG 14 | Systems Integration Facilitation (SIF) | |
| ISO/IEC JTC 1/AG 15 | Standards and Regulations | |
| ISO/IEC JTC 1/AG 17 | Meeting guidelines - SD 19 | |
| ISO/IEC JTC 1/AG 18 | Vocabulary | |
| ISO/IEC JTC 1/AG 19 | Coordination with ISO TC 20/SC 16 on Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) | |
| Ad Hoc Groups | Title | |
| ISO/IEC JTC 1/AHG 4 | Collaboration Across Domains | |
| ISO/IEC JTC 1/AHG 5 | JTC 1 Standards Made Freely Available | |
| Working Groups | Title | |
| ISO/IEC JTC 1/WG 7 (disbanded) | Sensor networks | |
| ISO/IEC JTC 1/WG 9 (disbanded) | Big data | |
| ISO/IEC JTC 1/WG 10 (disbanded) | Internet of things (IoT) | |
| ISO/IEC JTC 1/WG 11 | Smart cities | |
| ISO/IEC JTC 1/WG 12 | 3D printing and scanning | |
| ISO/IEC JTC 1/WG 13 | Trustworthiness | |
| ISO/IEC JTC 1/WG 14 | Quantum computing | |
| Subcommittees | Title | |
| Coded character sets | ||
| Telecommunications and information exchange between systems | ||
| Software and systems engineering | ||
| Cards and security devices for personal identification | ||
| Programming languages, their environments and system software interfaces | ||
| Digitally Recorded Media for Information Interchange and Storage | ||
| Computer graphics, image processing and environmental data representation | ||
| Interconnection of information technology equipment | ||
| Information security, cybersecurity and privacy protection | ||
| Office equipment | ||
| Coding of audio, picture, multimedia and hypermedia information | ||
| Automatic identification and data capture techniques | ||
| Data management and interchange | ||
| Document description and processing languages | ||
| User interfaces | ||
| Information technology for learning, education and training | ||
| Biometrics | ||
| Cloud computing and distributed platforms | ||
| Sustainability for and by information technology | ||
| IT service management and IT governance | ||
| Internet of things and related technologies | ||
| Artificial intelligence | ||
| Study Groups | Title | |
| ISO/IEC JTC 1/SG 1 (disbanded) | Smart cities | |
| ISO/IEC JTC 1/SG 2 (disbanded) | Big data | |
| ISO/IEC JTC 1/SG 3 | 3D Printing and scanning | |
| Special Working Groups | Title | |
| ISO/IEC JTC 1/SWG 1 (disbanded) | Accessibility (SWG-A) | |
| ISO/IEC JTC 1/SWG 2 (disbanded) | Directives | |
| ISO/IEC JTC 1/SWG 3 (disbanded) | Planning | |
| ISO/IEC JTC 1/SWG 5 (disbanded) | Internet of things (IoT) | |
| ISO/IEC JTC 1/SWG 6 (disbanded) | Management | |
| ISO/IEC JTC 1/SWG 7 (disbanded) | JTC 1 JAG group on emerging technologies and innovations (JETI) |
Each subcommittee can have subgroups created for specific purposes:
Subcommittees can be created to deal with new situations (SC 37 was established in 2002; SC 38 in 2009; SC 39 in 2012; and SC 40 in 2013) or disbanded if the area of work is no longer relevant. There is no requirement for any member body to maintain status on any or all of the subcommittees.