AIIM's Standards Program began developing standards in the early 1960s as a subcommittee of the American Library Association. After gaining experience in developing standards, AIIM became an ANSI accredited standards development organization March 15, 1985. The initial focus of the Standards Program was on micrographic technology. This focus continued until approximately 1988 when digital imaging was introduced to the industry. AIIM responded by forming three committees. C13 which focused on image capture, C14 which focused on image output, and C15 which focused on imaging systems and topics not related to input or output.

In 1995, AIIM assumed the secretariat for the Workflow Management Coalition to develop workflow standards for the industry. At approximately the same time, AIIM also was the secretariat for the Document Management Alliance (DMA) and the Open Document Management API (ODMA) Coalition. DMA and ODMA developed specifications and disbanded in 1999 since they had accomplished their objectives. Their collective work has become open source standards which AIIM calls DMWare. At the same time, AIIM relinquished the Workflow Management Coalition secretariat.

Today, the AIIM Standards Program has a wide selection of topics that it covers such as:

• Micrographic Technology
• Evidentiary Issues
• Terminology
• Electronic Imaging
• Document Management
• XML
• Storage Technologies
• Electronic Records Management/Electronic Document Management
• Enterprise Content Management
• and many others.

In 2000, AIIM began work on PDF standards development. Since then, AIIM has become the leading PDF Standards development organization with the following PDF standards projects:

• PDF/Archive
• PDF/Engineering
• PDF/Universal Access
• PDF Healthcare
• PDF Specification (formerly PDF Reference 1.7)

The AIIM Standards Program is always open to new standards topics. If you have an idea for an area that needs standardization, please send an email to the Director of Standards at bfanning@aiim.org.