When standards reach the ‘draft for review and public comment’ stage they are made available to the public. Back in the days, the mailman was involved in this process. Then the fax machine took over and at the start of this century, the web provided new opportunities, changing the public comment process for good.
Web-based applications increased public engagement in the draft review and commenting process and moreover improved handling efficiencies.
Next level commenting
Today, Fonto Review is taking the review and public comment process to the next level. Developed in close cooperation with ISO and IEC, the general public is now able to review and comment in a very intuitive and at the same time structured and efficient way.
Members of the public can make detailed comments on very specific parts of the draft standards. Down to the letter level if necessary. All comments can be easily categorized, sorted, and deduplicated. And of course, all comments are stored with the relevant version(s) of the draft standard, making it easy to go back in time if needed for compliance reasons. Who, what, and when. All this information is available at any time. Â
NISO-STS at the source
Conversion to PDF, HTML, or any other format is no longer necessary in the process. Review and comments are done in the XML (NISO STS) source format, as provided by ISO and IEC. This way of working saves time and (conversion) costs and at the same time increases the content quality and security.
If you’re interested in aligning your public review and comment process with the ISO/IEC processes, please check out Fonto Review first, and schedule a ‘Fonto Review for Standards’ demo if you like what you see.
We’re ‘the public’ too, so we’re happy to make this process more intuitive than ever before.  Â
Public review in standards development
Many standards development organizations have a public review stage embedded in the standards development process. In this stage, drafts of the proposed standard are open to the public for review and comments. The public exists of individuals, companies, and even governments.