IAF to Establish an Database of Accredited Management Systems Certifications

Accreditation, Business Benefits, Environmental, ISO 14001, ISO 50001, ISO 9001, ISO/IEC 17021-1, ISO/IEC 27001 Leave a comment

As reported in an earlier post: IAF Study may lead to global database of Management Systems certificates (9 August 2016), the International Accreditation Forum (IAF) has been revising the set of principles of the Database, and working on further development and implementation issues over the course of 2016 and 2017.

An accessible database of accredited certificates, such as ISO 14001, ISO 9001, ISO 45001 and ISO 50001 & ISO/IEC 27001, can potentially be beneficial for:

Businesses:
To access relevant information on accredited certifications held by their suppliers or partners within their supply chain.

Accreditation Bodies
To be able to access relevant data to develop and target their accreditation assessment of certification bodies.

Regulatory Bodies
To be able to access data of relevant data for their monitoring and enforcement work, such as the UK’s Environment Agency to be able to access the status of the ISO 14001 accredited certification of regulated businesses.

Government / NGOs / Academia
To be able to access reliable data on accredited certification for research and policy development.

Now, it can reported that IAF General Assembly members made a historic decision by voting to affirmatively proceed with the development of an IAF Database of Accredited Management Systems Certificates.

This has not been a decision taken lightly as it will be recalled that an earlier proposal by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) to develop a database of management systems certifications was abandoned in 2014.

Over the past two years, IAF Database Management Committee (IAF DMC) has taken two years to explore the feasibility and merits of the proposal database, explore potential suppliers, manage a tender and presented the business case to members in advance of the IAF General Assembly held in Vancouver in October 2017.

Now, this momentous decision gives authority to the IAF DMC to undertake the work to create the database a delivery it through a new Limited Liability Company, wholly-owned by IAF, and given the responsibility for contracting with an IT supplier and oversight of the database. It is anticipated that the database will be available before the end of 2018.

ACTION POINTS

  1. Review the implications on your business, such as the greater availability of ISO 14001 accredited certification data or the availability of your accredited-certifications being accessed by third-parties to understand how the IAF database may affect your business.
  2. Consider the opportunities for using of the IAF database within your business.
  3. Check back for further updates on the development of the IAF database in the late Summer / Autumn 2018 based on its current developmental programme.
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