V1 is the U.S. National Standards Body to ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34, Document Description and Processing Languages, which supports international standards development for the description and processing of compound and hypermedia documents. Specifically this includes:
The V1 webpage is located at: http://www.incits.org/tc_home/v1.htm.
A list of the projects of V1 can be found at: /www.incits.org/tc_home/v1sd4.htm. The projects with the most activity by V1 include OpenXML Fast Track submission from Ecma to ISO, Topic Maps and the Document Schema Definition Language (DSDL).
All work in V1 is done at the international level in ISO/IEC SC 34, Information technology Document Description and Processing Languages.
V1 has gone from eight active members last year to nineteen members (as of 22 June 2007, assuming all payments are made).
V1 has continued to hold teleconferences before each working group or plenary meeting of SC34 to develop positions for the meetings and to transact other V1 business.
V1 has participated actively in the work of JTC1 SC34/WG1, Markup Languages (Relax-NG and related standards) as well as JTC1 SC34/WG3, Information Association (Topic Maps).
As was noted in the 2006 report:
Voting by the committee continues to be by email ballots and voice votes at meetings. A voting system that offers greater transparency for the committees work and would enable members to see open ballots (and associated documents) would be useful to both committee members as well as members of the public.
That issue has been grown in importance with the rapid increase in the membership of V1 and the necessity to deliver documents to new members as well as apprising them of prior discussions in V1.
The challenges projected in the 2006 report concerning public interest in the then promised submission of OpenXML have come to pass. The lack of technological infrastructure to effectively deal with such submissions as well as clear rules concerning the public nature of the work in V1 have hampered the work of the committee on that proposal in particular.
The working (if not official) policy of INCITS appears to be that members of V1 in addition to their voting rights should have greater access to committee materials not covered by ISO copyright. That is contrary to the established positions of standards organizations such as the W3C and OASIS, both of which produce numerous standards each year with completely open access to drafts and working documents.
The open nature of the work of INCITS committees (or lack thereof) should be established as an INCITS policy so that committees can create the appropriate mechanisms for management of their work while waiting for enhanced infrastructure from INCITS.
V1 currently lacks an International Representative (IR) but a replacement from its increased membership pool is being sought.
Revisions to OpenDocument (ISO/IEC 26300) are underway and submission of that revision by OASIS to ISO is expected by late 2007. That proposal along with OpenXML are going to continue to attract members to V1 and providing both the current as well as anticipated future members with effective tools for participating in the consideration of those standards should be a top priority.
All work is performed with representatives of the SC 34 membership, but V1 has held teleconferences to determine the US position for SC 34 meetings.
V1 will be represented during 2007-2008 at the SC 34 meetings, caucusing as the U.S. national body when necessary. The following meetings are planned for the coming year:
The WGs generally meet along with the SC 34 to encourage cooperation among projects.
Teleconferences before each plenary and working group meeting in SC 34 to develop the US position and to further the work of V1 are sponsored by Snowfall Software.
V1’s liaison works through that of SC 34. Most of the V1 members are also active in:
a. V1 Officers
In SC 34, the following V1 members serve as officers:
JTC1/SC 34 Chair Dr. James D. Mason, Y12 National Security Complex
JTC1/SC 34/WG 3, Acting Convenor, Patrick Durusau, Snowfall Software
b. V1 Members
The current level of participation for the year 2007 consists of nineteen members.
It should be noted that even as this report was being prepared, the Chair became aware of at least one possible additional new member and more are expected.
As predicted last year, the interest in office software markup formats has swelled the ranks of V1. Unfortunately the infrastructure to effectively service that increase has not kept pace. That has been due in part to the unanticipated size of the increase by the Chair but also due to the lack of any effective committee technical infrastructure at INCITS.
The question now faced by both V1 and INCITS is how to quickly ramp up committee services that will keep both new and old members interested in the standards process? While increasing dues are one way to get the attention of new (as well as old members), some significant improvement in services should be evident before rate increases take place.
Neither V1 nor SC 34 collects any funds.