My name is Ted Burse. I am serving my first year as Member-at-Large, Standards, on the Power and Energy Society Governing Board. I am also a member of the IEEE Standards Association Standards Board (SASB). The SASB is established and appointed by the IEEE-SA Board of Governors. The IEEE-SA Standards Board encourages and coordinates the development and revision of IEEE standards. This includes approving the initiation of IEEE standards projects and to reviewing them for consensus, due process, openness, and balance.The SASB gives final approval to IEEE standards prior to publication and processes all necessary appeals.

I am currently serving as the Chair of the SASBReview Committee (RevCom) which is a standing committee of the SASB. RevCom makes recommendations on the approval or disapproval of standards submitted for IEEE-SA Standards Board approval or adoption.Approval or adoption requires agreement from RevCom members that RevCom and IEEE-SA Standards Board procedural requirements have been satisfied.

The PES is responsible for approximately 497 published IEEE Standards, Guides, and Recommended Practices. This represents approximately 43% of all IEEE Standards. There are currently 230 active PES PARS. You can see by these numbers the PES is indeed a very active contributor to the standards process.

Submitting a document to RevCom seeking the Committee’s recommendation to approve the work is one of the last steps in the process of creating or revising IEEE Standards. Prior to RevCom submission the Sponsor balloting process occurs. During the balloting process it is not uncommon to receive hundreds of comments to the draft. Resolving those comments satisfactorily is a critical part of the balloting process.

After the balloting is complete a comment spreadsheet is downloaded from myProject and the comment review begins. The spreadsheet contains columns for disposition status and disposition detail. These columns must be filled out prior to uploading the spreadsheet. It is the Sponsor’s responsibility to resolve all the comments received during the ballot.

The Disposition Status column shall contain one of three words. The words are Accepted, Rejected, or Revised. Accepted is used when the suggested remedy comment will be incorporated into the draft exactly as proposed by the balloter. In this case the Disposition Detail column can be left blank. Rejected is used when comment and suggested remedy is not accepted. When a comment and remedy are rejected the Disposition Detail column shall contain sufficient detail for balloters to understand the rational for the rejection. Revised is used when a change occurred to the effected material that was either in part or not all based upon the comment. The Disposition Detail column shall again contain sufficient detail for the balloters to understand the revision.

Often the Sponsor Working Group Chair has little or no experience responding to comments received during the balloting stage of a project. Unfortunately, inexperience with the details of the ballot resolution process sometimes leads to procedural errors which can delay the final goal of a achieving a published IEEE document. Heeding a few “Do’s and Don’ts” during ballot comment resolution stage of the project will help assure a project receives an approval recommendation from RevCom.

• Don’t make or promise to make any post-ballot changes to the draft. Do recirculate any changes you want to guarantee to the balloting group.
• Don’t have any empty disposition status or detail columns if you reject or revise a comment. Do have sufficient detail explaining the reason for rejection or the revised comment.
• Don’t have an outstanding negative ballot with comment(s) and submit to RevCom without addressing. Do email the balloter a reason for rejecting the comment and advise them the draft is being submitted to RevCom if you have an outstanding negative.
• Don’t cross reference comment disposition details. (i.e. “See comment XYZ for disposition.”) Do copy and paste the comment disposition detail.
• Don’t reference an external document in the disposition detail. Do copy and paste information from an external document into the disposition detail.
• Do make a reasonable attempt to resolve all Do Not Approve votes with comments.
• Do provide evidence of the consideration of each comment via the comment spreadsheet.

Following these few steps can help assure a smooth RevCom review process and avoid possible delays in attaining the ultimate goal of a successfully approved and published IEEE Standard.