During the first year of BQSP, the act creating the Bangladesh Accreditation Board (BAB) was passed. With assistance from UNIDO, the provisions of the act are being implemented, and BAB has commenced operations. The following article on the importance of, and the functioning of an accreditation system is adapted from the UNIDO publication “Trade Capacity Building - Laboratory Accreditation in Developing Economies'. The author, Mr John Gilmour, is UNIDO’s international consultant on accreditation for BQSP. (The complete publication can be downloaded from www.bqsp.org/downloads.)
Today the world has become a global village and domestic and export trade is vital to the development of any country's economy. A developing country's economy may be dependent on the export of foodstuffs and minerals and while such trade has existed for centuries there is enhanced awareness today in regard to the safety of the former and the quality of the latter. In the developed world the large fully integrated companies of the past (the automotive sector being a good example) have moved away from self dependence to focus on their core activities, outsourcing many components, devices and systems. In the automotive industry this includes wheels, jacks, exhausts, electronic devices and even dashboard assemblies, and many developing countries with lower labour costs have taken the opportunity of entering this expanding market. Export is critical to the growth of any country's economy, be it fresh fruit, minerals or manufactured goods. Adjacent countries can also be involved in the export of infrastructural goods or services that include electricity, water and telecommunications services.
The key to lowering the barriers to international trade is accreditation, the basis of which is to create confidence in the work carried out by certification and inspection bodies, as well as testing and calibration laboratories, located anywhere in the world. In the absence of internationally recognised accredited facilities, tests carried out in the exporting country would have to be repeated by a recognised laboratory in the importing country and an adverse test report could result in the rejection of an entire shipment of food or manufactured goods. As these may have already been transported halfway around the world this could be a very costly exercise for the exporter. In the field of accreditation this is often summarised by the saying "Tested Once - Accepted Everywhere". While international trade is fundamentally linked to supply capacity and cost, laboratory accreditation and the recognition of test results is a final determinant as to whether the goods produced by the exporter are acceptable in other countries. In terms of manufactured products, particularly components that must be built into value-added devices, the customer will usually insist that the factory supplying them has a quality system based on ISO9000:2000 and here again accreditation is key to providing assurance that certification bodies operating in one country follow the same strict procedures as those in others.
While accreditation is often thought to be mainly required for export purposes it has an even larger role to play in a country's domestic economy. Accreditation or conformity assessment provides confidence to the buyer or user of services. In the internal economy, accredited laboratories are used to test food and water, concrete, and other building materials, electrical and telecommunication test equipment and the basic measuring instruments used in the manufacturing industry. When you have a blood, urine or other medical test you need to have confidence that the outcome is correct and that you are not incorrectly diagnosed as having HIV/Aids, malaria or a host of other diseases. Veterinary practices must be able to correctly diagnose rabies and the many bovine diseases that affect both domestic and export sales, e.g. foot and mouth, anthrax, and mad cow disease. Another core value of accreditation is that it provides confidence for consumers that everything, from food and water, to electrical appliances and children's toys, and even motor vehicles, are safe and meet the conditions and standards imposed by the country's regulatory authorities. Protection of consumers has become increasingly necessary with the opening up of global trade, which has resulted in a vast increase in the number of products and services available. Once again reliable results are essential and the role of accreditation is to ensure that within certain acceptable (and quantifiable) limits, tests of any type made on a product in one country can be repeated with confidence in any other country in the world.
Conformity assessment is a term used to describe the whole process of accreditation and certification and is the process of determining whether products, processes, systems and people, meet specified requirements. The ISO 9000 quality management system is well known throughout the world. Certification bodies that grant registration have to be accredited by recognised national accreditation bodies. These same accreditation bodies directly accredit inspection bodies as well as testing and calibration (metrology) laboratories, where the requirements go far beyond a formal quality management system and require evaluation of the technical and infrastructural ability of the organisation to perform specific tests or measurements, or to be proficient in declaring that, for example, pressure vessels are indeed safe.
