SAC/TC124 (National Technical Committee for Standardization of Industrial Process Measurement, Control, and Automation) is soliciting feedback on the national standard GB/T Machine Readable Standards Capability Classification Model (Draft for Comments). This standard aims to guide relevant stakeholders on how to identify, assess, and enhance the machine-readable levels of standards.

Specifically, the standard categorizes machine-readable capabilities into five levels, ranging from low to high, each featuring its own set of requirements:

  • Level One (Machine Displayable): Machines can display and search relevant content.
  • Level Two (Machine Processable): Includes structured content of standard texts, allowing machines to identify the document structures and perform basic processing.
  • Level Three (Machine Executable): Machines can selectively access semantically enriched standard content based on application scenarios and perform more complex operations on standard content using application programming interfaces.
  • Level Four (Machine Analyzable): Machines can execute or analyze standard content in a more complex manner. This includes an information model (standard management shell) representing the relationships between standard content and elements, enabling uninterrupted and unambiguous data flow, and with the capability to provide preliminary responses and feedback results, in an autonomous manner.
  • Level Five (Machine Decidable): Machines can autonomously modify standard content and make autonomous decisions on adopting relevant standard content. Standards can autonomously update, optimize, and adapt to the latest technologies and regulatory frameworks. Machines are capable of self-learning and validation, and providing required standard content in a predictive manner (such as responding to demands in the procurement and sales processes of the industry chain).

Furthermore, for each level, the standard specifies several capability features from four aspects: (i) content creation, (ii) content management, (iii) content delivery, and (iv)content application. Detailed requirements are also outlined.

This standard represents China’s first disclosed model for the classification of machine-readable standards. It differs, to a certain degree, from ISO/IEC’s SMART Standards Utility Model. Additionally, China has established the National Standards Digitization Standardization Working Group (SAC/SWG 29) at the national level, which is also developing general guidelines for standard digitization and a universal architecture standard for standard machine languages. The coordination between these standards remains to be observed in the future.