InterAccreditation’s status
InterAccreditation is an equitable pioneering standard developing organization which corroborates all its experience and knowledge into the new aspiring domain of developing standards. Carrying on with our accurate procedures and precise requirements through out the years we have managed to maintain an effective scrupulous standard development process and we commit to honoring the same level of labor in all future activities.
The human and technological resources that InterAccreditation disposes of assure an eventless and time-worthy enterprise that has the full capacity to respect all established dead-lines regarding the developing and the maintenance process of a standard. More over, the competency is more then adequate to fulfill international standards conformity and to avoid or solve any unexpected dissension that might appear.
Notification of a standard assessment
Once InterAccreditation has identified the need for a standard, its standardization committee will decide upon its necessity or if a similar standard already exists and just needs adjustments. Concurrently, InterAccreditation will prove the benefits that the code can bring to a certain domain, the improvements that can later follow in the community once the code has been implemented and that the standard’s interest doesn’t come in conflict with the national one.
InterAccreditation commits to announcing the time period that the development of a certain standard needs in order to identify and corroborate all the specific necessity of a community, group or domain. Also, InterAccreditation will verify prior to subjecting the standard to the process of standardization that no other code concerning this field and containing those specific requirements exists.
In order to give the fair possibility to all parts and audiences to participate to the standard’s assessment session, InterAccreditation will notify in advance through relevant media channels the reevaluation or the developing of a certain standard. Also, InterAccreditation will present the need for the actual reevaluation and will identify all the persons or the organizations directly implicated or affected by the standard so that equal chances to participation are offered to all individuals.
Main phases of a standard development process
InterAccreditation standardization procedure implies that all standard’s assessments follow the same four phases: the proposal, the consenting stage, the affirmation and the final phase, called publication by witch the standard is made public through suitable media. In order to have fair, accurate and updated standards InterAccreditation will follow these procedures once at every 12 months so that all the comments and suggestions collected to be as fast as possible put in practice.
Moreover, if one standard has received several comments and allegations in a 12 months period of time from the moment it has been published, InterAccreditation commits to assemble a committee in order to evaluate the feedback received and gives the opportunity to the ones complaining to take a stand for their point of view. At all times anyone who wants to make an allegation or has a comment concerning a standard can send InterAccreditation his beliefs through the InterAccreditation Comment Form.
Maintaining Balance
Maintaining balance is one of InterAccreditation’s main requirements of the standardization process and it has to be honored through all the stages of the standardization process. InterAccreditation allows any person or organization that is directly implicated in the development of a standard or has an interest in the end result to participate and express its beliefs and then offers them the possibility to articulate their judgment and also to appeal any decision that is not in conformity with their point of view.
Additionally, InterAccreditation offers all participants equal status and accessibility to the consenting process without requesting any fee, membership or specific aptitudes. In order to obtain a fair and balanced process InterAccreditation’s standardization committee analyses regularly the composition of each board so that obtaining consensus should not be bounded by any member or dominant group. Therefore, there will be no single interested part that weights more than 50% of the members to represent majority in the standardization committee in order to avoid any conflict of interests. InterAccreditation will make sure that representatives from all interested parts will be present to all standardization phases, in consideration to the interests of the producer, the wide audience and the actual user of the product.
Acquiring an equitable result is the most important aspect that InterAccreditation hopes for and takes further action in maintaining an unbiased balanced standardization process even if it means to find and convene second parts to equalize the interest balance. Even so, InterAccreditation will take further action in analyzing why there is so little interest shown by a part or an organization so that their representation can not obtain a meaningful share while trying to reach consensus and will try by all means to solve whatever is causing the lack of interest.
Reaching consensus
All votes cast will be awarded in writing at a meeting or through fax, letter and electronic means. Also, InterAccreditation standardization committee will offer the voter the possibility for a written confirmation if he is not present at the meeting after or before the session. InterAccreditation takes into consideration all the negative votes if they are accompanied by an appropriate comment concerning the specific standard.
InterAccreditation rules out the negative ones without any feedback or the ones accompanied by an improper comment, of course making sure that all voters are familiar with this procedure before casting their vote. InterAccreditation procedure for reaching consensus also specifies that the voters have four valid positions available concerning the standard’s assessment: affirmative, affirmative with comment, negative with comment and the option to abstain from voting. InterAccreditation’s methodology for reaching consensus implies that in order for a decision to be considered final, 51% of the members casting the vote have to be in favor, while a considerable majority of the members have to vote, of course counting the ones that have abstained.
Changing a vote already cast is not usually possible according to InterAccreditation’s procedure, but if the change comes directly from the voter in a written format and doesn’t exceed the time limit established for voting a certain standard, then the new vote will be taken into consideration.
Consequently, InterAccreditation will preserve all written evidence of reaching consensus and of following the standardization procedures for any future reference. Also, any notice regarding the revision, withdrawal or creation of an InterAccreditation standard is presented to all interested parts in an accurate form in order to explain the need and the purpose of the standard’s assessment process.
