In late August, I went to a Standards Australia “Contributor Forum 2024”.  These contributor forums are, according to Standards Australia “an opportunity to come together to share initiatives we have delivered or are currently in progress, and seek feedback and insights to areas of focus where we can deliver the greatest value to our stakeholders.”

These have been done annually for awhile; the last one I went to was in 2019. 

The thing with getting feedback, is actually taking it on board and then reporting back.

I was pleased to see in the first few pages, a clear table of the status from 2023:

The item I like is the last one – the use of AI to support standards development.

This is an item I raised as an opportunity to really streamline and speed up the production of Standards.  Really, all that time spent on cross-references, grammar, and nitty-gritty details are perfect for AI to take over the bulk of the “styling and editing” that seems to take months currently.

Other noteworthy focuses are:

• An “onboarding manager” for new committee members
• Better guidelines about ‘committee in confidence” and what that means. … The quip at the time was that, once you join a standards committee, what, you’re not allowed to talk about standards anymore?
• Management of conflicts of interest process is getting a review.

Something that gets muddled up a lot is when Standards Australia asks themselves “who are our customers”.  Their answer is:

• Users of the standard
• Standards development (proposals, drafting, publications)
• Internal (employee Experience)
• Nominating Organisations
• Buyers of the standard
• Members of the public
• Committee members

This is a thorough list.  The problem is, that is a very diverse list of seven.  The user of a standard (who doesn’t even know who was on the committee) is very different to the committee members who wrote it (and therefore have a more deep knowledge of how it got there). 

That’s why we developed our wiki, and this blog.  It’s to serve the first on that list: the user of the standard.  We’re here to help.

And so, after the Forum concluded, we had some lovely drinks under the Story Bridge, and I got to chat with people who are involved in a plethora of standards:  wood, electrical, HVAC, and digitisation.  I’m glad I went.

To close out this post with some good news:  the ME-038 Main Committee has a new Project Manager.  We’ve appreciated Andrew McKay for many years, and we wish him well as he moves onto other committees and roles, still within Standards. 

Our new PM, Simon, is young, just 2 years with Standards so far…. and he has a legal/law background from uni/studies.  I think that will be fantastic.

And the best part is, when I mentioned to him our audacious goal to combine the seven parts of AS2885 into one, he said, oh yeah, ok, …I’m going through that right now with another committee. 

“Great, so you’ve got some recent experience”.

“Yes.  And, you should know:  they have spent the last six months meeting every two weeks, to resolve all of the fiddly overlaps, repeats and contradictions they keep finding.”

“Ah.  Ok”   
*puts note into 2028 calendar:  busy all year on AS2885*

Susan
September 9^th, 2024