l These two organisations work closely together in areas of common Standards. It is the responsibility of the individual national stand- interest. For example all ISDN activities within ISO are carried out ards organisations to promote and distribute these standards within in Technical Committee TC97, which is responsible for information their own countries. processing systems. This committee has two subcommittees: The organisation of ISO consists of: 1. SC6 which is involved in telecommunications and information 1. A General Assembly, which meets once every three years and exchange between systems. This subcommittee is working consists of delegates nominated from its member countries. with the CCITT on common channel signalling (CCS) and the Standards are approved by a vote in this Assembly or by mail relationship of ISDN to the Open System Interconnect (OSI) ballot. All decisions are recommendations and not mandatory. model. 2. The Council, which consists of a President, Vice President, 2. SC21, which is responsible for developing the seven layer OSI treasurer and representatives elected from member bodies. The model on which the CCITT has modelled ISDN. 22/14 Telecommunication standards 22.3.4.3 Joint ISO/IEC committee a subcommittee, the IEC Information Technology Co-ordinating Group, whose prime responsibility is to ensure that the IEC's acti- The ISO and the IEC work together in many areas through their vities are co-ordinated with that of other standards making bodies, Joint Technical Programming Committee (JTPC). This committee in particular with the CCITT, CCIR and ISO. has the task of ensuring that overlap of work between the two bodies is avoided. The ISO and the IEC have also set up a Joint Technical 22.3.6 International trade and user groups Committee on Information Technology, called JTC1, to develop generic Information Technology standards. This Committee incor- 22.3.6.1 The OSI/Network Management Forum porates the ISO TC97 and the IEC TC83. JTC1 is responsible for producing International Standards