IPC: stamp of approval?
At an extraordinary general meeting (EGM) held in Athens on 25 August, members of the International Personnel Certification Association (IPC) voted to include approval within their association’s portfolio of activities. IRCA director and IPC Board member Simon Feary took part in the debate and vote and comments here on the initiative and what it aims to achieve
Although IPC’s move to include approval within its remit may come as a surprise to those out of the personnel certification loop, to many it is an obvious consequence of the frustration members have experienced at the inability of the International Accreditation Forum (IAF) to progress extension of their multi-lateral agreement (MLA) to include ISO 17024. The frustration felt by IRCA and many others within the auditor certification world has been widely publicized. And although IAF has developed and published guidance for the implementation of ISO 17024, this guidance has not prevented the accreditors from varying widely in the way they choose to apply it. This variation is recognized as being damaging not only to the credibility of auditor certification, but also to the reputation of accredited certification as a whole.
As one disgruntled member put it: ‘Accredited certification of auditors is now an accepted practice in many parts of the world. But users are aware of the variation and, consequently, are becoming more cynical about the value of accreditation as an add-on to certification. This is hurting all of us.’
History
Most IPC members will recall that IPC was founded on the assumption that consistency would be provided by IAF accreditation, specifically, through an extension to IAF’s current MLA. One of the benefits of this would be to make auditor certification more a part of the accredited certification infrastructure. Given the often peripheral status of auditor certification amongst the accreditors, this had to be seen as a positive. Another benefit was to do away with the need for peer evaluation, a function that proved too difficult for IATCA, IPC’s precursor, in favour of a reliance on accreditation.
The IPC membership activities will remain, with the approval function being performed by a new separate legal entity. This is intended as the basic step in addressing the conflict that would exist if there was no structural separation while allowing IPC to continue as a membership association - a function which IRCA and many others value.
The new activity will be phased in two stages. Initially it will be called approval - an interim measure to be operated until IAF extend their MLA to include ISO 17024. But there are few within IPC who express confidence that the IAF will act quickly, or quickly enough, and the expectation is that the approval will develop into accreditation, with full compliance to ISO 17011.
Scope
At this early stage little thought has been given to the scope of IPC’s approval (or accreditation) activities, other than that these will focus on addressing the IAF MLA gap by approving member’s certification programmes. But the scope is likely to be wider than just personnel. IPC could easily expand into accreditation of training approval. Training providers have been the main - some would say only - beneficiaries of the IATCA-style training approval MLA and the planned withdrawal of this structure is causing them, and some training approval bodies, to be concerned. Although it is accepted that IPC’s emphasis is on examination and not training, demand for training continues and members continue to operate training approval. There is a need for some mechanism to regulate the quality of training and it is realistic to expect IPC to consider accreditation of training approval.
There was another key vote approved at the EGM, which was to extend the lifetime of the current MLA and auditor and training certification activities for an additional 12 months. The original plan was that these would cease at the end of September 2006, with the last auditor certifications being withdrawn three years later - in other words, at the end of the certification cycle. Recognizing that there remains a need for a mutual recognition mechanism until the approval function has been set up, the deadlines for cessation of certification and withdrawal of the MLA and auditor and training certification criteria will now be pushed back a year.
Working with IAF
The IPC board has made it clear it remains committed to working within IAF to address the consistency difficulties. IPC plans a strong representation at IAF’s plenary in Cancun later in the year and will continue its involvement on the various relevant working groups. But the expectation based on the progress so far is that the outcome of IAF’s work, if it does proceed, will not be timely and may not be effective, which means that there may be a new accreditation entity on the international scene within the next few years.
There was some debate among members on the extent to which this initiative might alienate IAF. While there was recognition that there were elements within IAF who may see an IPC approval body as a threat, members were reassured by the reported findings of IAF’s own recent survey which indicated that a significant majority of IAF members feel it is valuable to have one accreditation body recognized worldwide.
Done properly, and the IPC board has indicated it has every intention of doing so, an international rather than a national approval body should be regarded as an interesting and positive development. IRCA certainly sees it in that light and welcomes the development.
