Proposed liaison statement from OASIS on election standards work in ISO:

Subject: Proposed liaison statement from OASIS on election standards work in ISO: comments requested

Dear E&VS TC members:

In consultation with several of your members, we have noted the recent announcement of a *possible* new ISO activity on elections data. The announcement is set forth at the end of this message, for your information. (There is an attachment, excluded here, as its level of confidentiality was not immediately clear.) The announcements references deadlines for comment on the proposal in September, within certain national bodies including US ANSI, and by October, within ISO globally.

We have drafted a liaison statement to call attention to your EML work. It may be suitable, as a reply within ISO and its sub-bodies, and perhaps also to the new TC's proposers. The draft is immediately below this message. As several of you have kindly assisted, it may already be suitable; but it is our practice to consult with the TC via its full membership list before taking any public positions regarding the TC's work product.

Would you please share any reactions or comments on this draft within the next few days, either back to this list or (if private) to me directly? I will report back to this list on their disposition and our final liaison statement. Possibly that could occur as soon as the end of this week, if there are no objections.

Kind regards, and as always, thank you for your work to advance open standards

Jamie

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DRAFT

We are pleased to learn that ISO has expressed interest in standardization for the domain of electoral administration. As you may know, OASIS EML (the Election Markup Language), now in version 7, is a long-standing successful project in our consortium:

https://www.oasis-open.org/committees/election

EML has been used in production in a variety of jurisdictions. As our standards are freely available; we do not track or restrict uses, but we understand that polling administered with EML include official elections in Belgium, Spain, Australia, the Philippines and several US states (California and Virginia). EML is based on global contributions over 8 years of development, comprising a stable, multi-part solution. EML also is cited and used within the IEEE P1622 elections data specification, with our permission.

Our OASIS Election & Voter Services TC was discussing the possibility of sending its latest stable version through the ISO/IEC JTC 1 PAS process, for transposition to International Standard status under our accreditation as a PAS submitter. However, if a new ISO project is launched, and would prefer to receive OASIS EML as a submission for its approval on the same terms, we'd be happy to initiative a liaison and work towards such a submission. OASIS has made many similar submissions under our own open standards rules, which allow us to share our work with ISO TCs, ITU, JTC 1 and other global and national de jure bodies.

Respectfully, etc.

DRAFT ENDS

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TEXT OF ANNOUNCEMENT

Subject: ANSI ISO Council - FOR YOUR COMMENTS BY FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 12,
2014 - Proposal for a new field of ISO technical activity on Electoral
Administration.

AIC022-2014

To: ANSI ISO Council (AIC) Members

From: Steven P. Cornish, ANSI Senior Director - International Policy

INTECO (Costa Rica) has submitted to ISO the attached proposal for a new field of ISO technical activity on the subject of Electoral Administration, with the following scope statement:

Standardization in the field of electoral administration and management, including, but not limited to, the registration of electors, the registration of political organizations and candidates, electoral logistics and planning, vote casting, vote counting and declaration of results, citizenship electoral education, oversight of campaign financing, electronic voting systems, electoral crimes and jurisprudence, electoral observation and methodologies, as well as any other aspects related to the organization of an electoral process.

Further explanation and rationale is provided in the attached document.

AIC members are invited to submit comments on this new proposal by close of business on Friday, September 12, 2014.

In addition, ANSI will seek comments on this proposal through an ANSI Online news story, by listing in Standards Action, and by specific targeted outreach. All comments received will be compiled and use in the development of a recommended ANSI position and comments on this proposal that will be submitted to the AIC for approval prior to ISO's October 24, 2014 deadline for voting.

Thank you.

TEXT ENDS

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James Bryce Clark, General Counsel
OASIS: Advancing open standards for the information society
https://www.oasis-open.org/staff

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