Time, Commitment, and Consensus: Some Reflections on the Standards Process
Letter from the Executive Editor, August 2026
This is my 240th newsletter introduction. Over that span, I’ve covered a lot of ground in this electronic space. Over the more than 350,000 words—and bless you if you’ve read them all—I’ve tried to convey a sense of what has happened, what people are trying to accomplish, and what the potential implications might be for our broader community. While one person‘s perspective is always incomplete and biased, and my crystal ball may often be fogged, hopefully, I’ve been near the target more often than not. Looking back at the pool of thoughts conveyed in these posts and the experiences they represent, here are some reflections about content management, technology, and consensus. As we enter another tumultuous period for those who create, distribute, collect and preserve information, it’s an appropriate time to gather these learnings so that we can use them to propel us forward.
Despite the proclamations about how quickly every new technology advancement is adopted, it is important to reflect that all technology adoption actually takes time. We’ve become obsessed with user-install bases and tool downloads, presuming they are the perfect metric for adoption. Technology use in a business context is far more complex than downloading a software application tool or a new AI model. New technologies need to be integrated into existing work flows and processes. Even in a small organization of a few people, this will take time. In a large corporation or institution, implementation is measured in months if not years. Truly radical technology transformations generally begin at the ground floor with a new organization or, alternatively, will take years to be integrated in large businesses.
This adoption timeline is extended significantly in organizations that lack the capital to invest. Broadly speaking, the library community has been well behind the curve of technology implementations for many years. For example, one report from 2021 comparing the age of IT systems on university campuses showed that the average age of library resource management systems was more than 20 years. This single data point is an indication of how long it can take for new generations of technology to be deployed. Certainly, it is an outlier compared to other systems and businesses, and updates to a system, particularly a web-based SaaS system, mean that it may not be as outdated as the purchase date implies. The report signals, however, that systems deployments and implementations are not necessarily keeping pace with changes in the underlying technology capabilities. If news releases about the pace of AI deployment are to be believed, software and tool advances are developing far faster than any institution's technology implementation budgets can support, even in an SaaS, cloud-based infrastructure environment. Technology advances proceeding faster than organizational resources can collectively support adoption will ultimately cause unsustainable imbalances.
The second takeaway is that consensus is a process that takes time and effort, which seems like an obvious statement, but it’s critical not to forget this. It is true regardless of the starting point or the maturity of the technology in question. While the process can take longer if something is less mature, having something that is widely adopted when it enters into the standardization process doesn’t ensure the consensus process will go smoothly or won’t surface unanticipated issues. People often decry this challenge that “standards take too long” as a failure. Certainly, any initiative driven entirely by volunteers will take longer than an internal project driven by a team of directed employees. However, ensuring that a broad and diverse set of stakeholders are participating leads to stronger outcomes when the project achieves its goals. When people with different perspectives or use cases work through a problem, the diversity of viewpoints will eventually surface issues that should be considered and addressed. Several times over the past two decades, a project was challenged and standardization delayed because of new perspectives, or requirements were added because of the diversity of people either engaged in the standards processes itself or reviewing the outputs the working group had developed. Rather than viewing these delays and timeline extensions as problems, let’s remember that this is the process working as it should and the end result becoming stronger, even if the publication is delayed by weeks or months. While we’re not aiming for perfection, these delays will ideally result in better outcomes for the entire base that will eventually adopt the standard
Related to timing is the question of commitment and resources, which as described above are necessities for standards initiatives to succeed. Over the past two decades there has been a consistent reduction in the resources that organizations have directed toward community initiatives, not just at NISO, but at associations across the world and across domains. Without leadership commitments to engagement and without the ties to explicit organizational goals, standards development is perceived as a “nice to have” sponsorship as opposed to a critical part of organizational strategy or improving efficiencies. A 2024 report by the Visiting Committee on Advanced Technology organized by NIST examined barriers, (e.g. funding, travel/hosting costs, workforce development and investments, etc.) to sustained US private-sector engagement in standards development. One thing the report flagged as “most essential need, least understood path forward” was that companies can’t easily quantify ROI from standards participation, so investments are hard to justify internally.
Much of the engagement in standards development is driven by corporate support at a leadership level. Often, they engaged in the standards process earlier in their career and saw the value of standards through firsthand experience. NISO has worked to extend this experience pipeline through our NISO Plus Scholarship program, which has brought more than 100 early-career professionals into the standards development community. Unfortunately, this model of support is personality-driven and often suffers from a lack of long-term executive sponsorship as part of an organizational strategy. Many companies’ internal champions for standards work don’t have durable backing from leadership, so investment is vulnerable to reprioritization when people leave the organization or corporate leadership changes. Without deep, sustained, and growing support for standards work, the efforts will languish because of a lack of resources and commitment to get the work done quickly or get the results implemented. Where US engagement has been faltering, we have seen an expansion of resources invested from other parts of the world, notably China, that recognize that standards development and deployment are core parts of a corporate strategy for success.
Related to the concept that technology adoption is slower than it should be is the understanding that technology implementation in standards development more broadly generally has nothing to do with the technology itself. Standards development in particular is usually not about getting the technology right—this is almost never the source of delay or fundamentally the problem. In more than 80% of the situations, the challenges and barriers are social. These social barriers could take the form of different values, business aims, policy goals, or even just personality styles in a working group. Thinking back on all of the efforts that collapsed, never got off the ground, or were hung up by contentious battles, the core issue was always social. In seeking consensus, technical issues can usually be resolved, perhaps not in the most elegant way, but compromise can be found. Social issues, on the other hand, are the areas in which people and businesses are far less likely to compromise, if at all. Finding that sweet spot, where solving the problem through collective action doesn't compete with business solutions, entrenched interests, or core values, is fundamental to a smooth process.
We also need to acknowledge that standards, like a great number of things, must constantly evolve as the ecosystem develops and changes over time. No one gets excited about maintenance or updating work that has already been done. People are drawn to the novel, and particularly new technologies, but maintenance and support are critical parts of the life cycle. Very rarely does a new technology completely replace older approaches to addressing an issue, and previous generations of technologies persist long after new replacement technologies gain wide implementation. In the race to adopt the newest technologies, it is critical that we not forget the need to maintain existing implementations. Finding people willing to engage in this vital support work is a challenge for these reasons as well, and we should be eternally grateful for those willing to do this on behalf of all the users of standards-based processes. These people form the backbone of the technology so many others rely on for their work, and they form the core of the sustained community NISO relies on to maintain and advance standards efforts.
A new generation of technologies is beginning to have a profound impact on research, writing, and content distribution. As we seek to leverage new tools, such as artificial intelligence, it is well worth reflecting on these lessons—both the successes and pitfalls—to help us improve our work going forward. Standards can make technology implementation better, faster, cheaper and more effective. We just need to commit to and invest in the process to achieve those outcomes. Many of you reading this have done and will continue to do just that, and for that, my deepest thanks. Our collective goal should be to expand the network of people who understand this and are willing like you to take action. In this space, I’ll continue to share reflections on what people are doing, what goals they’re trying to achieve, and how that work will impact the broader community. Thank you all for continuing to engage while I do.
Sincerely,
Todd Carpenter
Executive Director
