standards organization

A standards organization, sometimes referred to as a standards body, is an organization with authority to endorse official standards for given applications.

Examples of standards organizations include:

• ANSI (American National Standards Institute) is the primary organization for fostering the development of technology standards in the United States. 
• The IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) fosters the development of standards that often become national and international standards.
• The BSI (British Standards Institution) is a service organization that produces standards across a wide variety of industry sectors.
• The IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) is the body that defines standard Internet operating protocols such as TCP/IP. 
• OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards) exists to promote product-independent standards for information formats such as XML and HTML.

Standards that are endorsed by these and similar organizations are known as de jure standards. De facto standards, on the other hand, are technologies, products or methods that are very widely used although they have no official standing.