The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has circulated a proposal for a new field of activity on blockchain and electronic distributed ledger technologies. As the U.S. member body to ISO, the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) invites all relevant and interested stakeholders to submit comments on the proposal by the end of the business day on June 3, 2016.
Blockchain and electronic distributed ledger technologies are an emerging peer-to-peer data base tool for managing and recording transactions, the document proposal explains. To that end, blockchains—driven by open source technology—offer the prospect for sharing financial, legal, physical, or electronic information more readily across multiple sites (nationally and internationally), and from government to business or business to business.
Various economic sectors may be impacted by blockchain, which has the potential to support efficient and secure transactions and reduce process management issues in areas including: government, consumer products and services, health, minerals and precious stones, financial services, real estate, and business. Standards Australia, the ISO member body for Australia, submitted the proposal for a new field of ISO technical activity to focus on the standardization of blockchains and distributed ledger technologies to support interoperability and data interchange among users, applications and systems.
All interested stakeholders are invited to review the proposal, which includes related standards and a listing of relevant countries where the subject of the proposal is important to their national commercial interests. Please submit comments to Steve Cornish, ANSI senior director of international policy ([email protected]), by close of business on Friday, June 3, 2016. Based on the input received, the ANSI ISO Council (AIC) will then be asked to approve an ANSI position and comments to be submitted to ISO before its July 14, 2016, deadline for voting on this proposal.
ANSI has published an explanatory information document outlining the process used to develop U.S. positions on issues and activities under consideration by ISO and IEC.