Guide to Consultation Drafts

Introduction

Consultation Drafts are the mechanism for the DSB formal consultation process. Feedback is welcome and essential to the process. 

Consultation Drafts replaced Decision Proposals on 7 April, 2025. Consultation on a Consultation Draft follows the same process as for Decision Proposals. See Rationale for Consultation Drafts.

Publishing requested changes in a Consultation Draft

The community may submit change requests via Github, suggesting changes in the standards. The DSB may also originate changes, based on community feedback and other considerations. 

The DSB determines the priority of changes and what changes can be undertaken during each maintenance iteration cycle.

The DSB publishes a Consultation Draft (CD), describing the proposed changes. A Consultation Draft is published as an issue in the CDS standards repository.

A Consultation Draft contains the draft standards and obligation dates related to the proposed standards. It describes the required changes to the existing standards.

An accompanying Explanatory Document (ED) contains related analysis, explanations, rationale, feedback summaries, and further considerations. 

Feedback on a Consultation Draft

Upon publishing, the Consultation Draft is open for feedback. To provide feedback, participants can post comments on a CD issue in the standards repository. There may be face to face consultations. The result of those meetings are published as comments or attachments to the CD issue.

The Consultation Draft specifies a date on which feedback closes. After this date, the formal consultation on the DP is closed. While feedback posted after the closing date is welcome, actions are taken on the DP on the basis of feedback received during the formal consultation period. The DSB may extend the consultation period.

To respond to a Consultation Draft, post a comment on the corresponding issue. Feedback provided by the community is considered only if it is submitted in a public and transparent manner. Feedback should not be sent as an email or in some other private form.

CDs that have not achieved community consensus may be adjusted and submitted for a second round of feedback.

Approval of a Decision arising from a Consultation Draft

After achieving consensus, the DSB submits change recommendations as a Decision for final approval by the Data Standards Body Chair. The Chair may approve, reject or defer a Decision. The DSB may resubmit rejected or deferred consultation drafts, for additional consultation in the next change cycle.

When a Decision is approved, the DSB modifies the published standards to incorporate approved changes. The draft standards are made binding standards. The DSB documents changes to the standards in the standards change log.

Decisions are binding

When changes are approved by the Chair, and incorporated into the published standards, they are binding on participants.

Discovering and referring to a Consultation Draft

The DSB publishes information on new and open Consultation Drafts in its newsletter and in other postings. A summary of recent consultations is available in CDS, Guide Consultations. 

To find current Consultation Drafts, open the standards repository issues tab and search for "Consultation Drafts".

To refer to a Consultation Draft, use the Consultation Draft ID number in the title. This is the same as the issue number.

Subsections

References

See also:

• Rationale for Consultation Drafts
• Creating a Change Request
• Guide to Noting Papers
• DSB Video Channel, CDS Consultation Process - note that this video refers to Decision Proposals. The consultation process is the same.