so thank you for joining us for the ansi overview and orientation webinar were delighted to have you we also host a live webinar the first Friday of each month so if you're interested in joining please do so you know we really do have a nice mix of attendees that include new members people new in their roles or others that are thinking about becoming an SI members so today the webinar is an SI overview and orientation and I'd like to begin with describing who ANSI is and what we do our mission is to enhance both the global competitiveness of US business and the US quality of life by promoting and facilitating voluntary consensus standards and conformity assessment systems and safeguarding their integrity ANSI was founded in 1918 and we are celebrating our 100-year anniversary this year we have a long history and strong reputation as working in close collaboration with all stakeholders to solve industry problems on behalf of the United States and around the world there are two common misconceptions that we hear often and one is people think were a government agency and while we work with over 65 agencies we are a completely separate private organization a non-profit 501 C 3 the second common misconception is that we develop standards and yes we do work with about 240 standard developing organizations commonly called stos we don't actually develop the standards we provide the process by which they are developed the ANSI Federation represents and serves the diverse interest of more than 270,000 companies and organizations and over 30 million professionals worldwide our Federation includes industry government trade associations academia individuals standard developers professional societies service organizations consumer and labor interest and many more getting to know who your fellow members are this chart illustrates our demographics in terms of membership categories and you'll see that 60% represent company members 28% organizational or associations about 6% or government 4% International and 2% educational and this allows us to bridge the public and private sectors in offer neutral forum our objectivity and independence commands confidence trust integrity and respect within the United States and around the world the next slide provides you a distribution of our company member demographics in terms of industry we do have a cross-section of industries represented and as you might imagine a large percentage is manufacturing and technology but it also includes services which in the last several years continues to grow as a matter of fact the Department of Commerce and international trade office has reported on the growing services sector as representing over 80 percent of the gross domestic product and also represents 30 percent of exports to that end our ANSI senior staff and board developed a board task group to research and study this growing sector to determine where ANSI could play a role more on that in just a moment the next slide illustrates the makeup of the company members in terms of job responsibilities and categories and you'll see it's quite varied from sea level to manager director administrator engineer coordinator and such so how can you participate you might be wondering what role can I play well this particular slide really is at the heart of the opportunity the opportunity that Maxim your organization's visibility to benefit the most from your membership as the name suggests each of these policy setting committees develop policy and position decisions regarding their specific areas whether it be the national policy committee the international policy committee the intellectual property rights committee the conformity assessment policy committee and regional standing committees another very active way you can participate is through our member forums and also being part of our board of directors the ANSI organizational structure as you'll see on this slide really does demonstrate at the very top the ANSI members are the driver of everything that we do and that's why it's critically important for you to help us help you identify the issues and challenges you face in both the domestic and international marketplace so we can best serve you and represent your interests around the globe so how do you stay connected ANSI membership gives you early warning about emerging issues that could impact your business and one of the best ways we can bride you with help is giving you timely and relevant information we have a weekly publication called what's new and it contains a host of information on announcements events meetings and training what's new you'll see a illustration on the slide it gives you a host of information and this is just an example of some of the important topics and links that you can access and you can share this so if you're not already receiving that we encourage you to subscribe and also distribute to your colleagues and then if you want to be very specific you can subscribe to our new subscription opt-in and it's a new subscription alert and you have the ability to select all or select news items based on your individual needs we're already receiving lots of positive feedback so when you have a chance we invite you to subscribe also on a weekly basis we update stand it's action and that is the Institute's key public review vehicle it provides our members and the public timely and accurate information and enables effective participation in the standards development process both in the US as well as internationally and still further as an ANSI member you can receive discounts on standards publications subscription agreements including ISO and IEC and other standards collections discounts on events and courses at NYU so what do we do nationally well an C's roll with policy makers really is a public-private partnership this is one of the greatest strengths of the u.s. approach to standards and conformity is the public-private partnership the US government is a very active participant in the standard setting process and often relies upon private sector solutions in its regulations and government use of standards has been reflected for over 30 years in federal policy we are talking of course about the OMB circular 8 119 which establishes policy on the government's use of and support for voluntary consensus standards and the national technology transfer an advancement Act of 1995 the NT taa directs all federal agencies to use standards and conformity assessment solutions wherever feasible and it directs them to do so instead of developing government unique standards or regulation the NT taa also encourages agencies to participate in standards development work ANSI provides that bridge to the executive and legislative branch we take on issues requiring involvement from all