Common Challenges in Standards and Technical Regulation

Standards development is an expensive and time consuming business as it is based on transparency and consensus principles. Hence national standards should only be developed if there is a real and demonstrable need for doing so and not because it is fashionable to publish specific standards or chase a predetermined number to be published. The NSB should furthermore ensure that the standards development process unequivocally meets all the requirements of Annex 3 of the WTO TBT Agreement.

Standards are developed in technical committees. These should be representative of the major stakeholders within a given context. The private sector should play the leading role in such technical committees, as they would be the ones that will have to implement the standards in the first place. Hence, the NSB should not be content with representatives mainly from the public sector, but should vigorously solicit meaningful private sector participation.

The NSB should represent the country in regional and international standards development where it matters, i.e. for sectors and issues relevant to the local industry and authorities. In these cases, NSBs should participate actively in international technical committees, and not only in annual General Assemblies

Few countries are ‘standards makers’, most are ‘standards takers’. This is especially the case for developing countries. Developing countries should therefore endeavour to adopt international standards as much as possible, and the NSB should help resist the temptation of local industry or the authorities to utilise national standards as a disguised trade barrier against imported products. The NSB should rather follow a strategy to influence those international standards that are of prime interest to the country by meaningful participation in the relevant international technical committees.

Ministries should be encouraged to utilise standards as the basis of their technical regulation, even to the extent that they reference standards in technical regulation instead of detailing technical requirements in full. Furthermore, Ministries should be persuaded not to publish normative documents themselves, but to use the NSB for doing so. The NSB on the other hand should recognise Ministries as SDOs and allow them the final veto on content in cases where specific standards are to become technical regulations.

Information on standards and the international and regional standards development processes rely heavily on electronic communication. Hence, robust internet connections are important. Slow and/or intermittent connectivity may lead to an ineffective standards information system and a lack of influence in international standards development.