Can Standards Move at the Pace of AI?
Letter from the Executive Director, November 2026
Technological changes can happen at a rapid pace. For consumers and users of these new technologies, this can be difficult enough to navigate. Standards development—while focused on technical issues—is fundamentally a social process that often takes time. This dichotomy doesn’t mean, however, that standards developers should sit idly by and let advancements happen without their involvement. Sometimes, the standards process must act more quickly to keep pace with technological advancement. NISO recognized this 20 years ago, when we launched the Recommended Practice series in 2006 with our first RP-2006-01, Best Practices for Designing Web Services in the Library Context. As the landscape continues to evolve, we have recognized that even the RP process might not be fast enough for some projects. Last month, as we announced here, NISO is part of a community initiative to advance AI standards work on an even more accelerated time scale.
As part of these initiatives, we are advancing a new approach for NISO in developing community consensus through initial pilot deployment. This approach will allow the community to compare data exchange models and then test and advance technological approaches to improve tracking of provenance data in artificial intelligence systems. Our hope is that we can rapidly come to some initial consensus and then advance a candidate-proposed structure that can proceed into a more methodical standardization process.
Although the initial timeline proposed for the provenance pilot project was described as expecting to run for 12 months, we now believe the project might be able to come to conclusion more rapidly. Following the launch meeting for the project in October and initial discussions and given the existing partnerships and data sharing that already exists in the community, the initial work could be done more quickly. We’re also exploring how this work can connect with and relate to existing provenance and metadata work, notably the C2PA standard, the IPTC work on image provenance, work by the IETF, and existing descriptive work such as Dublin Core. The result of the pilot project won’t be a formal standard, but rather a candidate that could be used in production systems as it begins the formalization process. It might also end in proposed extensions to the existing work to support their efforts, where appropriate. Regardless, we want to ensure that the voice of our community is represented in a timely fashion rather than after technology companies have moved on.
We are applying a similar approach in partnership with the SeamlessAccess coalition, of which NISO is a part. This second pilot project, which was announced last week, aims to improve and simplify the adoption process of federated identity access control systems for library resources. The Advancing Federated Identity for Library E-Resources initiative will bring together libraries, institutional identity and access management (IAM) teams, publishers, technology providers, federations, and national research and education networks (NRENs) to help develop requirements, investigate adoption barriers, and develop and test implementation recommendations to support adoption of federated access systems. The initiative’s approved charter is now available, and we invite people to engage either on the steering committee, as a research participant, or on one of the pilot implementations. You can express interest in participating using this form.
Since the projects were announced, there has been significant interest in the work. Numerous organizations have reached out to engage, from existing NISO members to startups, as well as organizations new to NISO’s work. We welcome further expressions of interest in the pilot development work. Now is the time to get involved, because things are moving rapidly. Standards work needs to keep up!
Sincerely,
Todd A. Carpenter
Executive Director
