Conclusions from the workshop
The overall attendance for this third ISO/CASCO workshop has attained new heights. With approximately 130 attendees in Paris, and 37 people in different parts of the world following the Webinar, ISO/CASCO reaches more people every year and continues its efforts to raise awareness with regard to questions in relation with conformity assessment. The recordings of the workshop will be made publicly available.
This year the workshop was focused on the role of risk when designing conformity assessment strategies, and was organized in three sessions:
- Presentations of ISO work in the area of risk, and presentations from sectors (finance, banking, certification);
- Presentations from industry sectors (nuclear, automotive, aerospace, inspection);
- Presentations from inter-governmental organizations, and ISO Committee on consumers policy).
It was agreed that this workshop would have the following objectives:
- Identify if risk management should be a key factor in the development of conformity assessment standards;
- Determine if and how CASCO can provide guidance in the management of risk in the design of conformity assessment strategies (whether it is for public or private sector);
- Identify if and how conformity assessment strategies and CASCO can assist sectors such as financial, legal, insurance, and governmental in mitigating their risks using conformity assessment strategies; and
- Determine if there is sufficient consensus on a need for international level work on risk based approaches to the design of conformity assessment strategies
It was confirmed that the format chosen for this type of workshop was a good one as it allowed for constructive exchanges after each session. The presentations given by the speakers (representing different areas of expertise) and the questions raised during the discussions allowed to distinguish cross-sector commonalities and led to the following conclusions:
- ISO to consider the publication of guidance on risk management;
- More efforts should be made to promote the existing Standards and other documents dealing with risks, and to raise awareness in "Business to business" as well as in "Business to consumers" relations;
- ISO/CASCO to identify any gaps with regard to risk in the CASCO Toolbox documents;
- Sectors' needs to be appropriately addressed;
- Internal audit to be publicized as adding good add value;
- To investigate how ISO 31000 (Risk management -- Principles and guidelines) could be used in conjunction with ISO/IEC 17021;
- Different conformity assessment systems can achieve the same outcome;
- Schemes rules are helpful in mitigating risks;
- Conformity assessment schemes and systems are as important as the standards themselves. Any change to the scheme, system or standard should lead to the re-examination of the whole;
- ISO to consider adding to appropriate Standards that accreditation is one possible means to add confidence in the conformity assessment system;
- Consider the possibility to develop "flexible Standards", which would include different level of response to risk, and that could be applied to different parts of the world;
- Additional promotion of the ISO/IEC brochure "Using and referencing ISO and IEC standards for technical regulations";
- Continue to address auditors' competence;
- ISO could issue a guidance clarifying what makes an International Standard certifiable;
A list of action will be draught from these conclusions. This page will be updated in due time to present the actions retained from these conclusions.
2010 CASCO Webinar: facts and figures
Registered: 87
Logged in to the Webinar (attendees): 37 (43%)
The attendees were representing 24 countries (Australia - Austria - Brazil - Canada - China - Colombia - France - Germany - Great Britain - India - Italy - Japan - Korea, Democratic People's Republic of - Kuwait - Mexico - Panama - Poland - Portugal - Saudi Arabia - Spain - Switzerland - Taiwan, Province of China - Trinidad and Tobago - United States of America)
A satisfaction questionnaire has been sent to the attendees of the workshop (persons who attended the workshop physically and also Webinar attendees). The results of this survey are given below.
Post-workshop surveys completed: 54 (as of 17 December 2010).
To the question "How would you rate the content of this workshop?" (1 is worst and 5 is best), the surveyed gave an average rating of 4.1 (83%).
To the question "Did the workshop meet your expectations?", the surveyed agreed at 91% (10 "expectations exceeded", 39 "expectations met", 5 "expectations not met")
The Webinar attendees were generally satisfied with the quality of the broadcasting. Only one person found the sound quality was not good at the beginning of the Webinar.
The attendees generally expressed their satisfaction in that the workshop was valuable because they would benefit from the following points:
- Better understanding of ISO 31000;
- Presentations from multiple sectors and linkage between various topics and branches;
- International perspective on conformity assessment;
- Identification of conformity assessment related risks;
- Update on the state of the art on the topic, including understanding of current issues;
- Networking;
- Learning about ongoing activities in partner organizations;
- Clarification of implementation of ISO 31000 and certification;
- Improve way of doing business;
- Practical examples;
- Trends in risk based controls.