Brian Reed is on a mission of sorts. He was at Collaborate, a large conference in DC for entrepreneurs and government agencies over the weekend, urging government and industry to start working together on standards for how Internet of Things products are developed. The chief mobility officer of Good Technology, a secure mobility firm in Sunnyvale, CA, says if government and industry don’t start developing IoT standards, it could be a repeat of the mobile tech wave when the rest of the world developed standards and the US stayed on the sidelines. Phones and devices in the US ended up not being able to move easily across networks, multiple technologies deliver mobile services, and many parts of the US still don’t have 100% coverage.

Brian, who’s based in DC, says luckily a lot of the first-generation IoT products are using some basic standards like Bluetooth and WiFi, but there haven’t been any standards set on how data can be shared. Take, for example, the dream of being able to turn on your car with your watch. Brian says if standards aren’t set, a certain smartwatch will only work on a certain car. Other countries are grappling with the same problem, so the US has a chance to lead the development of standards. NIST, he adds, might make the most sense in taking on the challenge considering it has developed standards for numerous other technologies.