Building blocks in standards: Improving consistency in standardization with ontology and reasoning

Abstract

International standardization in ICT has grown in importance due to the rapid technology development, the increasing need for interoperability, and the global nature of the digital infrastructure. However, technical resources available to international standards bodies have become more limited. With its focus on international collaboration and consensus, the standardization community has not invested significantly in the automation of the process of developing standards. In this paper, we describe potential gains in efficiency with an ontology-based approach and automated reasoning. As part of the exploratory phase of the project, we built a prototype ontology and evaluated the benefits of automated reasoning to improve the process of developing and harmonizing broadly understood ICT assessment standards. The exploratory phase confirmed feasibility and clarified the benefits of the ontology-based approach to standardization, but also highlighted difficulties and unsolved problems in this area.