Following the demonstrations at the 7th SMF of the test systems for our new web-based Information Portal and New Proposals Online, we are pleased to report that the testing has progressed well and we are expecting to launch the system in the New Year.
The New Proposals area will provide public access to new proposals for and revisions of Standards, including International, European and National proposals. The decision to place a proposal on the system will rest with the Secretary and any comments received via this system will be circulated to the Committee for their consideration. Once the allocated deadline has passed the Proposal will be removed from the system. The final decision as to the UK position remains with the Committee.
It is hoped that this tool will provide greater visibility of proposed work programmes, increase the transparency of the standardisation process and enable input from a wider audience than we are currently able to reach, for example SME and in new fields of technological development and potentially identify new committee participants.
In addition to showing New Work Proposals out for comment, the system also provides a central point from which suggestions for new standards can be submitted.
The Information Portal provides a more user-friendly way for people to access information relating to the Standards work portfolio - committees, Standards in development, their current stages and Standards published. In essence it expands and updates our current Project Line offering. There is still work to be done in testing on this system but we expect it to be ready early in 2010.
As part of our preparation, we are updating and expanding some of the Committee titles so that they appear where we would expect in the results from searches, this is being done centrally and you may see a change on your eCommittees page as a result. These changes are cosmetic only and do not require any Committee approvals, SPSC are being informed - an example is given below:
- PRI/88/4 is entitled Test Methods and so, whilst it appears in the search for test methods it does not appear in a search on plastic piping and whilst we know internally that PRI refers to plastics committees, this would not be obvious to the public. To rectify this we will be updating the title to read Plastic Pipes -Test Methods.
More details on the systems will be sent to you when the launch is imminent.
Return to Winter 2009 Committee e-newsletter
