Comprehend The Iso 17021 Requirements That Must Be Fulfilled By Certification Bodies

By Author: John
Total Articles: 95
Comment this article

The ISO 17021 standard is a global standard that establishes rules for certification bodies (CBs) to assure that the system certification process management is appropriate, consistent, and impartially executed. The ISO 17021 Standard outlines a set of requirements for auditing management systems at a generic level to provide a reliable assessment of compliance with the applicable certificate requirements, carried out by a competent audit team, with sufficient resources and following a coherent process, to achieve a consistent result. The standard specifies the general requirements for CBS to conduct audits and obtain ISO certification in quality management, environmental management, and other types of management systems.

ISO 17021 is a set of guidelines that establishes requirements for businesses that provide certifications of compliance to different management systems. These organizations are known as certification bodies (CBs) or registrars. ISO/IEC 17021-1, Conformity assessment — Requirements for bodies providing audit and certification of management systems, Requirements, specify the broad requirements and concepts ...
... that third-party certification bodies must adhere to. The ISO 17021 standards are used by accreditation bodies (ABs) to review the processes that certification bodies (CBs) have to support that their assessments are consistent and impartial.

Although ISO 17021 specifies the official guidelines for CBS behaviour and how they must present professionally, it is crucial for both CB users and their clients. Some of these requirements are:

• Impartiality: Certification bodies (CB) must have some procedures in place to ensure that their certifications are performed equally and impartially. It leads to the regulation of conflicts of interest (COIs), risk management of COIs, and the requirement for final certification decisions to be made by independent parties. Readers are aware of the most common issue that the CBs frequently disregard these regulations in their entirety and give out certifications to anyone who pays. However, a detailed examination of the standard reveals that it includes safeguards to avoid this. Thus, the standard itself is acceptable, and I frequently say that all that is required to bring CBs into compliance is effective enforcement rather than the creation of a new set of regulations.

• Confidentiality: The CBs have access to private data about their certified clients. To ensure the management of confidentiality, the CB must have controls in place (again, procedures are probably required). All CB professionals who might be involved with such confidential material must comply with these regulations.

• Competence. For the new CBS trying to adopt ISO 17021, this is one of the most difficult tasks. The standard specifies how to determine competence criteria, and ISO 17021 documents must be extensive. The CB must now make sure that all of its employees, including auditors, report reviewers, technical specialists, etc., adhere to these guidelines.

• Resources. As there isn't much of an infrastructure overhead requirement for such businesses, resource management for CBs is often simple in terms of facilities and equipment. The key change is that ISO 17201 requires the CB have a sufficient workforce and audit personnel to perform its responsibilities. Finding auditors to fill a new CB's initial auditor group can be difficult, which frequently causes delays in the completion of the ISO 17021 implementation.

• Complaints & Appeals. To handle both complaints and requests, CB needs a reliable method (again, protocols are helpful here). The standard makes the following distinction between the two: "Complaints" can be connected to anything and are received from any party. The term "appeals" refers to specific challenges to CB decisions made by its customers; for instance, a client may appeal when certification is revoked or suspended.

• Defining certification activities. This category contains the majority of the tasks required to implement ISO 17021-1. The CB must specify how audits will be conducted, reports will be written, reports will be reviewed, a decision will be made regarding final certification, and all other associated tasks. These techniques have already been created and refined for widely used schemes like ISO 9001, but it might be more difficult for a CB to work inside a less well-known scheme.

• QMS requirements. Along with all the other requirements, ISO 17021 requires the implementation of a minimum quality management system. Like many other conformity assessment standards, they provide two options: fully adopting ISO 9001 or applying essential QMS components.