Roundtable on Federal Government Engagement in Standards

The National Institute of Standards and Technology is considering changes in the role that government should play in driving and participating in standards development, including for health IT, cyber security and other technologies that are of national interest.

Secretary Gary Locke opened a discussion with thought leaders from industry and academia at the Commerce Department on the federal government’s role in setting, developing, using and adopting standards for critical national needs.

The threat of the government stepping in and legislating the smart grid standards making process was a useful tool for helping the process along, said Raj Vaswani, Chief Technology Officer of smart grid networking firm Silver Spring Networks, during a round table on government standards on put together by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). While legislation has the potential to suffocate a new market, in the smart grid standards process, the stick of legislation for when the industry lacked consensus “proved useful,” and a delicate balance was struck well, said Vaswani.