members of the ANSI Federation we provide a problem-solving capability a neutral convener and we build consumer and business confidence a good example of this is during the toy safety problem a few years ago the problem was not the underlining standard but the problem was the conformance of those standards because the US government does not have the authority to inspect facilities in other countries to ensure lead free toys Congress authorized the use of accredited third-party inspections of Chinese factories the Chinese government accepted this because such inspections would be done under ISO standards which China observed many other countries have what we would call a top-down system and this means that a single government agency drives the standards and conformity activities that will govern its products systems and services in the u.s. our system is bottom-up that means that it's primarily voluntary its private sector-led and marketplace driven as a result we have multiple stos in this country each working in response to a specific marketplace need ANSI has over 240 accredited standard developing organizations referred to as stos and the stos developed the standards and ANSI provides the process our process is open transparent consensus based and provides due process these are our essential requirements which is part of the u.s. standards strategy as well as the World Trade organization's technical barriers to trade agreement this slide illustrates some of the stos and the u.s. technical advisory groups that represent the over 240 stos some of them you may already know or be working with standards development and conformity assessment do go hand-in-hand as an ANSI standard is accepted and becomes an American national standard ANS it could then become international standard the next potential opportunity is to then have your standard become accredited this chart illustrates those specific areas of interest such as laboratory and medical labs personnel certification greenhouse gases etc so our international reach as we mentioned earlier there are many entities that we work with on an international front some are bilateral agreements and others may be regional and still others global an SI as the u.s. member body to ISO which is the International Organization for Standardization electrical technical Commission we do represent the interest of the US abroad the standards portal org provides answers to critical standards conformance market access and trade related questions that companies require to succeed in the US and around the globe part of the portal is dedicated to the standards Alliance which involves many countries around the globe the standards Alliance is a public-private partnership between the American National Standards Institute ANSI and the US aid designed to assist developing countries in effectively implementing their commitment under the WTO's technical barriers to trade agreement this program began in 2013 when US aid and ANSI entered into a partnership it covers a five-year initiative and it's funded between US aid and ANSI there are ten countries participating and it's all about capacity building assistance to developing countries Chinese standardization reform is of particular interest to many of our members and the many changes that have occurred recently the China standardization reform is something we continue to closely monitor and have created specific resource information for our members to access the latest updates and then there's more depending on your own objectives we have other areas of engagement that include a network to deliver solutions some of our standards panels collaborators or workshops which are on a specific area that we're created to solve the industry shoot these can be a one-time event or an ongoing effort to create a roadmap a recent example is the additive manufacturing collaborative which created and worked on a 200-page roadmap in phase 1 that was released in the fall and Phase two is already underway it's an excellent example of an industry led private public partnership that everyone contributed to more recently we've launched a service sector initiative which is uncovered many sub sector areas that need new or enhanced standards given the amazing growth and importance of the service sector which represents over 80 percent of the u.s. GDP and accounts for over 30 percent of US exports we wanted to make sure we were devoting enough time and attention in our time during this research and discovery we've identified food and product safety transportation retail and emerging technology as key areas across many sectors some of the emerging areas are unmanned vehicle systems mobile health devices and dietary supplements as a matter of fact we just created the unmanned aerial system collaborative and weren't working with the FAA and the association of unmanned vehicle system international who are the co leads on this important project as mentioned earlier the ANSI member forums are a very key area to be engaged and actively involved and provides you participation we have the organizational member form for our associations company member form government member forum consumer interests forum and then they usually meet twice a year and then there's a combined joint member form which is part of world standards week in October of each year so we very much encourage you to join in the forum participate we have some great topics and great takeaways to bring back to your organization and we've had several first-time attendees tell us this was an excellent way for them to learn from their industry colleagues so we encourage your active participation so mark your calendar in addition to the member forms we have a host of training sessions they can be live online we have other events coming up so please check our links on the events and please consider joining us to meet fellow members and network with industry colleagues and share best practices if you're interested in purchasing standards or finding out if standards are available there are a couple of ways you can do that you can visit the ANSI webstore we have additional resources available that you may not be familiar with that includes searching for standards by topic category or if you know the reference number you can search that way as a full member you're eligible for discounted rates we also have a fully staffed customer service center by telephone email and live chat capabilities we also wanted to provide you key contact information for ANSI staff as well as the membership teams information so if you have any questions at all we very much encourage you to contact us we look forward to working with you thank you for your time and attention and please let us know how we can help thank you so much