For decades, standards have been created primarily for people to read.

Whether published as printed books, PDFs or web pages, the objective has always been the same: enable a human reader to understand and apply the requirements of a standard.

Today, that is beginning to change.

Across the international standards community, organisations are investing in the concept of Smart Standards—standards that can be consumed not only by people, but increasingly by software systems, digital platforms and intelligent applications. The joint IEC/ISO SMART programme, alongside similar initiatives across the standards landscape, reflects a growing recognition that standards must evolve to meet the needs of an increasingly digital world. (ISO)

A Different Way of Thinking

Smart Standards are not simply electronic versions of existing documents.

They represent a fundamental shift in how standards are created, managed and used.

Imagine a CAD application automatically checking a design against the latest engineering requirements. A manufacturing system validating production parameters before a product reaches the factory floor. A procurement platform identifying applicable standards for a particular product. Or an AI assistant answering technical questions using authoritative standards content.

These capabilities become possible when standards evolve from static documents into structured digital information.

The PDF doesn't disappear—it simply becomes one of many ways in which the underlying content can be delivered.

Machine Readable Before Machine Actionable

There is considerable excitement around machine-actionable standards, where software can directly interpret and apply the requirements contained within a standard.

However, there is an important prerequisite that is sometimes overlooked.

Before content can become machine-actionable, it must first become machine-readable.

A Word document or PDF may appear perfectly structured to a human reader, but software largely sees formatted text. It cannot reliably distinguish between a normative requirement, a recommendation, a note, a definition or a bibliography without additional semantic information.

Structured XML changes that completely.

Every clause, requirement, table, figure, normative reference, definition and piece of metadata is explicitly identified, giving software the information it needs to understand the role and meaning of each component within the document.

Why Semantics Matter

Not all XML is created equal.

Simply converting a document into XML does not automatically create a Smart Standard.

The XML must be consistent, standardised and semantically rich.

This is precisely why Standards Tag Suite (STS) has become so important.

STS provides a common vocabulary for representing standards content, ensuring that the structure and meaning of information is expressed consistently regardless of which organisation created the document or which systems ultimately consume it.

This semantic consistency is what enables interoperability between publishing systems today—and increasingly between software applications tomorrow.

Authoring for a Digital Future

As Smart Standards initiatives gather momentum, standards organisations are beginning to rethink not only how they publish standards, but also how they author them.

The emphasis is gradually moving away from creating documents solely for human consumption towards creating structured content that can support both people and machines throughout its lifecycle. Across the standards community, organisations are exploring new authoring approaches, digital workflows and publishing technologies that better support this vision. (ISO)

Importantly, this does not mean authors need to become XML experts.

Whether an organisation adopts an XML-first platform, generates XML during editorial processing, or continues to author within Microsoft Word, the objective remains the same: produce high-quality, semantically rich XML that accurately represents the intent and structure of the standard.

The authoring experience may vary.

The quality of the structured content cannot.

The Role of icTools

At Ictect, we see structured XML as much more than a publishing output.

icTools enables organisations to continue authoring within the familiar Microsoft Word environment while generating and validating standards-compliant STS XML throughout the editorial process.

Rather than treating XML as something created after publication, icTools makes structured content an integral part of the workflow from the outset.

The result is content that is ready not only for today's publishing requirements—PDF, HTML, accessibility and digital delivery—but also for tomorrow's Smart Standards ecosystem.

Preparing for What's Next

The journey towards Smart Standards is still evolving, and there is no single technology that will deliver it overnight.

But one principle is already clear.

Before standards can be embedded into engineering systems, compliance platforms, AI assistants or digital twins, they must first exist as structured, semantically rich and interoperable information.

In other words, Smart Standards begin with smart content.

For organisations investing in the future of standards publishing, producing high-quality STS XML is no longer simply a production requirement—it is the foundation upon which the next generation of digital standards will be built.