NIST does this on the regular with ISO standards that they're involved with. That said, having a reference implementation with a test suite doesn't work around

NIST does this on the regular with ISO standards that they're involved with. That said, having a reference implementation with a test suite doesn't work around anything. Someone needs to have access to the standard to create the reference implementation. Not really a "loophole" but those on the committee that develops a given standard typically have free access to draft versions, often even the final version ratified by ISO.