User participation in standards setting—the panacea?

Abstract

· Voluntary standardization bodies regularly issue calls for increased user part icipation in their w o r k groups. This paper challenges such calls. It suggests that users are not normal ly in a position to provide meaningful requirements for a new IT service from the outset because of a lack of necessary experience. Second, the paper argues that such a n uncondit ional 'ca l l for users,' even i f i t w e r e answered , would probably be counterproductive, in that a s imple increase of the number of users on the committees would not necessarily increase the number of user representa t ives , but of c o m p a n y de legates . This i s explained by drawing upon evidence from innovation theory and survey results compi led through a number of interviews wi th representatives of both large companies and standards-sett ing organizat ions. The case of electronic mai l i s used to illustrate the arguments. tandardization processes adopted by the 'official' bodies (e.g., ITU and ISO) are facing an increasing amount of criticism. Typically, these bodies are reproached with operating far too slowly, and thus with not being able to cope with the pace of technological progress, especially in the field of information technology. As a consequence, a large number of more informally operating industry consortia and fora have been established in recent years, and are about to take on some of the tasks that used to be within the domain of the official bodies. Having seen the writing on the wall, and in an attempt to recover some of the lost ground, the official standardization bodies are trying to improve their standing, for instance by streamlining their procedures, by opening up the process to specifications generated by some external entity (e.g., a company or a consortium), and by establishing liaisons with other specification-producing organizations. In particular, they have regularly been issuing calls for increased user participation. In most cases this was an unconditional call, motivated by the perceived high risk of a standard's failure in the open market if no users were involved in its development. This perception is pretty much fn line with the commonly held belief, frequently echoed by standards theorists, that increased user .participation is the panacea to many problems ITU and ISO are facing. Yet, in the light of the results of a recently conducted survey and drawing upon lessons that can be learned from the literature on technical innovations, this claim appears to be in need of critical review. Regarding the former, we will link the corporate 'introduction strategy' typically to be observed in the cases of e-mail (as a sample high-level communication service) to users' inability to contribute to standardization from the outset. Regarding the latter we argue that user participation at all costs does not achieve very much; in fact, it may be counterproductive due to the environment-specific requirements that each single user is likely to contribute. Throughout the remainder of the paper we will address some general questions relating to user participation in the standards-setting process. The typical introduction strategy of corporate e-mail systems will