Information technology measurement and testing activities at NIST

Abstract

Our high technology society continues to rely more and more upon sophisticated measurements, technical standards, and associated testing activities. This was true for the industrial society of the 20th century and remains true for the information society of the 21st century. Over the last half of the 20th century, information technology (IT) has been a powerful agent of change in almost every sector of the economy. The complexity and rapidly changing nature of IT have presented unique technical challenges to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and to the scientific measurement community in developing a sound measurement and testing infrastructure for IT. This measurement and testing infrastructure for the important non-physical and non-chemical properties associated with complex IT systems is still in an early stage of development. This paper explains key terms and concepts of IT metrology, briefly reviews the history of the National Bureau of Standards/National Institute of Standards and Technology (NBS/NIST) in the field of IT, and reviews NIST’s current capabilities and work in measurement and testing for IT. It concludes with a look at what is likely to occur in the field of IT over the next ten years and what metrology roles NIST is likely to play.

A Rational Foundation for Software Metrology

“…The current effort is not the first time that NIST has looked at software metrology [5,6,7] or software metrics [8,9,10,11,12,13]. In addition, an ongoing project, [Mathematical] Foundations of Measurement Science for Information Systems, has applied a measurement perspective primarily for analysis and modelling of networks [14].…”

A case study on testing CMM uncertainty simulation software (VCMM)

“…For example, NIST has an algorithm testing service used to check least squares fitting algorithms for numerical correctness (Hopp and Levenson, 1995;Shakarji, 1998;Hogan et al, 2001). This software was used to produce a virtual circle perturbed by a systematic form error (e.g.…”