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ISO, ANSI, IAF – Standards Soup. Making Sense out of a Bunch of Acronyms

There has been a lot of buzz about ISO/IEC 17024: 2012 – Conformity Assessment – General requirements for bodies operating certification of persons.  With so many acronyms associated with this standard (ISO, IEC, ANSI, IAF, etc.) it is easy to get confused about who owns this standard and who accredits against it.   We will explore specifics of the standard itself in another post.  The purpose of this post is to help explain the various bodies associated with ISO 17024.

Let’s start with “ISO.”  ISO stands for the International Organization for Standardization.  You may wonder why the acronym letters don’t match the title. That’s because “International Organization for Standardization” would have different acronyms in different languages – for example, it would be listed as IOS in English and OIN in French for Organisation internationale de normalisation; therefore ISO’s founders decided to give it the short form ISO. ISO is derived from the Greek word isos, meaning equal. Whatever the country, whatever the language, the body is always referred to as ISO.

ISO is a member of a world cooperative of three big standards organizations: ISO, the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).  ISO and IEC have an agreement to put both names on all standards which is why you see ISO/IEC 17024 instead of just ISO 17024.

ISO is an independent, non-governmental membership organization and the world’s largest developer of voluntary International Standards.  ISO is comprised of 162 member countries who are the national standards bodies around the world.  The United States representative to ISO is the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) (see below). ISO has published more than 19,500 International Standards covering almost every industry, from technology and food safety to agriculture and healthcare.  You might be familiar with ISO’s biggest standards: the ISO 9000 series of standards associated with Quality Management.

It is important to remember that ISO doesn’t accredit anyone or certify anyone.  ISO is simply a clearinghouse for standards and standards development.  The standards themselves are developed by technical committees and working groups comprised of experts in a particular field of interest. ISO maintains a “neutrality principle” which means that the content of the standard may not state a preference for a form or one type of assessment over another. In other words, the standard may not require certification or accreditation.  The idea is that anybody should be able to use a standard to improve the way they are doing business, even if they determine they are applying the standard correctly themselves.

ISO has a special division called ISO CASCO.  CASCO stands for “Conformity Assessment Committee.”  Conformity assessment is the process used to show that a product, service or system meets specified requirements.   CASCO standards generally start with the number “17” such as ISO/IEC 17024.  CASCO Standards are developed by working groups.  National member bodies nominate individuals to serve on working groups. The graphic below depicts how an accreditation body, like the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), operating according to ISO/IEC 17011, accredits a certification body, such as a certification body for persons against ISO/IEC 17024, who then certifies a person.

ANSI is a membership organization formed in 1918 by voluntary standards bodies.  ANSI is the official United States representative to ISO and participates in the International Accreditation Forum (IAF).  ANSI’s mission is to enhance the global competitiveness of U.S. business and the American quality of life by promoting and facilitating voluntary consensus standards and conformity assessment systems and ensuring their integrity.  ANSI wears two hats: one hat is serving as the consolidator of standards that become American National Standards (ANS) and the other is serving as an accrediting body (AB).  ANSI maintains a division between these two activities.  As an AB, ANSI is the organization that accredits certification bodies for persons to ISO/IEC 17024.

IAF is a global association of Accreditation Bodies (ANSI, etc.), certification body associations, industry associations, and other stakeholder organizations and scheme owners involved in conformity assessment activities in a variety of fields including management systems, products, services and personnel.  IAF members meet regularly to agree on how to accredit against conformity assessment (CASCO) standards (harmonization of assessment practices).  They also create MLAs (multi-lateral agreements) and MRAs (mutual recognition agreements) to acknowledge the work of its peers and reduce duplication of effort in accreditation.  IAF committees create guidance documents where required.  Finally, IAF manages a peer review process for ABs. For Certification Bodies, what is most exciting is the potential for a MLA for personnel certification bodies. This MLA has many possibilities including permitting a CB accredited by ANSI against ISO/IEC 17024 to be recognized by an AB in another country.

Professional Testing is involved in all of these organizations.  At ISO, our staff chaired Working Group 30, which revised ISO/IEC 17024 and also developed a terminology document for personnel certification.  Our staff is currently co-chairing Working Group 42, which is revising ISO/IEC 17011, and we serve on various ISO CASCO policy committees.  Highly involved in ANSI, Professional Testing staff serves on ANSI’s Board of Directors and Workcred’s Board of Directors; participates as an Assessor for ANSI for ISO/IEC 17024; serves on the Conformity Assessment Policy Committee (CAPC), National Policy Committee (NPC), and the International Conformity Assessment Committee (ICAC); and previously served on the Personnel Certification Accreditation Committee (PCAC).  Finally, at IAF, Professional Testing staff chairs the Certification of Persons working group and chairs the Assessor Competency Task Force.

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