The details of the intricacies of such accreditation are covered in the relevant ISO/IEC Guides and Standards. Accreditation is not the only recognised route for conformity assessment but it is the one that offers the least duplication of effort, is the most transparent, most widely accepted and is the least discriminatory option.
The core inherent value of accreditation for laboratories is that a test or measurement carried out on a sample or physical artefact in one county should produce the same result (within the limits of uncertainty of measurement) when carried out by another accredited laboratory elsewhere in the world. This means that all accredited laboratories throughout the world are subject to the same strict requirements, thus creating the confidence in the whole accreditation process and ensuring that results produced by an accredited laboratory in one country will be accepted by authorities in any other country that is a signatory to the International Laboratory Accreditation Corporation (ILAC) Arrangement or where a specific Mutual Recognition Agreement (MRA) exists.
The question for a developing country is whether there is a real need for a national body (in terms of cost effectiveness and viability) or whether the needs of the economy could be better served by using another recognised national accreditation body. Assistance required to establish a national accreditation body starts with basic training and goes right through to the process of Pre-Peer evaluation which allows corrective action to be taken before formal application for approval. It should be noted that competition between accreditation bodies is rare or non-existent. ILAC encourages accreditation of laboratories by a local body where it exists. It is only in exceptional cases, such as lack of the required technical expertise in a specific area, where accreditation by another nation's accreditation body would be condoned.
The task for the emerging economies has been further alleviated by the establishment in 2000 of a Pre-Peer Evaluation Procedure (PEPEP) through cooperation between UNIDO, ILAC and the International Standards organisation (ISO). The scheme was based on one in operation since 1997 under the auspices of UNIDO, the International Accreditation Forum (IAF) and ISO and which was aimed at countries wishing to establish an accreditation system for certification bodies. The PEPEP, managed by UNIDO with the support of a Steering Committee including ILAC and ISO, is fully operational and Pre-Peer Evaluations have already been provided to several emerging economies. Those addressed since 2000 include Argentina, Colombia, Cuba, Egypt, Jordan and Tunisia.
While the requirements for accreditation are onerous, many developing economies have committed themselves to the process and several are already full members of the ILAC Arrangement. Many others are associate members with operating accreditation bodies, and are striving for full membership and recognition. Another category of ILAC membership is found in the affiliates. Affiliate members are mostly developing countries that are establishing or have declared their intention to establish an accreditation body in line with the requirements of ILAC. The board of ILAC is fully aware of the fact that the creation of the ILAC Arrangement was driven by the needs and foresight of the developed countries. The organisation actively promotes the participation of people from developing countries in their various forums so that their specific problems can be better understood. A joint IAF/ILAC committee to address the needs of developing countries has been established. This activity, which forms part of the business plans of both bodies, has its own funding allocation.
Regional accreditation organisations are also important. For developing countries the most relevant of these is probably the SADC Cooperation in Accreditation (SADCA). SADCA has fourteen member states all of which are classified as developing economies and all of these countries support the concepts and application of accreditation. Only one country (South Africa) has an established and recognised accreditation body and only one other country in the region (Mauritius) has declared its attention (at this point in time) to establish one. The other member countries have decided that the most effective way for them to benefit from accreditation is to use one of the other bodies in the region to accredit their in-country laboratories. Although governmental issues may still have to be resolved this model could possibly be extended into other developing regions of the world, most notably perhaps the rest of the African continent.
In summary, conformity assessment covers a number of complementary activities related to demonstrating to end users that products and services satisfy certain requirements, or meet user specifications. As indicated above, conformity assessment covers activities such as testing, calibration, inspection and certification. Services in terms of conformity assessment do not have to be provided nationally but all countries should have access to them, either through international or regional organisations or through cooperative arrangements with neighbouring countries. Where a country establishes its own infrastructure it should ensure that all elements are addressed at a level sufficient for its requirements. It should not be more elaborate than necessary..
