OSD Best Practices before, during and after formal consultation and ballot

Purpose

This article aims to highlight the benefits of using the Online Standards Development (OSD) platform throughout the lifecycle of a project commenting – before, during, and after the formal consultation and ballots. It also seeks to address potential challenges associated with transitioning to a fully integrated online commenting environment.

Introduction: unlocking the potential of OSD for commenting

The full potential of OSD is realized when participants including members of national mirror committees and liaison organizations engage directly through the online document on the OSD. This enables a seamless and integrated experience at all levels, fostering consensus on positions and comments submitted to ISO. For ISO committees and working groups, this approach simplifies comment management by linking feedback directly to the relevant content, allowing for one-click resolutions and text updates based on proposed changes.

This optimal workflow – referred to as Option A – is only available when participants are registered in the ISO Global Directory.

Offline commenting – referred to as Option B – remains available to  liaison organizations and national mirror committees who are not yet registered in the ISO Global Directory. This option has strong limitations (e.g.: comments are not positioned in the content, intended proposals and justifications are less clear) which leads to less efficient commenting and outcomes and increased workload for Working Groups and committee managers.

In this article you will gain a clearer understanding of how to best use the OSD in this context, leveraging enhanced features that go beyond traditional commenting tools.

Best practices summary table

Committee Manager, Convenor, Project Leader

Voter and NMC Secretary

Voter and Committee Member

Best practices to prepare a document for consultation or ballot

Improve the quality of your content to minimize comments (CM, Convenor, PL)

Comment resolution becomes significantly more challenging when a large number of comments are submitted by members. Without careful preparation, many of these comments may relate to minor editorial issues that could have been corrected before the document is shared for commenting. OSD offers a built-in tool, the  Content Quality Check, which automatically identifies editorial issues within the document and suggests corrections. The Content Quality module is built on the ISO/IEC Directives Part 2 and Editorial guides and contains a British English spelling and Grammar check..

Before creating the consultation or ballot, we strongly encourage you to validate the quality of your online document by scanning it using the Content Quality module.

More information is available here:

• Use the Content Quality check to validate the compliance of your document with the ISO/IEC Directives Part 2 and Editorial Guide
• Use the Spell checker to avoid multiple duplicate comments on simple spelling and grammar error
• Check that the structure of your document is compliant and does not include Hanging paragraph

If further advice is needed on editorial issues or formatting, please contact your project’s ISO Editor

Clean track changes (CM, Convenor, PL)

Once the Working Group or Committee is ready  to run a consultation or ballot,  clean all  track changes, as you would do in a Word document. This will allow for a clean version of the document to be balloted while facilitating tracking changes throughout the comment resolution process.

More information on how to clean the track changes is available here: Track change

It is recommended to export a copy of the document at this stage. If there is an issue with the download, fix it before the opening of the ballot/consultation: Export document in Word or HTML

Best practices during the consultation or ballot

The consultation or ballot is now open. Support material and trainings are available for committees and WGs in the Knowledge Base: Online Standards Development (OSD) - ISO helpdesk knowledge base

Get familiarize with the comment resolution features (CM, Convenor, PL, Voter, NMC Secretary, NMC members)

• Register to one of the Leading a Project Skill Bites Training Sessions to learn about comment resolution or enroll to a self-pace learning session for Leader
• Request an access to the OSD sandbox for Comment resolution: helpdesk@iso.org

Voter verify that all comments have been successfully submitted in the online document.

For voter, verify that all your member's comments have been submitted successfully in the online document: How to verify my comments have been submitted to ISO during a CD consultation or NP/DIS/FDIS ballot?

Best practices for comment resolution

Starting comment resolution can be overwhelming when there are a lot of comments on the document. Here are a few tips to help you organize the work for resolving comments in the OSD.

Decide on a strategy for reviewing and organizing comments before comment resolution

The OSD has many integrated features to help group and organize comments, such as tags and topics. To ensure efficient meetings you can also propose decisions for each comment in preparation of your meeting.

Get an overview of all comments made in the document with the Manage Comment Dashboard (CM, PL, Convenor, Voter, Committee Manager)

The Manage Comments Dashboard enables you to get an overview of all comments made in the document. You can view the total number of comments per member, per clause, per comment type. This dashboard also allows you to follow your progress in comment resolution and access sorting and organizing features such as tags and topics.

Create and assign tags and topics to filter and group comments

Tags and Topics offer a way to organize comments to improve and ease resolution and discussion , as well as ensuring that the meeting time is used efficiently.

Tags (for example ‘high importance’. ‘low importance’, ‘blocking issue’ etc.) can be created to filter and group comments. It is possible to assign one or many tag(s) to a single comment.

Decide with your group which tags should be created and follow the process here: Manage tags for comments

Topic(s) can be created  to group comments under a specific area of work such as a technical area or discussion topic.

Decide with your group which topics should be created and follow the process here: Manage topics to group comments

Add comments to topics: Create new topic(s) and assign comments to a topic

Assign tags to comment: Assign tag(s) to comments

If the document contains a large number of comments, consider breaking down the review process by clause. Use the filter (see next section) to display only the comments associated with a specific clause - such as clause 2 - and begin tagging and grouping those. Then proceed clause by clause to manage the workload more efficiently.

Use a filter to only display the comments you want to resolve (PL, Convenor, CM)

If you have a lot of comments in the document, your screen may look too crowded. By focusing the comment resolution to a specific group of comments (filtered by topics, comment type, tags, clause, etc). it will be easier to focus on the comment you want to resolve.

More information on filters: View and filter comments

Use the "Comment to Resolve" tab to easily resolve comments, including resolving multiple comments at once (PL, Convenor, CM)

The Comment to Resolve tab only shows comments that have not yet been resolved. This tab is useful to resolve multiple comments at once.

More information on comment resolution: Resolve comments

Frequently Ask Questions

1 Are Committee Managers responsible for checking that members have successfully submitted their comments?

No, Committee Managers are not responsible for verifying whether members have submitted all their comments.  If during the ballot or consultation, a Committee Manager, Convenor, or Project Leader suspects an issue with  a  member’s comment, they can ask the voter to access the online document and confirm that their comments have been submitted successfully.

It remains the individual member’s responsibility to ensure their comments are properly submitted in the online document before the consultation or ballot closes.

2 What should be done if a Committee Manager needs to consult an NSB to clarify a specific comment?

Committee Manager can ask the NSB directly: Contact details at NSBs is available from https://sd.iso.org/home/exports. 

3 What should a Committee Manager do if a member has forgotten or faced issues when submitting comments?

The process remains the same as for the Word-based template way of developing standards.

Voters cannot create or upload comments in the online document once the ballot is closed. They can send their commenting file to the Committee Manager who will  consult with the Working Group to determine whether to consider the member’s late input.

4 With offline comments, option B, even correctly submitted comments are placed at the clause or subclause level. Is it the responsibility of the Committee Manager to move the comment?

The Committee Manager, Project Leader, or Convenor may choose to reposition the comments to a more appropriate location if deemed necessary. It is not necessary to move a comment to be able to resolve it but can help to identify if several comments have been made against the same text in the document.