Configuration management of a system of interdependent standards

ISO/TC 211, Geographic information/Geomatics develops the ISO 19100 series of geographic information standards in close collaboration with the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). Forty-nine ISO 19100 standards have been published to date, and several were recently approved for revision in accordance with ISO´s review process. Dependencies among standards have to be managed as changes are introduced in revisions. Configuration management (CM) refers to identifying the configuration of a system at distinct points in time for the purpose of systematically controlling changes to the configuration, and maintaining the integrity and traceability of the configuration throughout the system life cycle. In this paper we explain the configuration management challenges for a `system´ of interdependent standards, which are expressed using standard documents, a Unified Modeling Language (UML) model and Extensible Markup Language (XML) schemas. We present two conceptual models and propose improved configuration management activities for ISO/TC 211. We conclude with a summary of results that are applicable in other ISO technical committees.