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JTC1/SGFS -
Special Group on Functional Standardization

2012-08-10: documents | meetings | contacts | list of ISP's | ISP documents

ISO/IEC JTC1/ SGFS was responsible within JTC1 for the methodology of defining and documenting profiles in International Standardized Profiles (ISPs). SGFS was created in 1987 and was disbanded on 1997-12-31.

The scope of SGFS (after expanding from the original OSI environment to also include the Open Systems Environment - OSE) was (see N606):

SCOPE: Functional Standardization in the field of Information technology through the development, maintenance and application of procedures and management tools including:

1.	definition of functional standardization and functional standard;
2.	development of a catalogue of functional standards with appropriate classification (known as the "Taxonomy");
3.	definition of a methodology for achieving functional standardization, and the publication of International Standardized Profiles (ISPs) in accordance with user requirements. (An ISP is defined as: 'An internationally harmonized document which identifies a group of standards, together with options and parameters, necessary to accomplish a function or a set of functions');
4.	development of a set of operating procedures and assessment of resources;
5.	execution of the review of proposed draft functional standards;
6.	consideration of the requirements of functional standards on conformance and maintenance;
7.	development of expeditious publication procedure.

Note: excluded from the scope of SGFS were:

a)	standardization of base standards referenced in functional standards; and
b)	standardization of test suites for base standards in a) above.

The SGFS had within JTC1 the status of a Subcommittee, but, due to its special relations with the Regional Workshops (EWOS - European Workshop for Open Systems, OIW - OSI Implementors Workshop in the USA, and AOW - the Asian and Oceania Workshop) who actually developed the ISPs, the SGFS operated under its own procedures (see N1367).

The ISO Bulletin of November 1995 had an article on the SGFS methodology in English and French.