Standardization and the democratic design of information and communication technology

Abstract

The way information and communication technology (ICT) develops can promote or hinder the democratic potential of this critical societal infrastructure. Concerns about the role standards development organizations (SDOs) play in this context predate the 'digital age' but are reemerging amid substantial changes in the institutional landscape of standardization. This article explores the increasingly critical link between the institutional design of SDOs and the democratic design of ICT. We review some principles of democracy in terms of the design of technology, apply these to standardization, and discuss the role public policy may play here, while distinguishing between input and output legitimacy.

Selling the Conceptual and Computational Value of Esri’s ArcGIS Platform

“…[58] The OGC's institutional arrangement of non-profit collaboration, negotiation, and consensus building which conform to the basic principles of democracy is poised and praised to inflect a more open and transparent context for standards development and adoption. [59] The process is compatible with a realm of innovation involving networks and services under the more or less democratic metaphor of the "Information Society. "[60] The OGC's motto is "to improve sharing of the world's geospatial data," and it complements not only the popular suppositions of the "sharing economy," but Esri's marketing of its ArcGIS platform.…”

Self-Regulation and the Legitimacy of Voluntary Procedural Standards

“…Policy actors typically have to choose between adopting, what previous research has defined as, mandatory, “hard,” or voluntary, “soft” policies (Abbott & Snidal, 2000; Reus-Smit, 2004). Without denying the functional similarities between hard and soft policies and mandatory, regulative standards, and voluntary, coordinative standards, this article focuses on the standardization process and adopts the latter distinction (Iversen, Vedel, & Werle, 2004; Werle, 2002; Werle & Iversen, 2006). The distinction between regulative and coordinative standards focuses on the economic costs and benefits of standardization.…”

“…While BS 8878 predominantly resembles a regulative standard, the voluntary normative character of BS 8878 more closely resembles a coordinative standard. The juxtaposition of regulative and coordinative characteristics provides a useful case for examining the analytic distinction between the use of a standard in law and in practice (Iversen et al, 2004; Werle & Iversen, 2006). Therefore, this article presents an in-depth case study of BS 8878, a voluntary procedural standard.…”

The influence of digital standardization on administrative efficiency in e‐government: A view of standards development organizations

“…The research's analytical structure is based on two perspectives of organizational standardization: (1) the individual's background: including age, education, IT acceptance or cognition and IT qualification in standardization development, (2002) E-government is defined as utilizing information technology, for example the Internet, for delivering government information and services to citizens in real time. IT standard setting Iversen and Vedel (2004) It is applied to form a network that fits into a predetermined pattern in the administrative process design. Standardization David and Greenstein (1990); Formin and Keil (2000) Standardization is understood as a universally agreed upon set of guidelines for interoperability in order to improve efficiency in handling people's interactions, whereby a 'standard' is a set of technical specifications adhered to by a producer.…”