[6] ISO was founded on 23 February 1947, and (as of July 2024[update]) it has published over 25,000 international standards covering almost all aspects of technology and manufacturing.

[7] The organization develops and publishes international standards in technical and nontechnical fields, including everything from manufactured products and technology to food safety, transport, IT, agriculture, and healthcare.

[2] The International Organization for Standardization in French is Organisation internationale de normalisation and in Russian, Международная организация по стандартизации (Mezhdunarodnaya organizatsiya po standartizatsii).

Although one might think ISO is an abbreviation for "International Standardization Organization" or a similar title in another language, the letters do not officially represent an acronym or initialism.

[13] The organization that is known today as ISO began in 1926 as the International Federation of the National Standardizing Associations (ISA), which primarily focused on mechanical engineering.

[14] In October 1946, ISA and UNSCC delegates from 25 countries met in London and agreed to join forces to create the International Organization for Standardization.

[18] A council with a rotating membership of 20 member bodies provides guidance and governance, including setting the annual budget of the central secretariat.

[18][20][21][22] ISO has a joint technical committee (JTC) with the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) to develop standards relating to information technology (IT).

[31] Some standards by ISO and its official U.S. representative (and, via the U.S. National Committee, the International Electrotechnical Commission) are made freely available.

After a consensus to proceed is established, the subcommittee will produce a draft international standard (DIS), and the text is submitted to national bodies for voting and comment within a period of five months.

It is approved as an International Standard (IS) if a two-thirds majority of the P-members of the TC/SC is in favour and not more than one-quarter of the total number of votes cast are negative.

[48] As was suggested at the time by Martin Bryan, the outgoing convenor (chairman) of working group 1 (WG1) of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34, the rules of ISO were eventually tightened so that participating members that fail to respond to votes are demoted to observer status.

He also said that Microsoft had intensely lobbied many countries that traditionally had not participated in ISO and stacked technical committees with Microsoft employees, solution providers, and resellers sympathetic to Office Open XML:[49] When you have a process built on trust and when that trust is abused, ISO should halt the process... ISO is an engineering old boys club and these things are boring so you have to have a lot of passion ... then suddenly you have an investment of a lot of money and lobbying and you get artificial results.