19770-2 Software Asset Management Tag DRAFT

The third Working Draft of ‘ISO/IEC 19770-2 SAM Tag’ was released by the 19770-2 Other Working Group on 14 April 2008. This is available for public review until 11 May 2008. The full draft, together with the commenting template and instructions, in available for open distribution so long as it is without modification and without commercial charge. A copy is available from http://www.agnitioadvisors.com/19770-2-WD3/19770-2-WD3.zip

WORKING GROUP 21 INTRODUCTION
Working Group 21 (WG21) is the working group responsible for Software Asset Management at the ISO/IEC level. It is located within Sub-Committee 7 (SC7) of ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1( ISO/IEC JTC1).

David Bicket (of Deloitte, and also a director of Investors in Software – dbicket@deloitte.com.) is the acting convener of WG21. The British Standards Institution (BSI) provides administrative support for WG21. All members of WG21 are appointed by their respective national standards bodies, with Sweden and the United Kingdom having the most representatives. WG21 actively encourages people to take whatever steps are necessary to become formally involved. The precise way that this needs to happen varies by country, because each national standards body establishes its own policies and procedures for such selections. In the future, it is hoped to provide information on this web site about joining instructions for a number of countries so as to facilitate such participation.  It is also possible to become a member of WG21 through a Category A Liaison (at the SC7 level, such as the itSMF) or through Category C Liaisons (at the WG21 level), and such Liaison relationships are currently being discussed with several international organizations.

WG21 normally conducts a physical meeting twice per year. One is in May, and is co-located with the plenary session of ISO/IEC JTC1 SC7. All working groups and special working groups have co-located meetings at this time, and the plenary session at the end – where the heads of national delegations each have one vote – decide on the progress or otherwise of various standards proposals. The second physical meeting each year is normally in October. Most of the working groups meet in a common location, but for cost and other reasons they may not all do so.

The ISO/IEC standard number which has been assigned to WG21 for SAM standards is 19770, with the opportunity to have different parts for the standard.

JOINING WG21

We encourage individuals and organisations with expertise in SAM to join WG21. In order to do this, individuals/organisations must be members of national standards bodies or of Liaison organizations.

STATUS OF WG21 ACTIVITIES

The information given here provides an overview of the status of WG21 activities as at the end of January 2008.

19770-1 Software Asset Management Processes

The first part of the standard on Software Asset Management processes was issued by ISO on 9 May 2006. There is a factsheet available about it in the Downloads/Documents section of this website. This is the only part of the standard which is official at present.

19770-2 Software Asset Management Tag

See latest news at top of this page.

19770-3 Software-Use Entitlement

At the Moscow plenary WG21 requested and received permission to ballot the national standards bodies for a New Work Item (NWI) for the purpose of creating a third part to the standard to cover software entitlements, i.e. licensing. This has not been balloted yet while the 19770-2 project was being brought within the ISO/IEC processes.  Assuming that the ballot is successful (which we expect it will be), WG21 will be in a position officially to proceed with the drafting of 19770-3.

Study Group on SAM Maturity/Capability Assessment

This was originally proposed by WG21 as 19770-4. However, one of the main objectives for this activity was to clarify what the market wants in terms of SAM maturity or capability assessments, and as such we are not yet in a position to specify a proposed standard as required for a New Work Item. Furthermore, this proposal is closely interlinked with the interests of other working groups in SC7, eg WG10 (concerned with ISO/IEC 15504) and WG25 (concerned with ISO/IEC 20000). Consequently an SC7 level Study Group was established to address this topic, led by David Phillips who is chair of the UK’s official WG21 mirror SAM committee. It has launched the on-line survey mentioned at the top of this page.