I too used to believe this. Now I think its an irrelevancy. the IETF process
works just fine. Its getting too big, and doing anything to make it 'bigger'
or 'more official' is probably wrong.
IETF standards are sufficiently rigorous, they prove viability by (free)
example, and respond to needs faster than the 4-year ITU cycle.
If you want to make ITU standards have more relevancy, work on two things:
1) get Standards Australia to ditch its X.400 mailsystem for a
full blown internet connection
2) get the (worldwide) standards bodies to stop holding the copyright
for cost recovery, and get national funding to make all standards
freely available.
-George