What is an NSB?

Acronyms are a fact of life in the standards business, but many times they are used without adequate definition.  So as part of my on-going efforts to educate you, the standards user, here’s information on “What is an NSB?”

NSB stands for “National Standard Body” and is the way to describe standards organization that have countries as their jurisdiction.  So some examples would be ANSI (the American National Standards Institute) here in the U.S., BSI (the British Standards Institute) in the U.K. and JISC (the Japanese Industrial Standards Committee) in Japan.

NSB’s usually are an arm of a particular government.  This is because standardization developed in many countries as part of the legal and regulatory structure.  Our U.S. system, with a large number of standards developing organizations (many of them trade associations), is not the norm.  Most NSB’s are quasi-governmental organizations with varying degrees of integration into other government structures.

Let’s take a look at a couple of the larger ones.  DIN (the German Institute for Standardization — Deutsches Institut für Normung) is a private, non-profit organization.  It was founded in 1917 as the “Standards Association of German Industry.”  In 1975 DIN entered a public-private partnership with the German Federal Republic by signing the Standards Agreement.  This makes it the acknowledged national standards body that represents German interests in European and international standards organizations.  It has a wide range of mandates.  The sales of standards provide the Institution with it’s primary income (about 70%.)

Another NSB you should be familiar with is BSI, the British Standards Institute.  Originally established as the British Engineering Standards Association, it is a private company incorporated by Royal Charter (first issued in 1929.)  This Charter sets out the purpose of BSI and defines in broad terms its range of activities.  These include its functions as a standards body, as well as serving as a training, testing and certification services facility.  This means that BSI not only develops standards and participates in standards development on a regional and international level, it also certifies products to the standards it publishes.

How does ANSI, as the U.S. NSB, differ from these other organizations?  ANSI does not write standards.  Instead, it adopts standards produced by other organizations within the U.S.  So many “ANSI” standards are actually written by such groups as ASME, OPEI, AWWA, and so on.  And while ANSI “represents” the U.S. in regional and international standardization efforts, many times this is achieved by authorizing one U.S. standards body or another to oversee participation.  So there is a degree of separation here in the U.S. not found in most other jurisdictions.  Or to put it another way, standardization is more of a “grass-roots effort” here than elsewhere.

One easy way to determine what organization is the NSB for any given country is to check out the list of members and affiliate members of ISO, the International Organization for Standardization.  Since ISO is solely comprised of NSB’s, the list will often help you to determine who’s who in standards.  Here is the link to the ISO List of Members page: http://www.iso.org/iso/home/about/iso_members.htm.  There are a few countries that are not represented in the list.  But with a total of 162 members, its pretty comprehensive!

Of course, it’s not easy to keep track of 162 national bodies, plus the 450+ standards developers in the U.S., various International Standards Bodies, and the many other standards developers around the world.  Most standards users find it advisable to choose an authorized distributor like Document Center Inc. to manage their collections.  Why?  Because a standards aggregator like Document Center Inc. has information coming in daily about new and revised publications.  Only a professional organization like Document Center can deal with the sheer volume of data generated daily.

Search for standards at our webstore, www.document-center.com.  There you’ll find a consolidated catalog of standards from around the world.  Order the documents you need, then depend on our superior notification service to keep you informed of changes moving forward.  Remember:  Document Center Inc. has been helping folks like you since 1982.  Make us your Standards Experts!

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Claudia Bach

Claudia Bach is the President of Document Center Inc. and a world-wide recognized expert on Standards and Standards Distribution. You can connect with her on Google+

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