World Standards Week 2024

In person event — all day

In conjunction with World Standards Week, this multi-day event will prime emerging standards professionals for success in international standardization, in both IEC and ISO activities. Participants will get to network with industry leaders, gain insights into the standards development and conformity assessment processes, and attend valuable trainings to advance their careers and the work of their organizations. This event is sponsored by the USNC Young and Emerging Professionals Committee.

Morning/Afternoon:
ANSI Headquarters
Washington DC

Evening:
National Housing Center
Auditorium
Washington DC

ANSI Legal Issues Forum

Hybrid event
Free event; open to all

10:00 am - 4:00 pm ET

National Housing Center
Auditorium
Washington, DC

Panel 1: New Legal Developments Impacting the Practice of Incorporation by Reference (IBR)
This LIF panel is the second in a series covering the increasing risk of loss of copyright protection for standards that are incorporated by reference into regulation. Through the practice of incorporation by reference, government agencies enact into law standards developed by private organizations, and, up until now, have done so in collaboration with the standards community, making IBR’d standards “reasonably available” to the class of persons impacted by the regulation. But increasingly, loud voices have argued that these collaborative solutions do not go far enough and have urged courts to require that standards incorporated by reference into regulations be provided to everyone for free on the internet, even maintaining that free access be provided for standards considered as part of a notice of proposed rulemaking as well as standards that are merely secondary references, meaning they are not directly referenced by regulation, but are included in other standards that are themselves IBR’d. This panel will analyze the current legal landscape, including the possible impact of a recent Supreme Court case overruling the Chevron deference doctrine, and examine other evolving challenges to governmental use of privately-developed standards. Panel discussions will address both recent decisions and pending court cases relating to the continued use of voluntary consensus standards in regulations.

Panel 2: What the Standards Community Needs to Know about Data Security Regulations, Practices, and Standards
An increasingly complex digital environment is profoundly altering how businesses operate and compete today, raising the stakes associated with protecting and securing data assets. The impact of threats to data security is being felt across multiple sectors—healthcare, financial services, manufacturing—as well as in corporate and government supply chains. Enterprises are creating, manipulating, and storing an ever-increasing amount of data, driving a greater need for data governance. Computing environments have also become more complex, routinely spanning the public cloud, the enterprise data center, and numerous edge devices such as Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, robots, and remote servers. This complexity increases the risk of cyberattacks, making it harder to monitor and secure these systems. This panel will explore the regulatory and legal frameworks that are being put in place to address and mitigate data security risks, and the role of standards and conformity assessment in enhancing data security.