I loathe the way the whole philosophy of the ISO has gone.
The IETF approach is akin to open source - publish everything so it can be peer reviewed and tested. The ISO model is closer to closed-source - keep it private except to those who pay you enough so it's tightly controlled and flaws can be kept on the down-low.
IETF standards are generally minimalist, robust, future-proof and easy to understand. ISO ones are usually over-complicated, poorly thought out, require frequent revision and are difficult to comprehend even after you've paid to read them.
One of my two favourite ISO cluster f..ks is OSI - useless as anything other than a diagram and even that doesn't map very well onto the most common real world systems such as TCP/IP & SS#7.
The other is the self-perpetuating monster ISO9000 et al. Originally supposed to bring the benefits of Far Eastern continuous improvement quality systems to Europe & the US it has had the exact opposite effect. Provided you have documentation that you've followed your 'process' you get - for a fat fee to a B-ark consultant - a certificate that you're compliant. It doesn't matter how good or bad your process is or how inappropriate for your business provided it's documented & followed. The bureaucratic cost of changing your process means improvements are positively discouraged.
Toyota for example gave up on ISO9000 back in 2000. Unfortunately smaller companies in supply chains have to continue to pay for the farce because their idiot downstream customers do and they insist on sharing the blame.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
