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Standards are produced by many organizations, some for internal usage only, others for use by a groups of people, groups of companies, or a subsection of an industry. A problem arises when different groups come together, each with a large user base doing some well established thing that between them is mutually incompatible. Establishing international standards is one way of preventing or overcoming this problem. There are many national and regional standards organizations, but the three international organizations having the highest international recognition are the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). All three of these have existed for more than 50 years (founded in 1947, 1906, and 1865, respectively) and they are all based in Geneva, Switzerland. They have established tens of thousands of standards covering almost every conceivable topic. Many of these are then adopted worldwide replacing various incompatible 'homegrown' standards. Many of these standards are naturally evolved from those designed in-house within an industry, or by a particular country, whilst others have been built from scratch by groups of experts who sit on various Technical Committees. In addition to these organizations, there exist literally thousands of standards organizations that set standards within some more limited context, such as IETF, W3C or IEEE, and API. ISO, IEC, and the ITU are only three of many international standards organizations based on the principle of one member per country/economy. ISO is composed of the National Standards Bodies (NSBs), one per member economy. The IEC is composed of “National Committees”, one per member economy. In some cases, the National Committee to the IEC of an economy may be the ISO member from that country or economy. ISO and IEC are non-treaty international organizations. The ITU and Codex Alimentarius are two examples of treaty-based organizations (where only governments are the primary members). The members of these organizations are the government foreign ministry, and/or appropriate regulatory body (telecoms regulator, agricultural, food safety or pharmaceuticals regulator, etc). The World Standards Cooperation (WSC) is a cooperative effort between ISO, the IEC, and the ITU. Other types of international standards organizations exist which are not based on the principle of one member per country. Membership in such international organizations is more granular descending from below the economy level down to an individual level. Members or participants in such organizations may be companies or technical experts from around the globe.
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