Overview: In response to the National Technology Transfer and Advancement Act and the E-Gov Act, ITL is involved with IT standards activities for and with the federal government. These activities fall into two categories: security standards and general IT standards. ITL’s Computer Security Division www.csrc.nist.gov has the lead for security standards. The general standards policy of the federal government is to use industry standards wherever possible. While retaining the authority to issue general Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS), FIPS are only issued when there is a compelling federal need. In practice, the only FIPS issued since the NTTAA established the new policy are in security.

Industry Need Addressed: The federal government needs to actively participate in industry standards groups in order to ensure that these groups produce standards that meet federal agency needs.

NIST/ITL Approach: There are several organizations in the federal government which look broadly at questions of IT standards and how to influence them and use them: the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) E-Gov Office and Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, the federal Chief Information Officers’ (CIO) Council, the Interagency Council on Standards Policy (ICSP), and the General Services Administration (GSA) Office of Government-wide Policy. We are actively engaged with all of these key players through leadership of the Standards Working Group of the Architecture and Infrastructure Committee of the CIO Council. Our goal in chairing the Standards Working Group is to solicit requirements from federal agencies, find the appropriate voluntary standards committee that is addressing these requirements and encourage participation to ensure the government requirements are being adequately met.

Impact: Our activities have focused on federal XML efforts and on policy development. We chair the XML registry group. In addition, we serve as a conduit for federal agencies to seek NIST advice on standardization and have linked up key groups in healthcare with research work in the division. We have also helped move the federal smart card interoperability specification to the international standards arena. The E-Gov Act is creating another round of federal IT policy decisions. ITL is engaged to help ensure that the federal agencies retain the authority to use emerging IT standards and to encourage more participation in the standardization process.