The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) hosted a free webinar on February 16 on the recently published revisions to White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular A-119, "Federal Participation in the Development and Use of Voluntary Consensus Standards and in Conformity Assessment Activities."
Over 200 stakeholders from the standardization community participated in the webinar. Slides and a recording are now available for all interested parties:
Slides (in .pdf format)
Recording (in proprietary WebEx format; you or your IT team may need to install a plug-in to view this properly)
"To say that OMB A-119 is important to the standardization community is an understatement. Truly, it is the defining document of our nation's public-private partnership for standardization. And that is why ANSI has been closely monitoring the OMB's revision process since it was first announced in 2012," said S. Joe Bhatia, ANSI president and CEO.
"I'm so pleased to report that the revision has taken many points raised by ANSI into account. And it's wonderful news that the revision maintains a strong preference for using voluntary consensus standards over government-unique standards in federal regulation and procurement."
The circular, in conjunction with the National Technology Transfer and Advancement Act (NTTAA) of 1995, instructs U.S. federal agencies to consider using voluntary consensus standards developed privately instead of government-unique standards whenever possible. It was last updated in 1998 and has been revised again to reflect notable changes that have occurred in the ensuing years in connection with voluntary consensus standards, conformity assessment activities, and the federal government's participation in and use of standards.
Guest speakers at the webinar included:
Jasmeet Seehra, Policy Analyst, OMB
Jeff Weiss, Senior Advisor for Standards and Global Regulatory Policy, U.S. Department of Commerce
Gordon Gillerman, Director, Standards Coordination Office, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
For more information visit www.ansi.org/ibr, or contact Elizabeth Neiman, ANSI senior director of communications and public relations, at [email protected].