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So now that we have dealt with how to vote, we should perhaps turn a more important issue: the ballot is unlawful.

Why? Because the JTC1 Secretariat and ITTF (Information Technology Task Force) failed to follow the JTC1 Directives and ordinary principles of international law in dealing with the “contradictions” that were raised.

This post is intended as a reasonably crisp summary of the position. Those wanting more detail can delve into the dozens of previous articles on this site. Or, even better, they can download the JTC1 Directives and check things for themselves (taking legal advice if desired).

To recap, the first stage of the Fast Track process (which OpenXML is following) gives NBs (National Bodies - JTC1 is essentially an intergovernmental organization, but governments are typically represented by their national standards bodies) 30 days to review the draft standard. “During [this period] … a NB may identify to the JTC1 Secretariat any perceived contradiction with other standards or approved projects of JTC1, ISO or IEC.” A “contradiction” is not defined. However, it is clear that an existing ISO/IEC standard covering the same subject matter is the worst possible kind of contradiction. That is exactly what we have here (endless red herrings are usually dragged in to obfuscate this point - see many previous articles on this site).

The BSI (British Standards Institute, the NB representing the UK) raised a contradiction in a timely way. Its submission included:

The UK believes that there is a contradiction between ECMA 376 (DIS 29500) and existing ISO/IEC JTC 1 Standards, in particular, ISO/IEC JTC1 26300 “Open Document Format for Office Applications”

Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, Kenya, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore all made the same (or a closely similar) point. Malaysia raised a number of different, and less far-reaching, contradictions.

The 30-day process is not a voting matter. A single contradiction raised by a single NB is enough to sink the draft. That is what you would expect, because there is no point in putting to a vote a standard which is fundamentally flawed. As usual, the JTC1 Directives are abysmally drafted, but it seems clear that the JTC1 Secretariat, which happens to be ANSI, the USA standards body, chose to ignore the Directives and press ahead with the 5 month balloting period.