Trends in ICT standards in European standardisation bodies and standards consortia

Although theoretical analyses have dealt with the relationship between standardisation activities in formal standardisation bodies and in standards consortia, the empirical evidence is rather weak. Besides various case studies, there is no broad and quantitative approach to examine the relationship between formal and informal standardisation processes. This paper quantifies the standardisation activities in information and communication technology (ICT) of formal and informal standardisation bodies by relying on the database PERINORM containing formal standards and by analysing two CEN/ISSS surveys of standardisation consortia in 2000 and 2004. The two major insights are that the technical content of activities of formal and informal standardisation bodies in rather complimentary than substitutive and that there is a consolidation of consortia activities by a significant reduction of consortia not changing the distribution of activities by technical fields.