Stephen Mounsey on standards:

That matters because some constraints are good constraints. They protect the basics. They stop us reinventing things we do not need to reinvent. They make it easier to reuse what already works. They can create pace, not just control. In public services, where accessibility, privacy, reliability and trust really matter, that kind of standardisation is not something we should be scared of. It is often part of how we deliver responsibly at scale.

Standards set you free! Well, not quite.

I was making this more or less exact point earlier today, though. So much energy and time is taken up in local government (in particular) having to convince people over and over again about how things ought to be done. It’s exhausting and one of the reasons why progress across the sector is so slow – and why I am still continuing to have the same conversations I was having 20 years ago…

Having an external standard gives you something to point at, makes things less arguable, gives them a little more solidity. And being able to refer to “the standard” regularly will – over time – lodge it in people’s minds and make it eventually, hopefully, second nature.