Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
of due process actually experienced in various
standardization venues for all three major tiers of
environmental standardization should be exam-
ined from several research perspectives: political
economy, doctrinal legal research, sociology,
cognitive psychology, industrial organization and
public policy. For example, the role of affected
parties beyond NIST's intended user group, such
as downstream users, society and the environ-
ment, have been largely ignored when directed to
voluntary consensus standards organizations and
consortia. Environmental standardization may be
the ideal domain to better develop understanding
about participation by more remote affected parties
because this is an inherently strong focus in envi-
ronmental concerns. There are technical barriers to
effective political checks and balances given the
proliferation of SDO venues and the constrained
supply of public interest participants with suf-
ficient technical expertise to effectively analyze
externalities of proposed standards. Second, this
chapter argues that environmental standardization
is much broader than de jure governmental emis-
sions standards. Research into the overall system
of environmental standardization could reveal the
benefits and costs of each tier of standardization
with a view to optimizing the whole system's costs
and benefits. For example, efforts to standardize
the electric grid under auspices of the Smart Grid
largely focus on coordinating generation capacity,
hardening the electric grid's security, and coordi-
nating transmission facilities with user demand
(consumer and industrial) to avoid system failure
and damage (NIST 2009). However, a systems
analysis perspective of the Smart Grid would
look beyond these national security and energy
efficiency foci, to externalities such as how the
individual human information collected through
the Smart Grid as a cyber-infrastructure triggers
considerable privacy concerns that Smart Grid
standards have already overlooked (Lynch 2008).
The due process and political accountability
aspects of voluntary consensus standards bodies
have not been adequately examined in the litera-
ture of any discipline; the absence in the politi-
cal economy literature may be most significant.
This research should examine the similarities
among the ANSI and OMB A-119 schema then
juxtapose these with participation rules at other
major international SDO venues such as the ISO.
These fairness standards represent an important
evolution towards universal political accountabil-
ity and due process of standardization processes.
While precise uniformity among all these schema
seems both unnecessary and unlikely, it can be
expected that international SDO bodies and ac-
crediting bodies will not directly adopt all the
characteristics of the ANSI rules. Indeed, other
nations are unlikely to adopt the precise wording
of almost any U.S. law or policy without consider-
able adjustments reflecting their national cultures
and uniqueness. This poses increasing problems
for environmental standardization because these
SDO bodies direct their standards to all nations.
Economies of scale and network externalities
are weaker without cross-border standardization
and international environmental treaties urge
international standardization. Of course, it is
arguable that the similarities tend to overpower
the differences, fostering commerce and general
conformity. Perhaps, an equilibrium in standard-
ization process design is under way. Nevertheless,
research is needed reconciling ANSI due process
requirements with OMB due process attributes
and the SDOAA.
It is uncertain how the competition among
SDO bodies will be determined because they have
“race to the bottom” incentives to attract SDA
participants. To the extent that major contribu-
tors still seek to game the IP disclosure system at
selected SDO bodies with weak due process and
IP disclosure rules, research into the competition
among SDO bodies would be a useful public
policy tool to standardize SDO bodies' rules of
participation. To avoid patent hold-up problems
SDO bodies should toughen their IP disclosure
rules and mandate requirements for fair access to