InterAccreditation procedure for appeal
InterAccreditation has a strict but accessible procedure concerning the appeal process or the request for modifying an InterAccreditation procedure. Once the appeal is registered, InterAccreditation committee will evaluate the validity and the purpose of the appeal and will subject the request to an unbiased impartial assessment process. In maximum 14 days a response will be sent to each one of the senders notifying them about the status of their complaint. InterAccreditation’s appealing procedure will not overwhelm or burden with bureaucratic tasks any InterAccreditation collaborators; in contrast InterAccreditation will continually seek new solutions and ideas for facilitating the appeal process.
Preserving the documentation
InterAccreditation preserves all documentation regarding the activity by witch consensus was met for all future references or audit requirements. InterAccreditation’s records will be preserved accordingly to each type of maintenance that the standard requires. InterAccreditation establishes a period of 2 years in the case when a standard is scheduled for a periodical revision and a period of 4 years if the standard requires an on going maintenance. The documentation will contain all written evidence necessary during the development of a standard or any other procedures that were put in practice, such as: the records of an appeal, a request for reevaluating a standard, the withdrawal of a standard etc.
The withdrawal of an InterAccreditation Standard
The withdrawal conditions of an InterAccreditation standard consist in various situations that can conclude to the decision that a standard is no longer valid and reliable. If the standardization committee has already reached consensus and has decided that a certain code lacks reliability, its interest doesn’t serve anymore the general interest or InterAccreditation has failed to solve any conflict of interest that the standard might have created, than the withdrawal of the code is compulsory. Also, immediately as the withdrawal decision has been made, a public notice will be issued in order to avoid all future inconvenience. If a period of 6 years pasted and a standard hasn’t suffered in this period any revision or reaffirmation then InterAccreditation will directly subject it to the standardization committee in order to evaluate whether or not it should be withdrawn.
Recognizing an InterAccreditation standard
An InterAccreditation standard can be easily recognized by the logo and the identifiers of InterAccreditation. Also, wherever you’ll find an InterAccreditation code on the first page of the document you’ll easily identify the domain of the standard, its version and its individual identification number.
Publication of an InterAccreditation standard
The transparency level of a standard developer body is crucial and simultaneously can be the most important feedback machine the standard developer body will ever have. InterAccreditation fully understands the necessity of publishing each time the status of the developing process of a standard and consequently respects the publication procedure of each one of its codes. Further more, InterAccreditation standards are available to all interested parts and contain all the details of their development as the initial plan, the comments and feedback received while they were still developing, the drafts used and of course the finalized published version. InterAccreditation takes not more then 14 days in order to publish the development process of a standard after the moment it reached a conclusive stage. Since the moment of the publication, InterAccreditation offers not more than 30 days for receiving comments on that particular standard. All the suggestion received after the comment session had closed will be kept for later reference. The senders will be notified of the status of their comments.
InterAccreditation pleads for international harmony
From the incipient stage of identifying the need for a standard InterAccreditation investigates whether or not the new code respects the international and national interest without causing any future inconvenience. Consequently any InterAccreditation standard that has accomplished the development process will met all the international requirements and won’t come across with any other affiliated standard concerning the same domain.
If InterAccreditation receives a comment concerning the lack of compliance of an InterAccreditation standard with another international code, then InterAccreditation will assemble in maximum 14 days a committee that will decide upon the legitimacy of the standard. Regarding the outcome of the decisional committee, InterAccreditation will divulge the result and all interested parts will be informed as soon as possible.
InterAccreditation maintenance
In order to respond to all requirements and to promote valid accurate standards, InterAccreditation’s maintenance embodies several types of revision of the content of a standard.
The first one consists of a periodical maintenance which is scheduled once at 4 years and states the revision of the whole standard. The main responsibility of this type of revision comes from the necessity to respect a certain schedule and assess whether or not the standard needs revision, reaffirming or withdrawal. In the same time InterAccreditation establishes another future date when the next periodic maintenance will take place.
Another imperative maintenance that InterAccreditation performs is the on going revision which results from unexpected changes or recommendations to present standards. The published version of a standard that will be subjected to this type of revision has to contain the information that is suggested to be corrected. Further on, the revision of a standard will pass through the maintenance committee and has to reach consensus in order to be put in practice in the future.
As already mentioned the importance of the comments and feedback received is the decisive criteria that InterAccreditation analyzes in the process of maintenance. All corrector aspects and suggestions received will be subjected to the committee and only when consensus is reached corrections will be applied.
In the specific case where a standard concerns technology, safety issues or matters that can be subjected to different changes in a relatively short time period, than normative maintenance is compulsory. Even so if during two normative maintenance a standard receives any kind of proposal, comment or corrective improvement than the standard should be immediately submitted to the committee in order to evaluate whether or not the advice are worthy of on going analyzes.