The 34th meeting of the Communications and Publications Committee, hosted by COFRAC, the French NAB, was held in Paris (France) from 12 to 13 September 2018.

This 2-days meeting gathered 23 CPC members, who had fruitful discussions and shared their experience in promoting accreditation at their national levels. It was also the occasion to benchmark communication activities with the purpose of transferring marketing and communication knowledge and best practices between EA Members.

Discussions focused on various subjects related to accreditation:

  • Corporate presentation of COFRAC, done by Sebastien Laborde, Communications Director to present COFRAC organization and update members on the action plan managed in terms of communication to support and promote accreditation in France,
  • Workshop on EA communications strategy dedicated to EA stakeholders, with a presentation of what was done in UKAS in terms of communications with stakeholders. A brainstorming session was organized to define the relevant materials to be developed by EA to enhance its cooperation with stakeholders. It was, among other things, decided to publish more news articles on EA website and develop specific newsletters dedicated to stakeholders and addressing issues from the specific angle of stakeholder expectations.
  • Report on the actions managed for the WAD 2018 “Accreditation: Delivering a safer world”, to highlight the initiatives organized locally by EA and its members. For that occasion, EA published an article on EA website to promote the work done through EA Committees to provide a safer world. This article was highlighted through EA Twitter account. It generated successful feedback with 7,896 impressions and 104 engagements (28 likes, 16 retweets, 15 link clicks)!
  • Progress review on CPC Work programme 2018 with a focus on EA digital materials (e-news, Twitter account, website) and other materials such as brochures, reports and slidesThis report was the occasion to mention the good results obtained through EA twitter account (more than 1350 followers and 750 tweets since its creation in 2016) and to update members on the future EA website, which should be online in the coming weeks with a completely new design and tree organization.
  • An update on ILAC and IAF activities with a report of Jon Murthy, the ILAC MCC and IAF CMC Chair, with a focus on the IAF Database, called IAF CertSearch, as a global register of Accredited Certificates, which will be online in October 2018. That database would be the means to reduce time and risk for those seeking to validate a certification. It will also improve value and integrity of accredited certification by preventing misuse, increasing awareness, education, recognition and visibility of accredited certification. All of which will lead to a strengthening and growth of accredited certification globally.
  • Presentation of video projects developed by NABs (a corporate video to present Turkak (Turkey) and its activities, an ad clip from Accredia (Italy), an explicative video on “FLEX +” from Cofrac (France) and a Tv report on the conference managed by PCA for the WAD 2018.
  • Sharing experience on the implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) with a presentation of what was done by ACCREDIA at national level and on IT tools with a concrete example of an application developed by COFRAC, FLEX +, to manage update of flexible scopes.

The next CPC meeting, hosted by HAA, the Croatian NAB, will be on the 13-14 March 2019 in Zagreb (Croatia).