Standards: A Road to Economic Growth?

The lingering recession all over the world—and the resulting depressing economic news—has caused many businesses to think outside the box when it comes to getting and keeping new clients. Standardizing products seems to be on the rise as one of these tactics. The American National Standards Institute recently announced that it will host a workshop to help countries that receive economic assistance from other countries set up systems to evaluate their capacities to use monitoring and evaluation (read: standardization) to improve their business outlooks.

The meeting will be held Oct. 17–21 in Geneva. Participants include the World Bank, Evaluation Capacity Development Group, the Joint Commission on Standards for Educational Evaluation, and the International Organization for Cooperation in Evaluation. ISO reports that the participants will form an International Workshop Agreement that will create a common understanding for evaluation capacity development.

The meeting is free and open to all interested stakeholders, although is limited to one representative per organization. The workshop agenda and background information is available at www.ecdg.net.

What do you think? Is standardization an effective way of promoting economic growth, or an exercise in bureaucracy?