ISO/IEC: The organization that develops the standards for contactless technology
01 May, 2003
category: Contactless, Library
The development of standards is an important step in the development of any new technology. Without standards, users of a technology cannot be certain that products from one vendor will work alongside those from other vendors, nor can they even be certain that products from a single vendor will be interoperable with future shipments from that same vendor.
This important task of developing standard for contactless technology falls to a group of international technologists that comprise Working Group 8. The full title of the group is ISO / IEC / JTC1 / SC17 / WG8. To understand the formation of the group, the name is detailed below.
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is a worldwide federation of national standards bodies from some 130 countries, one from each participating country. ISO is a non-governmental organization that was established in 1947.
International Electro Technical Committee (IEC), founded in 1906, has 52 National Committees responsible for international standardization in the electrical and electronics fields. IEC committees represent all electro-technical interests in each country, from manufacturing and service industries to government, scientific, research and development, academic and consumer bodies.
Joint Technical Committee 1 (JTC1) directs standards for Information Technology Standardization and was established in January 1987. The JTC1 committee has 19 subcommittees and 67 working groups.
Subcommittee 17 (SC17), Identification Cards and Related Devices, is the subcommittee that is responsible for card standards.
Working Group 8 is the working group within SC17, established in 1988, to develop standards for contactless chip cards.
To learn more about the effort of WG8, visit them on the web at http://WG8.de.