On the 29^th October 2019 the IAF-ILAC Joint General Assembly (JGA) passed a resolution to establish a single organisation for accreditation based on a survey of Members. This allows for more effective and efficient communication and services as the two organisations already work closely to ensure consistent and complementary services. 

To support the One Organization Project a Steering Committee (SC) was established which executes the project with the support from a contractor reporting to the IAF/ILAC Joint Executive Committee (JEC). This article provides an update on the work to date.

 

General outline of the new organization

It was confirmed that the new international organization for accreditation would be a worldwide association of accreditation bodies and stakeholder organisations with an interest in the accreditation of conformity assessment bodies such as testing and calibration laboratories, inspection bodies, proficiency testing providers, reference material producers, biobanks, certification bodies for management systems, persons, products, processes and services, verification and validation bodies, with a membership consisting of accreditation bodies and stakeholder organisations throughout the world.

 

Articles of association

 The draft Articles of Association (AoA) have been through several rounds of review and the next stage will be to further develop these during the JEC meeting on the 8^th November 2022. Progress made at this meeting will be reported back to Members at the JGA. Issues surrounding voting rights will also be considered following Member feedback.

 

Registration

The SC has reviewed options for the registration of the new body, taking into account political climate, costs, and administrative hurdles, New Zealand is currently being considered and appears to be the best option.

 

Secretariat

Under the current timelines the secretariat services needed to manage and operate the single organization will be defined and a tender for the new secretariat will be established by the end of 2022.

 

Next steps of the One Organization Project

08.11.2022	JEC meeting – discussion on the next steps in this process and confirming proposals for presentation at the November meeting of the IAF/ILAC JGA.
10.11.2022	JGA – information of the status of the project and the proposals from the JEC on how to proceed.
TBD	IAF/ILAC Joint SC meeting to implement the agreed on the next steps in the One Organization Project.