Standards - Questions and Answers

What are standards?

What is the difference between a best practice and a standard?

A standard is a documented agreement containing technical specifications or other precise criteria to be used consistently as rules, guidelines, or definitions of characteristics, to ensure that materials, products, processes and services are fit for their purpose. Today, the growth of the Internet is greatly due to its use of standard technology such as the TCP/IP network protocol and the Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) protocol. Everything from electrical outlets, fuel, oil, metals, plastics, pharmaceuticals, telecommunication equipment, and even the spacing of threads on a small tiny bolt must conform to a standard.

In the mid 1990s, AAMVA’s members asked the association to put together some guidelines for several technologies that included the use of magnetic stripe, bar codes, and digital imaging in motor vehicle applications (e.g., driver licenses, titles, registrations, etc.). In response, AAMVA formed working groups and the result of these collaborations are known as "Best Practices". One should think of these as "standards-lite", it is not as strict as a standard but a strenuously recommended way of doing something. Each Best Practice is aimed at assisting the Jurisdictions with doing business and have undoubtedly been a tremendous help.

3.A

What are the benefits of using a standards or being standardized?

In general, the benefits to date include:

• Standardization allows for users to be compatible and interoperable at the interface with related equipment components of a system.
• Standardization ensures compatibility to communicate and exchange electronic information between data bases.
• Standardization allows vendors to achieve the cost benefits of economies of scale which can (should) translate to lower prices for jurisdictions.
• ANSI standards have national recognition and acceptance due to their development by a group of national technical experts in cooperation with motor vehicle drivers license jurisdictions operating under the directives of due process and consensus building.

4.A

What information are individual states collecting for their driver’s licenses and what technology are they using to encode the information?

Like many organizations, AAMVA and its members are often at the mercy of surveys to provide what everyone hopes is the latest and greatest - it rarely turns out to be. Unfortunately, due to limited resources obtaining, and more importantly maintaining, this information is nearly impossible to obtain. This is a very good illustration for why there is such a need for a standard for the driver’s license. On the subject of technology, there is a very simple table available that attempts to illustrate where the various States are at a given time, see DL/ID Survey. The accuracy of this type of depiction can never be totally reliable due to changing political winds and technology needs of the jurisdictions.

5.A

What is an IIN?

An IIN is a Issuer Identification Number. For information see the IIN Application and Forms.