Distinguished Guests,

ISO Officers,

ISO Members,

Friends and colleagues.

　

Please allow me to add my own welcome to the 25^th　ISO General Assembly. This is the first time, and I hope the last, that an Acting Secretary-General gives the report to our General Assembly which Dr. Lawrence D. Eicher called the annual "State of the ISO Federation" speech. He introduced this speech with the implementation of the new ISO Statutes and Rules of procedure in 1994 and it has since become a traditional feature of our General Assemblies.

　

I would like to report on the recent achievements and new perspectives in referring to the remarkable framework developed under the leadership of Dr. Eicher, who was able to build on the solid foundations put in place by his predecessor, Olle Sturen. An exhaustive list of the achievements would take too long, so I have selected some of those that have set directions or major milestones for our Organization, even though the word "milestone" is not really appropriate knowing how Dr. Eicher was committed to promoting the "metric" system! Once remarking on the use of "milestone" in an ISO document, he commented, with his customary sense of humour, "I see that international standardization is still inching towards metrication!"

　

May I first, however, on behalf of us all here today express our deep appreciation for the excellent preparatory work carried out by SIS to make this occasion both enjoyable and successful.

　

Today, the ISO family stands at an all time high of 145 and I would like to extend a particular welcome to our new or reinstated members: Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Burundi, Coted'Ivoire, Eritrea, Swaziland and Yemen. I am pleased to report that to date, there are no suspended members and, therefore, no ISO membership subscriptions outstanding for previous years. It is a source of pride for all of us, and it was so for Dr. Eicher, that so many "national standards bodies", the most broadly representative of standardization in their respective countries, as specified in the ISO Statutes, consider it important to belong to ISO and are ready to take on all the related obligations, including the defence of the intellectual property of our common Organization.

　

As every member knows, belonging to ISO is not only a matter of paying fees, receiving some services and coming to General Assemblies. It is also adhering to agreed good practices that have been codified in a basic document developed under the leadership of Dr. Eicher and entitled List of Fundamental Principles of the ISO System, which captures the real essence of the ISO system and explains the collective strengths of the ISO family and its members. It is published as ISO/GEN 22: 1999 and is available on the ISODOC server.

　

In brief, it specifies:

- the principle of consensus and due process, organized and safeguarded by the national members of ISO,

- the principle of following authorized procedures (codified in the ISO/IEC Directives), and

- the principle that ISO standards can be adopted as national standards.

　

The rights and responsibilities of the ISO members in adhering to these principles are explicitly codified in this document.

　

Having at our disposal such clear and well-formulated fundamental principles is a great tool for organizing cooperation and developing projects with partner organizations at regional or international level as it provides a well understood framework for all parties.

　

In this context, we are pleased to welcome each year representatives of ACCSQ, AIDMO, ARSO, CEN, COPANT, EASC and PASC to our General Assembly.

　

We are also fortunate this year to have the President of IEC with us here in Stockholm and certainly look forward to hearing his presentation, as well as that of the ITU-T.

　

ISO's cooperation with intergovernmental organizations is fruitful. This is demonstrated in particular by the participation of the Deputy Director General of WTO, Mr. Paul-Henri Ravier, at this General Assembly and WTO's cooperation with ISO in the organization of a series of regional seminars.

　

ISO was also represented at the U.N. World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg at the end of August 2002, reminding participants that the ISO initiative in preparing the ISO 14000 series of standards on Environmental management systems was a partial response of the private sector to the challenges identified during the Earth Summit of 1992 in Rio de Janeiro.

　

In addition, ISO has been an active participant in the first preparatory committee that took place at the beginning of July 2002 for the "World Summit on Information Society" to be held in Geneva in December 2003 and in Tunis in 2005. ISO has proposed to cooperate with IEC, ITU-T and UN-ECE in the organization of a side event on the need for harmonized standards to respond to and support the implementation of future resolutions and declarations coming from the Summit

　

Cooperation with specialized international or regional organizations at the technical level is extensive, with more than 560 organizations in liaison with one or several ISO technical committees or subcommittees.

　

To sum up, ISO is extremely well integrated and recognized within the global network of international organizations that are relevant to the development of standardization.

The core business of ISO is specified at Article 2 of its Statutes, which says that ISO has to "take action to facilitate worldwide harmonization of standards ・・・" to "develop and issue International Standards and take action for their implementation". How well are we implementing this objective? Let's begin with the customary review of facts and figures on the 2001 production.

　

In 2001, we had a production of 813 ISO standards - a decrease of 17 % compared to 2000, and circulated 700 draft International Standards (DIS) - a decrease of 20 % compared to the previous year. The number of technical pages produced are more or less around 65 000 per year with a peak in 2000 of 72 000. This reflects a disappointing average output from the technical committees in 2001, which may be due in part to the cancellation of many projects that were not relevant for the market (minus 25 % compared to 1999). Nevertheless, this streamlining of the programme did not accelerate the process for the remaining projects as much as expected.

　

This slow down noted in the input from TC/SCs in 2001 seems, however, to have been exceptional as the input received during the first two quarters of 2002, if sustained, will lead to an input of 920 DIS in 2002 - a 30%increase compared to 2001.

　

The production chart also shows that there is no real progress in the average processing time either at the TC/SC level or at the level of the ISO Central Secretariat.

　

The picture is somewhat better if we look at the chart introduced by Dr. Eicher two years ago, which shows the average time taken from start-to-finish for ISO standards

　

published from 1997 to 2001. I do not ask you to examine each column but to take an overview from which it can be seen that the existing procedures make it perfectly possible to produce ISO standards within three years, and that many are produced within this timeframe. A substantial number are prepared within four to six years and the trend for those standards taking seven or more years to produce is going down. Average figures provide evidence of trends, which help the management to adjust our system but it has been noted that these are often misinterpreted and, for this reason, the Technical Management Board is developing a system that focuses on actual achievement in comparison to objectives set by the committees themselves in their business plans.

　

What in fact the market players expect is the availability of International Standards once a new technology is mature for introduction to the market. In principle, this objective is taken into account in the business plan and productivity can be therefore be evaluated by comparing actual achievements of the TCs in relation to the objectives set in the business plans, which by now are available for 100 % of TCs.

　

The challenge for the Technical Management Board in the years to come will be to ensure that TC business plans properly identify the objectives to be reached to serve the market and that they correspond to the priorities of the market players.

　

It is necessary to look at the productivity statistics and to draw conclusions for the future. However, this is somewhat abstract and it is appropriate to report a few examples of important ISO accomplishments since the last General Assembly in Sydney to demonstrate that ISO is responding to market expectations and that the usefulness of its production is recognized. In making a short selection of topics, I know that I am not doing justice to many achievements but to comment on the value of each of the 813 ISO standards published in 2001 and 2002 would obviously be impractical.

　

The automobile is a favourite subject of conversation for many of us and it is a strong activity within ISO through ISO/TC 22 Road vehicles, which published 69 International Standards in 2001 and has targeted even more in 2002. ISO 22628,

allowing evaluation of the recyclables and recoverability of road vehicles, was published in March 2002 after having been introduced as a project into the work programme of ISO/TC 22 in November 2000, i.e. a start-to-finish of 16 months.

　

Cooperation with the regulators is fruitful within the U.N. WP 29 World Forum for harmonization of vehicle regulations and has been extended to the "smart car" sector, with particular focus on "advanced safety vehicles".