Standards Council Canada stops certification

Standards Council Canada announced in January that it will stop certifying management systems training providers. Interestingly the existing certificates will no longer be recognized.

Where does this leave the companies that have existing certifications and will they be reimbursed their certification fees? Will these companies will flip to RABQSA certification? What happens in the meantime?

Presumably this happened due to the low number of SCC certified training providers. This now means that there is no Canadian accreditation program for management system training providers. With the National Quality Institute (NQI) and RABQSA parting ways in 2006 the only option Canadian companies have left is to so south of the border or into Europe.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 2007-01-17 (full article copied - link here)

The Standards Council of Canada (SCC) announced the discontinuation of its accreditation program for management systems auditor training course providers. Effective immediately, certificates issued under the program will no longer be recognized.

For additional information contact Stephen Cross, Manager, Certification Body Accreditation at scross@scc.ca.

The Standards Council of Canada is a Crown corporation with the mandate to promote efficient and effective standardization in Canada. It facilitates the development and use of national and international standards and offers accreditation services with the goal of enhancing Canada’s economic competitiveness and social well-being. For more information, visit http://www.scc-ccn.ca/ or email info@scc.ca.

Easy reference for ISO 17024

Hopefully this will be the first of a few helpful posts around the subject of ISO17024 (General Requirements for Bodies operating Certification of Persons).

What it ISO17024?

Released in 2003, ISO 17024 is designed to harmonize the personnel certification process worldwide. There is still much debate as to the effectiveness of the standard to date, especially with the variability in how it is applied by Accreditation Bodies globally.

The issues that ISO 17024 tackles can be simply summarized:
- Defining what it is you are examine (the competencies)
- Knowledge, skills and personal attributes
- Examination must be independent
- Examination must be a valid test of competence

Where competency is typically described as:
”The demonstrated ability to apply knowledge, skills and attributes”

Guidance

Each Accreditation body provides various levels of guidance around compliance and the implementation of ISO 17024. I have attempted to bring together the more in-depth references below:

American National Standards Institute (ANSI)
Overview of Personnel Certification
Documents related to accreditation under ISO 17024
ISO 17024 FAQ
Directory of Accredited Bodies

Standards Council Canada (SCC)
Overview of Personnel Certification
Criteria and Procedures
Directory of Accredited Clients

Joint Accreditation System of Australia and New Zealand (JAZ-ANZ)
Personnel Certification Homepage

United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS)
Certification Body Schedules

International Accreditation Forum (IAF)
ISO 17024 Guidance

International Organization for Standardization (ISO)
Link to ISO 17024

Welcome to Personnel Certification and Training

So as the very first post on this blog I simply want to compile an up-to-date list of the organizations, papers and feeds that have been making a big impact in the world of personnel certification. This first post is starting off small but the information will grow over time.

As we all know significant debate is happening around the focus on skills and competency based certification. The purpose of this blog is simply to have a central point where information is gathered for convenience. I'll leave the cut and thrust debate (well maybe we can have some) to the discussion boards such as the excellent one IRCA provides (http://forum.irca.org/).

So here we go:

On-line personnel certification e-zines:
IRCA Inform
RABQSA e-momentum


Personnel Certification Organizations:
IRCA
RABQSA

Accreditation Organizations:
International Accreditation Forum
ANSI (Personnel Certification)
UKAS
Standards Council Canada (SCC)
JAZ-ANZ (www.jaz-anz.com.au, website seems to be down at the moment)

Generic sites:
Conformity Assessment
Canadian Council of Personnel Certification

The above is a tiny snapshot of the organizations and references out there. My mission over the next while will be to create an up-to-date reference of not just these organizations, but also papers and feeds as appropriate.

If anybody would like any specific kind of information reported on a (fairly) frequent basis then just post a comment on this blog or pop me off a quick mail.

Stephen Davies