Software Guideline May Become National Standard On November 21, the Korea IT Industry Promotion Agency (KIPA) announced that the Guideline on Software Ordering and Management has been presented to the National Standard Commission and is now being reviewed. It may soon be adopted as a national standard. The guideline on software ordering and management has been made by the Software Engineering Center, which is a sub organization of the KIPA, on the basis of the International Organization for Standards International Electrotechnical Commission (ISO/IEC) 12207. This is a standard process for software ordering and management including software-related planning, Requests for Proposal (RFPs), acceptance of proposal, evaluation, analysis, testing, repair and maintenance. By adopting the standard process, the organization which places an order will be able to manage its project more systematically, and the company that accepts the order may not bear an additional burden beyond the contents suggested in the RFP. This will enable more advanced management techniques to be possible. Song Gi-ho, chief of the Software Technology Application Team of KIPA, said: 'Until now, as domestic public organizations have applied different methodologies to their projects, it has been impossible to make a systematic arrangement of accumulated know-how and experience, thus making it impossible to use again. But now if we have this national standard on software ordering and management, it will become a turning point to raise it to the level of developed countries. Meanwhile, the KIPA has already tested this guideline for 11 organizations as a model system.'