US Revamps NIST's Standard-Setting Efforts

coondoggie writes "The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has been given new marching orders: expand work with the private sector to develop standards for a range of key technologies such as cloud computing, emergency communications and tracking, green manufacturing and high performance green building construction. NIST could see its core science and technology budget double by 2017. NIST has also cut the number of labs it runs to 6 from 10. NIST labs now include engineering, physical measurement, information technology, material measurement, the Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology and the NIST Center for Neutron Research."

Comments

NIST is all over the Smart Grid effort too

[Doofus]

Summary left out a number of Smart-Grid related efforts NIST is heading up, all of which involve large numbers of private sector corporations and engineers.

See the following:

NIST Smart Grid overview

as well as this page

Who is involved?

Because the Smart Grid will touch so many aspects of life in the 21st century, the development of standards involves a wide range of stakeholders—national and international, private and public, large and small. This simplified illustration (see below) shows the many complex relationships and interactions that will take place within the Smart Grid, as electricity and/or information flows back and forth.

As part of the overall Smart Grid coordination effort, NIST is also pushing security issues for the Smart Grid, which is somewhat reassuring.

Can they switch us over to metric, please?

[gman003]

American user here, requesting the NIST start migrating America to pure metric. I've done about all I can to prepare myself for metric - I can't do any more unless more people start switching as well, and the only way to really do that seems to be government mandate.

Re:Can they switch us over to metric, please?

[Minwee]

Heck yeah. If this metric thing is so popular or necessary, why hasn't the rest of the world adopted it?

Re:Can they switch us over to metric, please?

[Anonymous Coward]

the rest of the world

You mean Hawaii and Alaska?

Re:Can they switch us over to metric, please?

[arthur.gunn]

Pffft.
And Liberia, and Myanmar.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Metric_system_adoption_map.svg

Re:Can they switch us over to metric, please?

[FrootLoops]

It gets inconvenient having both. Mechanics have to use x mm or y/z'th inch wrenches; nurses convert from F to C, pounds to kg's, and feet/inches to meters all the time; NASA lost a mars orbiter a few years back because of a conversion mistake. English units are inconvenient and error prone in other ways, besides the fact that the rest of the world doesn't use them. Try calculating your BMI by hand--you'll need to convert feet+inches to inches, that to meters, and pounds to kg's. The extra feet+inches conversion requires multiplication by 12 instead of a decimal shift and needs to be done even if you use a formula combining the other two conversions into multiplication by a constant. Converting between pounds and tons, gallons and pints, and feet and miles have similar issues--it's just stupid to add random constant multiplications when decimal shifts could do the same job.

If the weather was reported in C and kph, speed limit signs used both mph and kph, and common body temperatures were taught in both C and F, we'd be well on our way to conversion. Even a slow conversion is fine with me--letting the older generations die out as newer ones use metric more and more will eventually cause a switch.

Key role in standardisation?

[Gavin Rogers]

From TFA, "Since World War II, the United States has played a key role in international standardization"

Umm. Played a key role in international standardisation? This is a country - the only major industrialised nation in the entire world - that so far refuses to embrace the metric system. Key role, indeed.

Re:Key role in standardisation?

[Sir Holo]

You forget that the US's lack of standardization in length measurement has led to major equipment failures, such as the lost Mars probe? Making US industry use standards is NIST's primary job. Go read their congressional mission statement in the main lobby.

NOTE: I'm responding for the record, not to feed a troll.

Re:Key role in standardisation?

[khallow]

Trolling again, khallow?

It's the Slashdot version of the Socratic method. Sure, I am trolling in a sense, but that's to get the poster to question their beliefs. Sure I could have ignored the post or I could have just said that it isn't the NIST's job. But I saw that the real problem was the assumption that a standards organization inherently is somehow responsible for the failure of a country to fully adopt a popular global standard. By pointing out the absurdity of that assumption, I help the original poster think about their assumptions.

Re:Key role in standardisation?

[JustinOpinion]

Not everything's lost - only 4 labs!

The "NIST has also cut the number of labs it runs to 6 from 10" from the summary is very misleading. NIST just underwent a major re-organization, and reduced the number of administrative "labs" from 6 to 10. But none of the divisions within NIST were cut: various labs were just merged and divisions moved around to better reflect the modern research mission. No science programs were eliminated and no one was fired.

(I used to work at NIST.)

Re:that's progress...

[CyberDragon777]

Yeah, because everybody knows that the only way to deform steel with heat is to melt it completely.