Contents

• News from the Secretariat
• Policy Groups
  
• Working Groups
• ISO/CASCO liaisons
• ISO/CASCO diary
• In the next issue

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News from the Secretariat

ISO/CASCO membership as of 2010-07-05: P‑members 69 – O‑members 42

ISO/CASCO 26th plenary meeting
The 26th ISO/CASCO plenary meeting, hosted by AFNOR (Association française de normalisation), will be held in Paris, France , on 18 and 19 November 2010. The delegates will review and discuss ISO/CASCO's policy projects, technical working groups' work, and liaisons' questions related to conformity assessment. The plenary website is available at: www.iso.org/casco2010.

ISO/CASCO workshop 2010
The plenary meeting will be preceded by a workshop on Risk based approaches to designing conformity assessment strategies, on 17 November.

ISO/CASCO will determine what role it can play in minimizing the risk through the use of conformity assessment. A dedicated Website gathering the information will be made available, and updated regularly: www.iso.org/cascoworkshop2010.

ISO/CASCO interpretation process
To date, ISO/CASCO has generated 10 interpretations on ISO/IEC Guide 65, 17011 and 17021. The latest interpretations concern ISO/IEC 17011 and ISO/IEC 17021 and have been posted in February / April 2010. All interpretations are available in English and French.

Translation of the CASCO toolbox in Chinese
All ISO/CASCO Standards are available in Chinese thanks to the Chinese ISO national member body SAC (Standardization Administration of China).

Memorandum of Understanding between ISO and GHTF (Global Harmonization Task Force) – Medical devices
Early in 2010, ISO signed a MOU with GHTF which commits both organizations to cooperate in standards development. The MOU replaces all earlier ones. It specifically commtis GHTF and ISO to cooperate in the promotion and use of the ISO/CASCO toolbox.

EA (European Accreditation) and European Commission partnership
The Framework Partnership Agreement between EA and the European Commission has been signed on the 30 June 2010. This Agreement formally establishes the partnership between EA and the Commission in the context of the European accreditation policy as set out in Regulation 765/2008 (EC) of the European Parliament and of the Council of 9 July 2008. The Agreement covers a period of four years commencing on 1 January 2010.

Policy Groups

CPC, Chairman's Policy and Coordination group
The CPC held its 13th meeting in April 2010. During this meeting it tackled different questions amongst which:

• A task group is currently reviewing the representation of the CPC. The main aim of the review is to ensure adequate representation by stakeholders
• ISO/CASCO has been requested to survey National Mirror Committee (NMC) structure
• The CPC meeting focused on the critical issues which were for discussion at the last ISO/CASCO plenary meeting.

STAR, Strategic Alliance and Regulatory group
It has been agreed at the last ISO/CASCO plenary meeting to produce an informative booklet collecting good practice on market surveillance. The project plan has been finalized and comprises six stages:

• Defining the target audience
• Defining the good practice criteria
• Searching and identifying good practice sectors
• Reviewing the information
• Drafting the information document
• Publishing and promoting the information document.

The STAR Group has finalized a communication strategy whose aim will be to promote the benefits of the ISO/CASCO toolbox and its use as the preferred mechanism for achieving conformity assessment objectives.

TIG, Technical Interface Group
The TIG held its 5th meeting in April 2010. The group has initiated the development of a guidance document to assist echnical committees (TCs) on how to use the ISO/CASCO toolbox when needed. Furthermore, the TIG is actively involved with approximately 15 TCs on conformity assessment issues.

Working Groups

WG 21, Certification of management system
WG 21 met end June to review the comments and proceed to Final Draft International Standard (FDIS). The April meeting was rescheduled due to the Iceland volcano eruption but the completion of the document is still on target and publication is planned in early 2011.

The future ISO/IEC 17021:2011 contains all of the current ISO/IEC 17021:2006 requirements and additional requirements related specifically to auditor competence and the audit process. For the first year of publication, ISO/IEC 17021:2006 will coexist with ISO/IEC 17021:2011. ISO/IEC 17021:2011 will then undergo a restricted review in 2012 to allow the working group to make necessary changes to the 2006 parts of the document. This document will then replace all other versions.

WG 29, Certification of products, services and processes
The last meeting was held in Geneva in April 2010. The attendance was the highest for an ISO/CASCO WG meeting.
A second Committee Draft (CD) for ISO/IEC 17065 will be balloted by CASCO members in August for a period of three months. The comments received will be addressed at the next WG 29 meeting in February 2011.

WG 30, Certification for persons
The first Committee Draft for the revised version of ISO/IEC 17024 will be sent out for ballot in July for a period of three months. The WG 30 will meet in January 2011 to discuss the comments received.

WG 31, Inspection
The last meeting of WG 31 was held on 4‑5 May 2010 in Geneva, at the ISO Central Secretariat. WG experts reviewed the comments on Working Draft 2 of the revised ISO/IEC 17020 and agreed to proceed to Committee Draft stage. The three-month CD ballot was launched on 2010‑05‑27. The next WG meeting is planned on 15‑17 September 2010 in Geneva.

Mr. Marcus Schmid remains as the only Convenor further to the resignation of Ms. Chiew Wan Tan as Co-Convenor. We wish her well in her future endeavours.

WG 32, Fundamentals of product certification
A preliminary draft of for ISO/IEC 17067 has been sent to the WG 32. In October 2010, the working group experts will meet to discuss their comments and produce a first working draft (ISO/IEC 17067 WD1).

WG 33, Third party audit report
WG 33 met for the first time in February to start work on the ISO/IEC TS 17022 on "Minimum requirements and additional recommendations for content of a third party audit report on management systems". The meeting reviewed the draft outline proposed in the New Work Item Proposal and included relevant text from ISO/IEC 17021, ISO/CD 19011, ISO 28003, ISO/IEC 27006, the ISO 9001 Auditing Practices Group guidance documents, and the International Accreditation Forum (IAF) mandatory documents MD1 and MD5.

The next WG meeting is planned early July to produce a first Working Draft.

For general information on active ISO/CASCO working groups, please visit this link.

ISO/CASCO liaisons

New member
UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) application has been accepted. This new A liaison membership brings the number of organizations in A liaison with ISO/CASCO to 17.

IAF Technical Committees meeting
A meeting of the IAF technical committees was held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in March 2010. Among important actions was the circulation of a draft document on harmonized sanctions for members' comment. The document is intended to ensure that accreditation bodies apply the same sanctions for the same nonconformities during certification audits.

The meeting also discussed the payment of "finder fees" to consultants – specifically where a consultant implements a management system, and then refers his client to a certification body. The aim is to ensure that this practice does not compromise the impartiality of the certification body. Several criteria were identified for compliance before this practice could be considered acceptable.

Methods for ensuring the competence of accreditation body assessors were also discussed, as part of an ongoing analysis of assessor tasks.

A draft IAF document is being developed identifying five metrics that a certification body will be required to report to an accreditation body on a regular basis. This will allow the accreditation body to determine if the certification body has sufficient resources to handle the volume of work.

The next IAF technical committee meeting will be held in China in October.

See the full list of organizations in liaison with ISO/CASCO

ISO/CASCO diary

In the next issue (November 2010)

• Update on ISO/CASCO policy and Working Groups
• IAF/ILAC/ISO Joint Working Group
• New interpretations