The decision to rename the group and revise the charter was reached at a December 2012 Steering Committee meeting. That meeting was attended by representatives of ANSI, ANSI members the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) and ASIS International, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the U.S. Department of Commerce (DoC)'s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), among other groups.
The new name - which the Steering Committee determined to be more reflective of the collaborative nature of the group's work - is just one of the changes included in the revised charter. The updated charter calls for the group to reach out to members of the homeland defense and security sectors that have not previously been directly involved with the voluntary consensus standards system as well as to government agencies such as the Department of Defense (DOD), National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), and relevant state-level governmental bodies.
ANSI has agreed to work with the group's co-chairs to develop a reorganization plan for the HDSSC Steering Committee and to consider the possibility of creating topic-specific HDSSC task groups. ANSI is expected to survey members of the Collaborative regarding topics for future work plans.
For more information about the revision of the charter, the name change, or other information related to the HDSSC, please visit the official ANSI-HDSSC website at www.ansi.org/hdssc, or contact Michelle Deane, ANSI-HDSSC director, at [email protected].