Lee Smith found an interesting event taking place in the UK. While his post doesn’t make 100% clear what he thinks of this effort (I think he is in favor), I think that it needs some commenting upon.
Essentially, an integrator in the UK, The Content Group, is teaming up with BSI Group, an engineering standards company out of the UK, to create a group of ECM Standards. The Standards that they plan on creating are a collection of definitions and best practices. This seems like a marketing ploy to me.
- Are these standards, once developed, going to be freely available?
- Why not involve AIIM in the process?
- Will the standards be vendor neutral? (Probably not as important as they are just defining terms)
I do think that the outcome of this process could benefit the ECM community. I worry about the short list of participants and the motivations behind this effort. I also wish that they would describe the effort without using the word “Standard”.
In short, I’m not going to pay much attention for now and will wait to see what happens. I would not be surprised if the result was a pricey White Paper that told us things most ECM practitioners already knew.
Of course, maybe we’ll be lucky and I’ll be wrong.
Word of Pie 
I believe you’re right to think these guys are a bunch of yahoos. Not involving AIIM or any of the major vendors is just plain stupid.
I relish the opportunity of demolishing their crap standard once its finished.
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Actually, AIIM is part of the steering group.
And this information will be freely available once published to my knowledge, as is required by the British Standard Institute.
Vendors are also involved inthe steering group but only have just as much input as the customers and analysts such as AIIM involved.
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Thanks for the update. At the time, over a year ago, they weren’t involved. I had since heard that they had become involved but hadn’t updated the post since it was over a year old by then.
-Pie
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