New IEC/IEEE 82079-1:2019

Tue, 12/31/2019 - 12:43

Monika Popiołek

Preparation of information for use (instructions for use) of products — Part 1: Principles and general requirements

Introduction

The IEC/IEEE 82079-1:2019 was jointly developed (as part of JWG 16 since 2015) and published by ISO, IEC and IEEE. The standard provides general principles and detailed requirements for the design and development of all types of instructions for information (aka instructions for use) that are necessary or helpful to users of products of all kinds, ranging from consumer goods to highly complex installations, industrial machinery, power plants or buildings. IEC/IEEE 82079-1:2019 cancels and replaces the first edition IEC 82079-1:2012 which, in turn, was based on and replaced IEC 62079 Preparation of instructions – Structuring, content and presentation. This 2019 edition constitutes a technical revision and it is published as a horizontal standard.

In the introduction to the standard information is classified by the following types:

Conceptual information (concepts, safety notes, others),
Instructional information (procedures, warning messages, others),
Reference information (troubleshooting, maintenance schedule, others).

According to the scope of the standard, information for use is: necessary for the safe use of a product; helpful for the efficient and effective use of a product; and often fulfils market, legal, and regulatory obligations. Information for use of products applies to phases of the product life cycle such as transport, assembly, installation, commissioning, operation, monitoring, troubleshooting, maintenance, repair, decommissioning, and disposal, and the appropriate tasks performed by skilled and unskilled persons. IEC/IEEE 82079-1:2019 provides a generic framework for prospective additional parts of this standard and applies to information for use whether provided as electronic or printed information products. It is intended for use by all parties responsible for or involved in the conceptualization, creation, maintenance, translation, localization, integration of content, production, provision and evaluation, acquisition and supply of information for use. The aim of the standard is to provide these parties with the common and fundamental basis for developing information for use of supported products of the required quality. The document is intended to be applied and referenced in product-specific standards, including those that specify the content of information for use of those products, for example, IEC 60335 for all parts for household electrical products, ISO 20607 for machinery, and ISO/IEC 26514 for systems and software. It is intended as a basis to elaborate product specific requirements for target audiences or product information. As a horizontal standard is primarily intended for use by technical committees in the preparation of standards in accordance with the principles laid down in IEC Guide 108.

How does IEC/IEEE 82079-1:2019 differ from IEC 82079-1:2012?

According to the information supplied by ISO, IEC/IEEE 82079-1:2019 includes the following significant technical changes with respect to the previous edition:

The structure of this document has been rearranged in order to facilitate application of the standard and to make it easier to find information. Where possible, the language has been simplified.
Information for use is introduced as a generic term. Instructions for use is a synonym for information for use. Step-by-step instructions is used as a subset of information for use.
Clause 5 (Principles) is revised and focuses on the purpose of information for use, the quality of information and the process for management of information.
The process for preparation of information for use is integrated in the normative part and addressed comprehensively.
Empirical methods for the evaluation of information for use are described in the normative part.
The professional competencies needed for the preparation of information for use are addressed more comprehensively.
Some aspects have been added to general requirements for information for use for complex systems of systems.
Consideration is given to instructions for self-assembly products.
An informative annex providing guidance on the fulfilment of specified requirements is introduced.

In reality, the differences between IEC 82079-1:2012 and IEC/IEEE 82079-1:2019 are more fundamental and not necessarily positive– as discussed below.

What sort of information does IEC/IEEE 82079-1:2019 deal with, what has really changed and what requirements are being set?

Judging by the change in the standard’s name, the watered-down technical requirements and a more generic and horizontal approach to content and its specific use, one can only surmise that the aim was to develop a standard that would deal with intelligent information and digital content in general but this didn’t quite work out. The aim to move into the area of information/content rather than just instructions for use makes a lot of sense, except it should have been clearly stated in the scope and reflected in the contents of the standard properly. Unfortunately, this did not happen. Furthermore, the terminology and language that was used to draft this standard is awkward, inconsistent and does not support any of these aims because it lacks substance and reference to other relevant requirements, proper terminology and existing approaches to dealing with intelligent information, digital content and internationalization.

