IEC refines its Collaboration Tools Suite

Specific links for every expert according to TC or SC

Track changes and transmit documents with comments

Follow discussions and update records

By Azar Tahbazian

The ‘I’ in IEC stands for International. It is precisely this word that is significant when it comes to originating, drafting, revising and approving a standard. That’s because the thousands of experts from dozens of countries who make IEC International Standards operate “in the field”. Unlike the people in a centrally run organization, who may work from in a single location, they rely almost totally on electronic data exchanges to fulfil their tasks.

Now, the IEC has refined its data exchange platform, the Collaboration Tools Suite, to make it even easier for these experts. Parts or all of the suite are also available to IEC members, regional subsets of members and any other international organizations who may benefit from it.

Among its international standardization peers, the IEC has led the field for at least 10 years in developing, implementing and using a 100 % electronic working environment. To help the experts do their IEC work, various services have been introduced over the past few years, including File Transfer Protocol sites (FTPs), discussion forums and mailing lists.

Although these services have been successful and much appreciated by users, access to each has required a different username and password and/or internet link. Now, the Collaboration Tools Suite has been further enhanced to provide access with a single username and password to all the services, whether they be working documents on the web, other collaboration tools or the Expert Management System.

After obtaining initial access to the system, each user will see a personal login page showing all committees in which he/she is active. The services available include:

• exchange of Working Group documents,
• the archive of WG minutes and agendas,
• discussion forums,
• issues and tasks,
• automatic notification of changes.

Since the entire suite of applications is maintained at IEC headquarters, changes and updates can be made quickly and simply according to comments and suggestions received from users.

Two of the IEC conformity assessment schemes (IECQ and IECEE) are currently evaluating the applications for their own use, notably the exchange of documents between members.
In the extended community, the European electrotechnical standardization body, CENELEC, is the first to take advantage of the suite to simplify the work of its National Committees. In addition, access for experts active in both the IEC and CENELEC will also be simplified, since they will be able to use the same username and password for both, and their login page will display one column with the IEC committees and one column with the CENELEC committees to which they belong.

The Collaboration Tools Suite can also be used for the operations of national mirror committees. The Swedish NC has already been trained and is introducing elements of the system, the USNC is testing it and the Japanese NC is also expressing interest. Other National Committees interested in this feature are encouraged to contact TISS for further information.

Related information:

website: TISS, Technical Infomation Support and Services
email: TISS