Software standardization process in Brazil

The international software standardization effort has contributed to the exceptional development of this sector in the last few years. Brazil has been participating in the software standardization process, through ABNT (Brazilian Association for Technical Standards) as a permanent member of the standardization initiatives of ISO/IEC/JTCI (ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee for Information Technology). The activities of SC21:10, ABNT's software subcommittee, since its creation in 1992, in Curitiba, capital of the State of Parana, and the contributions of these activities to the dissemination of software standards and software quality concepts in Brazil, are reported in this paper. SC21:10 focuses its work in two areas: software engineering standards; and programming languages, operating systems and database standards. The SC21:10 strategies are focused on two main objectives: the production of Brazilian standards (NBR) on software and the contribution to the international standardization effort on software.