The standard generally classifies information as , conceptual information, instructional information and reference information. However, this is not developed into any logical model, there is no attempt at any information mapping scheme that would show potential interactions and the information product development and the output examples do not seem to follow from any comprehensive model approach or provide any practical references for information developers.

When talking about global digitalization and intelligent information, what typically comes to mind are the following:

content structured for storage, retrieval and reuse.
strategies used for developing and managing content as a corporate asset;
efficient us of processes, people, and technologies;
scalable content management approaches;
optimized authoring and content management processes;
automated processes that support the reuse of various content components
personalized content that serves different purposes, can be marketed and delivered via multiple platforms/channels to different target audiences
metadata and indexing algorithms
analysis of how digitization and the various social media influence information processing and dissemination, etc.

IEC 82079-1 addresses strategy and information management process (clause 5.4 and 6), professional competences (of the people involved) (clause 10), media and format (clause 9), structure and information delivery (clause 8). In that sense, it covers some of the points I’ve listed above but, once again, this is done in a very general and convoluted way.

The following four process groups for the planning, design, production, and sustainment of information for use are distinguished:

Analysis and planning of information
Design and development (including review, editing, and testing)
Production and distribution
Sustainment (including maintenance and improvement)

The standard contains recommendations for hierarchical structuring information so that only relevant information is delivered to the target audience (clause 8) but specific requirements or references to specific frameworks are not provided.

When it comes to the digitization of information, IEC/IEEE 82079-1:2019 is much less specific than its predecessor. Media and format requirements (clause 9) are also much less restrictive than before. It makes sense to align some of this with the needs of the target audience (e.g. printed text is not always required, not everybody wants or needs a big manual etc.) but there are no specific guidelines provided and it mostly boils down to general remarks that it is important that the media allow easy and permanent access to information for use and the media should be appropriate.

Clause 10 deals with human resources. According to the standard, the creation of information for use shall be assigned to competent persons but the only indication of actual requirements is included in the definition of the term itself (3.3). There is a lot of general talk about competence requirements in IEC 82079-1 but unfortunately no specific qualification requirements are provided anywhere and recommended levels of proficiency are impractical, non-standard and without reference to any recognized framework (Level 1, Level 2, Level 3), outdated (e.g. obscure reference to “skilled person” (3.36)), and hence quite arbitrary.

For example, ISO 17100:2015 Translation services - requirements is referenced in the context of the translation process (in a note) instead of being referenced directly in the clause of the standard dealing with required translator competence requirements. Not only is the standard terminology related to translation and its stages completely incorrect here but the translator competences in IEC 82079-1 are much lower than the minimum competence requirements of ISO 17100 and minimum translator qualifications or the qualification requirements of other people involved in the process are not mentioned at all. Furthermore, the key requirement of ISO 17100 which deals with compulsory revision (“the four eye principle”) which was included in IEC 82079-1:2012 previously is now gone. It is hard to understand what was the reasoning here. Why not reference the requirements set out in a recognized translation industry-specific standard in the context of the translation process and translator competencies? If IEC/IEEE 82079:2019 aims to establish standards for the whole information (instructions for use) development process and this document does not reference, in the appropriate context, recognized industry standards that set the minimum human and process requirements for key parts of the process (i.e. ISO 17100 - translation, revision, review) then someone must have missed the whole point of standardizing specific processes and services in order to achieve the required result. What is more, the IEC/IEEE 82079:2019 now does not contain any minimum requirements in this area, so the competence and process recommendations of the people involved are now completely meaningless and one cannot talk about any compliance reference scheme here. From that perspective, it is impossible to see how IEC/IEEE 82079:2019 aims to raise the bar and promote standards for processes. How can one realistically attempt standardization of, for example, “competent person” (3.3), “information quality” (3.20), “professional competencies” (clause 10), “safety-related information” (7.11), “information quality” (clause 5.3), “risk management” (clause 6.2.7) or “quality assurance” (clause 6.2.12) or “competencies of translators” (10.4) without setting any real (measurable) requirements as to qualifications and documented competence of the people involved in the process of producing and translating information or without setting a strict requirement that all translated content shall be at least revised once by another competent person prior to its approval for use?

