International Standards Organisation Secretary General Alan Bryden has visited India several times in the past, but his recent visit was extraordinary in the sense that he visited Bangalore -- the IT capital of India -- for the first time. He was vociferous enough to state that this signifies the start of an era where the ISO will be closely working with the Indian IT industry to formulate new standards in IT. Here are the excerpts of Bryden's interview with Business Standard.

Do you think that complying to ISO standards can bring any value to Indian IT firms?

India is a leader in the IT industry, but is yet to become a leader in international standardisation. Indian IT firms are very strong in offshoring. Now, they hope to prosper on the basis of innovation and technology. And in technology, international standards are key to influence the world market.

We have two major standards for management -- one is ISO 20000 for quality management and the other is ISO 27001 for information security management. In relation to certification to ISO 27001, which is our information security management standard, India is number three in the world -- far behind Japan and behind UK.

There had been complains that the Indian IT industry does not have much say in various technical committees formed by the ISO to formulate standards in the technology sector?

ISO is a very global organisation with 157 countries as its members. India is a member of ISO. The Indian member is the Bureau of Indian Standards, which is the entry point to the ISO in order to participate. We have a number of technical committees involved in IT.

Basically, what we do covers the basics of standardisation, terminology, coding, document processing, quality of IT services and products, IT security and IT applications in many sectors. Currently, India is participating in most of these works.

But are there any Indian IT firms which are representing any of the ISO technical committees?

A number of Indian companies are members of these committees through the BIS. My presence here in Bangalore is to encourage them to do more. Because other countries including the US, Japan and many European countries have long been leading in standardisation.

Recently, countries like China and Korea are also coming up. I hope that the industry will become more aware and mobilised in taking part in making investment in networking in order to gain interest.

India has, of course, a major asset. It has a major domestic base for IT services and also it has increased very significantly its outsourced and offshore services. In India, you speak English, and it's advantageous for standardisation because standardisation is also done is English.

Of late, there has been a spurt of ISO certifications in India. Do you think that this is making the standards very cheap?

ISO is making a cautious approach in awarding the standard certifications. However, according certain surveys, some certifications have been awarded very rapidly. ISO being a brand name, is often being used as a passport in trade circles.

So it is imperative to verify the quality of certification before it was awarded. We want to ensure there is no deviation when it comes to the quality of standards and that the standards specified were applied and adhered to.

It seems you have a separate policy for issuing ISO standards to patented technology. Does it make sense for a technology-focussed firm to disclose its patent information before the ISO?

ISO, by definition, is very open and transparent in its operations. We develop international standards when there is consensus. We have rules and procedures what we formulate with the participation of the industry through national or international delegations.

We have a patent policy; so we don't exclude that there can be patented technology in a standard. But our policy provides that if there is an ISO standard in patented technology, it should be known.

So there should be a declaration of the patent, and there should be a commitment of the owner of the patented technology to make it available under certain conditions. If this is not the case, then we can withdraw the standard.