Can AFNOR really change the OOXML vote to "abstain"?
I fully(as stated in its licence) reproduce this article by Nortbert Bollow on how France possibly broke the JTC1 rules by suddenly changing its vote from Disapproval to Abstention at the eleventh hour:
Having participated within the responsible technical committee of the Swiss Association for Standardization and considering the decision-making process that has been used to be unsatisfactory, I find it interesting to look at how things have been handled in other countries, in order to see what can be learned from that. I plan to focus my attention in this regard on countries where the primary language is German, English or French, so that I will be able to understand any relevant documents which might become available to the public or personally to me.
The case of France is particularly interesting, because in early September 2007, the French standardization organization AFNOR had taken a very strong position against accepting OOXML as a separate ISO/IEC standard besides ODF (official announcement in French, English translation on Groklaw).
The ISO/IEC JTC1 directives say in section 9.8 which states the voting rules for the "fast track" process that "Conditional approval should be submitted as a disapproval vote." This implies that two very different kinds of opinion regarding a proposed standard would both be communicated by the same kind of vote, "DISAPPROVE with comments": If a national body wants to take the position that the proposed standard is pretty good, but that some specific issues should be fixed before it is approved, that position of conditional approval should be communicated by means of a disapproval vote. If on the other hand the national body is of the opinion that the proposed standard is very bad and totally unsuitable for acceptance without an in-depth revision and reworking which is not realistically possible during the fast-track process, that position would also be communicated by the same kind of vote. The only way to find out whether a national body submitting a disapprove vote just wants some specific issues to get fixed before the proposed standard is approved, or whether the national body really wants the proposed standard to be disapproved, is to analyze the comments which were submitted with the disapproval vote.
In the case of France it was as clear as it could possibly be that the disapproval vote was meant seriously. This makes the decision to now change the vote to "abstain" doubly interesting: What were the motivations and politics behind deciding to make this change? Has the decision been reached by means of a reasonable process?
I plan to comment on these questions in later blog posts, as more information becomes available. Right now I want to focus on a different question which I stumbled across when checking the ISO/IEC JTC1 directives for the precise reference for the above quote. Namely, I noticed in that section 9.8 an indication that it is not permissible to vote "abstain" for just any reason. Specifically, in the list of possible ways of voting, it says "Abstention (see 9.1.2)."
Since I am currently seeking to understand the context of AFNOR's decision to vote "abstain", I checked what section 9.1.2 says about this topic. To my surprise, I found that voting "abstain" is tied to a particular procedural condition:
A P-member which has given appropriate notification that it will abstain from participation in specific work items (see 3.1.2) is entitled to abstain from voting on these work items.
Naturally, my next step was to turn to section 3.1.2 to learn what "appropriate notification" would be:
A P-member may have an interest in the field of JTC 1 without having interest or competence in all of the work items which may be dealt with. In such an instance, a P-member may inform the JTC 1 Secretariat, the SC Secretariat and the ITTF at the beginning of the work, or at a later stage, that it will abstain from participation in discussion or voting on specific items. Such a position, established and recorded by JTC 1, shall entitle the P-member to be absent from meetings and to abstain from voting on the relevant FDISs.
This means that it is not acceptable for P-members to abstain for just any reason. Abstaining is acceptable when there is lack of interest or competence regarding a specific work item, but with regard to work items concerning which the P-member has interest and competence, the P-member is required to somehow reach a decision of approval or disapproval.
I think that the intention behind this rule is probably to minimize the influence of lobbying on approval/disapproval decisions. When abstention is allowed only for the specified reasons, the technical committees are under much stronger pressure to evaluate proposals in a fact-oriented manner that can lead to a genuine, factually justified consensus decision.
I suppose that if during the initial review period in spring and summer 2007, a national technical committee failed to reach a consensus of any kind, that maybe could be interpreted with just a little stretching of the meaning of the words as a lack of competence and used to justify submitting an "abstain" vote at that stage.
But in view of the excellent technical quality of the comments document from France, I really don't see how AFNOR could now claim lack of competence, and a claim of lack of interest would be equally absurd.
Could it be that the French standardization organization officials really were not aware of the rules regarding abstention? I suppose I will ask them.
I will edit this blog entry to add a link to AFNOR's reply if/when I receive one.
Author: Norbert Bollow
Posted: 2008-04-02
License: Permission is hereby granted to faithfully reproduce this article in any medium, provided that a prominent link to http://Adaptux.com/blog/2008-04-02/OOXML/France is included as attribution.