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Background
The IEC Standardization Management Board （SMB） in 2007 mandated the IEC Directives Maintenance Team （DMT） to review the current maintenance procedures， which were introduced in 1998.
The reasons for the review were：
·The maintenance cycles of publications were considered to be too short；
·Confusion in the application of the procedures ；
·Ambiguity in the fourth edition of the Supplement between the text （normative） and information given in the Annex A （informative） related to the use of Document for Comments （DC） in the procedures.
A questionnaire was circulated to all TC/SC officers. The IEC DMT’s conclusions based on the questionnaire replies were：
·Encourage the use of longer periods over which publications remain unchanged；
·Ensure that there is an effective review process prior to the initiation of any maintenance work；
·Propose indicators to be considered during the review process；
·Emphasize that TC/SC P-members should ultimately decide on the initiation of maintenance work；
·Clarify ambiguity in the definition and use of DC documents for the procedures.
“Review and maintenance procedures” - major changes
·Introduction of a review process；
·Indicators given for use in the review process；
·“Stability period ” and “Stability date” replace “Maintenance cycle” and “Maintenance Result date” respectively to reinforce the basic concept of keeping publications unchanged for a set period of time；
·Extended the minimum stability period from 2 to 3 years；
·FormMCR replaced by FormRR （Review Report） recording TC/SC decisions；
·TC/SCs may advance the review/ stability dates when there is an urgent need without requesting SMB approval；
·Deleted the definition of DC document in the review and maintenance procedures as this is a generic document， which is not specific to these procedures.
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