The Research Design & Standards Organisation of Indian Railways has been declared the first standard development organisation (SDO) by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) under its ‘One Nation One Standard’ initiative.
“The scope of RDSO’s recognition as SDO, as approved by the Bureau (BIS), is “Standards Developing Organization for products, processes, and services for the railway transportation sector in India”. The recognition is valid for 3 years and will require renewal after completion of the validity period,” a statement by the Ministry of Consumer Affairs said.
“The standard formulation procedures at RDSO will now be more focussed on consensus-based decision making and will entail extensive engagement of all stakeholders including industry, academia, users, recognized labs, test houses etc, in the process of standard making from the very early stages i.e. from conceptualization to finalization of standards,” the Ministry said. It added that this will lead to larger participation of various stakeholders, improve competitiveness and reduce dependence on imports.
Through the ‘One Nation One Standard’ initiative, the BIS is seeking to provide recognition to standard developing bodies in a bid to aggregate and integrate existing capabilities and dedicated domain-specific expertise available with various organizations in the country engaged in standards development in their specific sectors, and enable convergence of all standard development activities in the country.