national bureau of standards (NBS)

The National Bureau of Standards (NBS) is an agency within the U.S. Commerce Department that is supported by the government. In the area of communications, NBS is working on recommendations to enable government agencies to purchase distributed computing components that will work together even if they are supplied by different vendors. There is close collaboration with the National Standards Institute ( ANSI) and IEEE. Contracts for the necessary standardization work are awarded either to private organizations or to the Institute for Computer Science and Technology (ICST).