The global market for information technology (IT) products is undergoing radical alteration. Fundamental changes in information and telecommunications technologies have lowered production costs and driven rapidly accelerating market demand for new products. But individual national systems of conformity assessment currently in use regulate and restrict the entry of information technology into many national markets. A change to a global approach for conformity assessment is necessary, and this change should be implemented through a best-practices approach, benchmarking, and use of a global framework of principles. Such a framework of principles could be agreed upon by governments through current Information Technology Agreement (ITA) talks or by modification of the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT). Implementation of those principles could be supported by industry through a best-practices analysis that would provide guidance concerning ways in which conformity requirements can be efficiently met and that would also serve as benchmarks for governments in assessing industry compliance.
About the Author
William B. Garrison, Jr. is director of the CSIS International Communications Program. He has served as a consultant to public- and private-sector clients and to foreign governments on industrial restructuring and regulation. Before entering private practice, he was director of the Office of Congressional Relations and Public Affairs for the National Telecommunications and Information Administration at the U.S. Department of Commerce. Garrison holds a B.A. from Duke University and a J.D. from the University of North Carolina.
Peter S. Watson is a senior associate with CSIS. Previously with the U.S. International Trade Commission, he was appointed to the commission by President Bush in 1990 and subsequently named its chair by President Clinton (1994-1996). Prior to his work at the commission, Watson served in the White House as director of Asian Affairs at the National Security Council and as the Overseas Private Investment Corporation special adviser to the President. An adjunct professor at the National Defense University, he holds an LL.M. from McGill University, and LL.B from Auckland Univeristy, and an M.I.B.A. from West Coast University.
