Information standards underpin national initiatives from the Department of Health, Care Quality Commission and other national organisations. They provide a shortcut to implementing the IT components of these initiatives.

You should:

• Sign up for the ISB distribution list to ensure you are informed of new standards.
• Register for TRUD so you can download the files that support many information standards.
• Read about how to use standards.
• Check out data.gov.uk as a rich source of structured data
• Ensure that existing standards listed in the library are implemented in your systems. Standards baselines can help you identify which standards to use.
• Prepare to implement standards in development.
• When selling IT systems state your compliance with standards and update your system where these standards change. The Standards Enforcement in Procurement (STEP) tool can help with this.