Conclusions

It is a pity that IEC/IEEE 82079:2019 lowered some of the requirements contained in the previous version and did not correctly reference other standards that deal with various aspects of the information/content development process (the obvious and lamentable lack of proper reference to ISO 17100 aptly illustrates this point). The standard is quite lengthy now (130 pages) and there are a lot of recommendations and general statements but there are very few actual requirements for anything included in the standard.

It seems that IEC/IEEE 82079:2019 was intended as a generalist standard for dealing with intelligent information and tries to address some of the digital content issues and in theory it was supposed to be a requirements standard but either intentionally or unintentionally it is actually a guidance standard because it has failed to set any strict requirements in the key areas and process stages. Some of the key concepts of information management best practice certainly underly the IEC 82079;2019 standard but it is difficult to pinpoint specific requirements or guidelines that would directly address the challenges of global digital economy (and society) in need of intelligent information management. From my experience, this will in practice make this standard non-certifiable for, in spite of the efforts to provide guidance on evaluation (Annex A), it is very difficult to audit fulfilment of requirements that are either not stated explicitly or not objectively measurable. In such cases, the certification schemes are usually convoluted, non-transparent, non-objective, complicated and costly (which invariably has a negative impact on standard adoption and general usage).

Some of the other problems that this standard has not managed to overcome also boil down to linguistic issues. It is obvious that the standard was developed from different sets of documents and mainly by non-native English speakers and hence it does not reference many key terms and concepts used by digital content developers and used within the sector. The standard does not completely ignore typical terminology and issues but many of these concepts are well hidden in incomprehensible clauses and some of the key terms are simply not used. Apart from the absence of requirements and failure to reference relevant industry standards, my main objection to IEC/IEEE 82079:2019 is the lack of relevant requirements and not enough attention to editing and adherence to linguistic conventions (including failure to comprehensively use specialist/standardized terminology). It is clear that professional editing and more input from native speaker experts would certainly have improved this standard a lot and made it not only more readable but also more translatable into other languages (which is still a requirement in most countries). It is a great pity that the editors of this standard did not implement their own authoring best practice or refer to existing editorial and simple language standards as well as ISO terminology resources when drafting this extensive and convoluted piece of “information for use”.

General information:

	EN 82079-1:2012	IEC/IEEE 82079-1:2019
Name EN:	Preparation of instructions for use – structuring, content and presentation – Part 1: General principles and detailed requirements	Preparation of information for use (instructions for use) of products –Part 1: Principles and general requirements
Name PL:	rzygotowanie instrukcji użytkowania ‒ Opracowanie struktury, zawartość i sposób prezentacji ‒ Część 1: Zasady ogólne i wymagania szczegółowe.[PN-EN 82079-1:2013 – Polish version]	Przygotowanie informacji użytkowania (instrukcji użytkowania) produktów ‒ Część 1: Zasady i wymagania ogólne.
IEC/ISO publication date:	August 2012	May 2019
Publication in Polish by PKN	10. 2013 [as PN-EN 82079-1:2013]	pending
Edition:	1	1
Status:	Withdrawn	Published
Number of pages:	107	130
Relevant ISO TC:	ISO/TC 10 Technical product documentation	ISO/TC 10/SC 1 Basic conventions (JWG 16)
Relevant Polish TC:	PKN TC 256 [Komitet Techniczny nr 256]	PKN TC 256 [Komitet Techniczny nr 256]
ICS:	ICS : 01.110 Technical product documentation	ICS : 01.110 Technical product documentation