Your product roadmap has a three-year horizon. The standard it depends on has a seven-year development cycle. Do the maths.
- 1 day ago
- 2 min read
In the secure document and digital identity industry, product development moves fast. Standards development moves deliberately. The tension between these two speeds is where fortunes are made — and where market access is lost.
A vendor that builds against a draft standard that changes direction before publication has wasted years of R&D. A vendor that waits for final publication before starting development arrives two years late to every tender. A government that writes procurement specifications against a superseded standard locks itself into technology that was already obsolete at contract signature.
The only way to navigate this is to understand where the standards are heading — not where they were when the last edition was published.
ISO/IEC JTC1 SC17 WG3 is the working group responsible for the international standards governing identification cards, travel documents, and related machine-readable technologies. Its work directly determines what governments can specify, what vendors can offer, and what border systems can verify.
SECOIA has contributed through its key staff to this work as an expert delegate and editor for over two decades. We track active work items, understand the direction of normative changes, and translate this intelligence into actionable guidance — for vendors aligning product roadmaps and for governments writing future-proof specifications.
Standards aren’t just rules. They are market intelligence. The question is whether you’re reading them — or shaping them.
SECOIA Executive Consultants Ltd is a Swiss boutique consultancy specialising in identity management, border security, biometrics, secure documents, and ePassports. The firm holds active memberships in ICAO ICBWG, ISO/IEC, and CEN standardisation bodies.
We welcome dialogue with professionals navigating these questions. Reach out through our website , arrange for a meeting or connect with us on LinkedIn.
Comments