The British Standards Institution (BSI) is the lead organisation responsible for the development and adoption of national standards in the United Kingdom and has been incorporated by Royal Charter since 1929. BSI was formally recognised by government as the UK national standards body under a Memorandum of Understanding in 1982, but has in effect fulfilled that role since its initial establishment in 1901.
BSI works with manufacturing and service industries across all sectors and disciplines, with professional bodies, businesses, governments and consumers to facilitate British, European and international standards. BSI represents UK economic and social interests across the European and international standards organisations and through the development of business information solutions for organisations of all sizes and sectors in and beyond the UK.
BSI’s Standards division focuses primarily on the development and dissemination of standards products (Publicly Available Specifications (PAS), British Standards, European standards (CEN/CENELEC) and international standards (ISO/IEC)) and supporting information services.
BSI is also the national standards organisation (NSO) participating on behalf of the UK in ETSI, the third European standards organisation alongside CEN and CENELEC. BSI has a portfolio of over 37,000 current standards covering a wide variety of sectors, with approximately 7000 in development or revision every year.
BSI offers a range of standards deliverables depending on their intended purpose (guidance through to highly prescriptive specifications and controls), including those that can be audited and certified against (eg an information security framework) or to be tested against (e.g. crash helmets). The BSI participation model is different to many other developers of standards for data as there is no charge to take part in BSI’s committees or to input comments on standards. This also means that funders cannot unduly influence the standardisation process (eg where funding can be linked to voting rights).
Do you have a focus on a specific type of standard or sector?
BSI has developed a range of standards for all sectors.
What standards have you helped to develop or support?
Amongst BSI’s wide-ranging portfolio of 37,000 current standards and 7000 that are in development or revision, in recent years we have started new standards around the Internet of Things, Blockchain and Big Data.