A Tribute to Gordon Gillerman: Retiring from Federal Service

By Karen K. Reczek, NIST Standards Coordination Office, and SES Immediate Past President

I know many SES members have had the pleasure of interacting with Gordon Gillerman, former Director of the Standards Coordination Office at the National Institute of Technology. Gordon has spent most of the latter portion of his career in standardization coordinating standards and conformity assessment across government with the private sector. After 20 years of federal service, Gordon is retiring to pursue other endeavors.

In terms of SES, Gordon has supported NIST’s organizational membership, moderating and speaking at SES conferences, and was an instructor the conformity assessment portion of the SES Fundamentals course for many years. His conformity assessment “popcorn” interactive exercise has become a cornerstone of SES training programs. Gordon is an SES Fellow and was the recipient of SES’s most prestigious award this year, the Leo B. Moore Award.

Gordon has mentored many professionals in the standardization fields. He shares his knowledge freely and provides guest lectures at universities and programs, whenever asked. He has worked with countless government and industry professionals in a many subject areas; the vastness of Gordon’s knowledge should not overshadow his depth of subject matter expertise. He is a problem solver, coordinator and facilitator extraordinaire. Personally, as the person who brought me to NIST, I have the utmost respect (and awe) for Gordon. He has been a great leader, manager and a mentor. He will be sorely missed!

Some of Gordon’s accomplishments at NIST include:

• leading the drafting of the U.S. Government National Standards Strategy for Critical and Emerging Technology.
• developing a first ever government wide standardization training program that has thousands of attendances and created a strong U.S. Government (USG) standards community.
• leading the development of Federal policies on standardization including Office of Management and Budget, Circular A119, Guidance for Agencies – Federal Participation and Use of Voluntary Consensus Standards and Conformity Assessment Activities.
• authoring the standards and conformity assessment provisions of the USMCA Trade Agreement (formally NAFTA).
  

Many federal agency programs were designed under Gordon’s leadership:

• FDA - Accreditation Scheme for Conformity Assessment
• FedRAMP - certification of cloud computing service providers
• Department of Health and Human Services - Health IT certification
• WaterSense certification
• CPSC - Accredited laboratories for testing of children’s products
• DoJ - Compliance Testing Program for body armor
• DHS - P25 Compliance Assessment Program for First Responder Radio

Before joining NIST, Gordon spent his early career at Underwriter’s Laboratories. Some of his accomplishments at UL include:

• Leading harmonization of safety standards for ITE and electro-medical equipment
• Training US industry on harmonized safety standards
• Reducing barriers to trade through the implementation of test data exchange programs between UL and VDE (Germany) and leading UL’s entrance into the IECEE CB Scheme for ITE and electromedical equipment

Gordon has held many important roles over the last several years including:

• Department of Commerce, Standards Executive and Chair, Interagency Committee on Standards Policy (ICSP)
• Co-Chair US/EU Technology Trade Council (TTC), Technical Standards Working Group
• Co-Chair QUAD Critical and Emerging Technology Working Group, Standards Sub-group
• ANSI Board of Directors – Member, Executive Committee and Director-at-large, Board of Directors
• Chair Advisory Task Group to Enhance the Effectiveness of the USNC to the IEC

Some his previous roles include:

• Chair, ANSI National Policy Advisory Committee
• Co-rapporteur of the International Telecommunications Union – Study Group on Conformance and Interoperability
• Public Sector Co-Chair of the American National Standards Institute’s (ANSI) Homeland Defense and Security Standards Collaborative
• U.S. Expert ISO/IEC 17065, Requirements for Bodies Certifying Products, Processes or Services
• ANSI Advisory Committee on Accreditation for Personnel Certification
• IECEE Certification Body Scheme peer assessor
• Standards developer in ASTM International, IEC, NFPA, IEEE and UL
• Affiliate Member, Quality Infrastructure Committee, Organization of Scientific Area Committees (Forensics)

The loss to NIST will be significant.  I am thankful that I had the opportunity to learn and work alongside Gordon for 14 years. On behalf of the community, we thank Gordon for the impact he has made in the field of standardization and for his numerous accomplishments, and commitment to SES: The Society for Standardization Professionals. Here’s to hoping we will still see him around at standardization events.