The standards evolution: A pioneering Meta-standard framework architecture as a novel self-conformity assessment and learning tool

Not all standards are technical. We will start by unveiling what are the non-technical standards -known as Management standards- and go further by discovering a new type of non-technical standards which have not been identified yet. We will name them Policy standards. Next, we will present the shortcomings that existing conformity assessment schemes for Technical standards have when used with Non-technical standards and acknowledge the need for developing new compliance architectures to serve the later. The response we will give to this need is the 3C Meta-Standard Framework, an effort to create a “Standard for Standards”, a universal architecture for standards that allows assessing compliance with Non-technical standards and improve conformity assessment with Technical ones. We will create this novel architecture by breaking down several Technical and Non-technical standards to first identify their commonalities and differences, and next systematise and represent these investigations in the 3C Meta-Standard Framework. We will test conformity assessment capabilities of our pioneering 3C Framework with the most challenging type of Non-technical standards within Policy standards, the City standards. Lastly, we will also show the additional benefits of the 3C architecture, in the improvement of standards understanding and therefore helping their uptake, adoption and implementation.