The Procedure covers the use of Internet to support and promote ICNDT activities:
The Secretariat shall maintain the ICNDT official website and assume all legal responsibilities associated with the website. The ICNDT PGP shall set a guideline for its contents. The whole or a part of the actual operation of the website may be delegated to NDT Societies in Membership of ICNDT nominated by the ICNDT PGP.
ICNDT shall retain the copyright of contents in the official website unless otherwise stated. ICNDT shall grant other websites on the Internet links, mirrors and translations of contents of the official website, so long as proper credit and reference are given to ICNDT.
(Note: It would provide a wider exposure to activities of ICNDT, if other websites such as standardization bodies, societies, database, etc, can link and quote contents of ICNDT website.)
The Secretariat shall maintain a list of e-mail addresses of participants of ICNDT activities (membership, officers, PGP, committees, working groups, etc.) A participant shall promptly advise the Secretariat any change of delegate and its e-mail address.
The Secretariat shall provide e-mail aliases for major participants, so those individuals may communicate proper group or officer without knowing personal address.
(Note: for example, president@icndt.org, secretariat@icndt.org, pgp@icndt.org, etc. Voting and Non-voting delegates may share the same address such as uk@icndt.org, which is permanent regardless of a change of delegate.)
The Secretariat shall provide mailing list services for groups of participants.
(Note: For example, if you send a mail to pgp@icndt, then all the members receive the same mail. cc: used at present is not good practice. If you compare cc: lists of members, you will find many differences.)
The Secretariat shall provide a FTP server or website with/without access control for distribution of documents.
(Note: An attachment of a large document to e-mail is not a good practice. There are free excellent services such as Yahoo!, which integrate mailing list and website. In view of a limited resource of ICNDT, I would recommend to subscribe these services.) DOCUMENTS
All official ICNDT documents shall be published on the ICNDT Website.
(Note: Document acquisition and distribution through the Internet are the fastest and most economical way to run global operations in timely manner.)
Draft minutes of a meeting shall be published on the ICNDT Website within one month after the meeting.
(Note: Wording - Draft minutes is preferred than Unapproved or Unconfirmed minutes. It will be approved in a subsequent meeting as usual. But it will become obsolete because it will take months or even years before approval.
National and regional delegates have to distribute minutes to and ask comments from a number of people. Effective access control of documents in such a large and vague group is difficult anyway. On the other hand, ICNDT would gain better public exposure by timely reports of its activities. I would support the decision taken by the President Nardoni and other officers of
ICNDT at Anaheim, U.S.A. in 1998 that minutes may be published on the web. Members only communication and documents management is better handled by the abovementioned mailing lists integrated with web services.)
ICNDT shall publish documents, such as handbook, guidebook and recommendation, on ICNDT web and encourage to take full advantage of multimedia capability.
Editorial committee shall examine whether a document is suitable for the publication on the web or a printed version is absolutely necessary.
An originator of a publication shall consent a free use of the document by ICNDT in printed form and any electronic forms.
The preferred format is PDF for documents of permanent nature, whereas TXT or HTM (HTML) formats for working documents.
(Note: The PDF format can contain multimedia contents and preserve the look and integrity of original printed documents. Adobe Reader with a capability of full text search is free and easily incorporated with a web browser. Contents of an important document (e.g. constitution or operating procedures) may be protected against alternation.
The TXT format is universal regardless of platforms and OSs. Many webeditors prefer to receive contents in TXT without any cosmetic markup. The HTML format is essentially TXT format with mark up tags. Browsers, which view HTML documents, are universal and multilingual. The DOC format of Microsoft Ward may be used keeping in mind that it is proprietary and there are notable inconsistencies among various language versions.)