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What the standard does is (to) say (that) widgets are better than gidgets.

One would avoid saying/writing that because it's redundant. Using "does" indicates an overall effect or achievement. The following variant using "say" is sometimes found, but is also considered poor style because they are too wordy:

• Poor: What the standard does is (to) establish a common size for doors. (to is optional)
• Poor: What the standard does is it establishes a common size for doors.
• Better: The standard establishes a common size for doors.

Attributing the action of "saying <something>" to inanimate objects like a book or a standard is mostly informal. It's discouraged in formal registers. Here's an example:

• Poor (or Informal Speech): What the Standard says is (that) doors should be a certain size. ('that' is optional)
  Better (still informal): The Standard says that doors should be a certain size.
  Best (or "Formal"): According to the Standard, doors should be a certain size.

Here are some more examples:

• Poor: In her article, what Thompson said is (that) all good things come from sincerity. ("what" and "is" are wordy)
  Better: In her article, Thompson said, "all good things come from sincerity." (Direct quote.)
  Better: In her article, Thompson said that all good things come from sincerity. (Only if it's a paraphrase.)

• Poor: In her article, what Thompson did was (to) summarize the nine major belief systems.
  Better: In her article, Thompson summarized the nine major belief systems.

The proper use of the what...do form is rare. Here's an example of it's proper usage:

• Good: In her seminal paper on anthropology, what Thompson did was to virtually reshape all modern thinking on the topic. And that changed the course of history--both forward and backward!

Note how the above (fictional) sentence indicates what the paper "did" in terms of it's overall effect rather than state what the paper was written about. The following actual comment found on Facebook also uses the form for good emphasis:

• "David Belle even says himself, parkour was never created. Parkour is the art of human motion, it has always existed, but what he did was revolutionize the art form and modernize parkour."¹ [Bold emphasis added.]

^{1. (Comment, January 2, 2011 at 3:09pm, by Anthony Rosas, on TakeFlight Company facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/TKFLT/posts/143105472410827.)}

We call it an Infinitival Relative Clause (hereafter, IRC). Or if you don't want to analyze it as a relative clause, you can just call it a post-modifing infinitival clause. This IRC is so flexible that it can occur with either a passive voice or an active voice. This is explained by Biber et al. in Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English.

Postmodifying to-clauses are more flexible than participle clauses for two reasons: they can occur with both subject and non-subject gaps [...]

• The e-mail address of the Facebook account to delete
  _{(This is in the active voice. The object of the verb delete is missing, so this IRC has a non-subject gap.)}

• The e-mail address of the Facebook account to be deleted
  _{(This is in the passive voice. The subject of the infinitival clause is missing, so this IRC has a subject gap.)}