General Qualifications
  • Professionals able to operate at the corporate level
  • Experience with M&S technologies
  • Experience in policy implementation and general organizational management
  • Ability to work with people in a volunteer team environment
  • Leadership qualities in conducting standards activities development
  • Interest in advancing the vision of SISO and the goals of the SAC
  • Willingness to serve, learn about SISO, and excel as a SAC member
Standards Activity Committee (SAC) Job Description

The Simulation Interoperability Standards Organization (SISO) comprises three principal interacting entities: Executive Committee (EXCOM), Conference Committee (CC) and Standards Activity Committee (SAC). The CC and SAC operate under the direction of the EXCOM.

The SAC is working to instill agility into SISO standardization processes, reduce administrative burdens on groups, and to get SISO Standards, Guidance, and Reference Products into the M&S community faster.  SAC has the following major areas of responsibility:

  • Provides oversight and overall management of product development and support activities
  • Promotes standardization of technologies that enable interoperable simulations for the M&S community
  • Ensures products to be developed address the needs of SISO community members
  • Ensures developed products meet the intent of Product Nominations
  • Provides oversight of groups involved in study, development, and support of SISO Products
  • Oversees development and support of SISO-sponsored IEEE Standards and SISO-supported ISO/IEC Standards

To accomplish the Balloted Products Development and Support Process and to address its responsibilities, the SAC relies on its members as well as SISO community members.  SAC assigns a Technical Activity Director (TAD) from its membership to liaise with SISO groups. TADs help groups move from concept to development to balloting to publishing and finally to supporting the published products.

Personal Commitment

SAC members must affirm a willingness and availability to allocate an appropriate level of time, effort, and costs to serve. The commitment is anticipated to be approximately:

  Time

- An average from 5-10 hours per week, which includes:

  1. A 1-hour or less teleconference twice a month
  2. eVoting on announced SAC business actions when unable to participate in scheduled teleconferences
  3. Discussion forum interactions to prepare to conduct SAC business
  4. Review and comment on multiple draft SISO documents (e.g., Product Nominations, Terms of Reference, Standards Products, Guidance Products, Reference Products, Administrative Products)
  5. TAD participation in group meetings and group communications (e.g., teleconferences, discussion forums, face-to-face meetings at annual Simulation Innovation Workshop).
  Travel Costs

—   Annual Simulation Innovation Workshop (includes SAC face-to-face meeting and TAD participation in group meetings)

— SAC conducts all meeting via teleconference so members may participate from anywhere in the world
Responsibilities of the SAC
The SAC manages the standards development process. The SAC ensures that the SISO Vision and Product Nominations (PNs) are used as the foundation for developing SISO Products. The SAC establishes criteria for the review of PNs and development of SISO Products. The criteria is developed to reflect SISO community priorities and will be refined and reviewed at regular intervals.

The SAC is responsible for PN processing.  For approved PNs, the SAC forms Product Development Groups (PDGs) to develop the nominated product, facilitates virtual/electronic election of officers, tracks progress, provides management where needed, and dissolves groups as required. The SAC approves all technical products before making a recommendation for approval to the SISO Executive Committee (EXCOM).

The SAC elects from its membership a Chair, Vice Chair, and Secretary. The SAC Chair serves as an ex officio member of the EXCOM. The Vice-Chair serves as an ex officio member of the Conference Committee.

In 2003 the IEEE Computer Society (CS) Standards Activities Board (SAB) recognized SISO SAC as the Computer / Simulation Interoperability (C/SI) Standards Committee to oversee development and support of SISO-sponsored IEEE Standards.  The SISO SAC Chair or Vice-Chair serve as SISO's primary contact for all IEEE Standards activities.  Memberships in the IEEE Standards Association and IEEE CS are required to serve as the C/SI SISO SAC Representative.

The SAC  is a Category C Liaison to the International Organization for Standardization / International Electrotechnical Commission (ISO/IEC)
JTC 1 — Joint Technical Committee Information technology
SC 24 — Subcommittee Computer graphics, image processing and environmental data representation
WG 8  — Working Group Environmental representation

The SAC Chair serves as liaison or appoints from the SISO membership a liaison to any international standards organizations with which SISO establishes a relationship.

SAC members serve as Technical Activity Directors (TADs) for one or more groups for which SAC has oversight.