During the EA elections held in May 2015, Nicole Vanlaethem from BELAC, the Belgian national accreditation body, vacated her position as the EA MAC Chair. She has kindly accepted to answer a few questions, taking stock of the current performance and expected improvements of the EA Multilateral Agreement Council (MAC).
Picture: EA MAC Members at the last meeting chaired by Nicole Vanlaethem in October 2015 in Berlin.
Nicole, what are your best souvenirs of the time you spent in EA, notably as the EA MAC Vice-Chair and Chair?
Before chairing the EA MAC during the last three years, I had the privilege to work with the three previous Chairs of the Council who were Jos Leferink, Gro Rodland and Thomas Facklam. I had a great experience with three different persons: Jos insisted on the “peer” spirit and the importance of the EA MLA, while Gro started promoting the development of new tools to support the peer-evaluation process, and Thomas went on drawing specific attention to the role of the EA MLA within the European and international frameworks. The route was open for me and I had just to further develop what had already been put in place, adding a touch of my personal experience as a peer-evaluator.
The EA MAC has always been a very active committee. I really enjoyed the lively discussions as the Members’ input allowed for constructive, transparent and balanced decisions, and contributed to the development of the peer-evaluation process. This is indeed a paradox: the level of performance of the EA MAC’s activities has been considerably increasing these last years, but EA MAC Members’ expectations and critical review of what should be achieved have been constantly bringing out new challenges.
My best moments were probably when the representatives of an national accreditation body (NAB) having been evaluated for the first time entered the MAC meeting room after the deliberation on their evaluation report, and saw the terms of a positive decision presented on the screen. This moment is usually the last step of a long and difficult process for the NAB, and becoming signatory to the EA MLA is also felt as the beginning of a new and very rewarding story. I am pretty sure that on such occasions, all attending MAC Members share the feeling of belonging to the same community.
In your view, what are the major challenges to be taken up by the EA MAC in the near future?
The first challenge is the necessary evolution of the peer-evaluation concept. A majority of EA Members agrees that the current peer-evaluation process could be still improved in terms of performance and efficiency, and that the whole process should be reconsidered to take a new turn for the better. The fundamental issue to be discussed is: “what do we expect from a peer evaluation?” Shall it demonstrate – as probably NABs understand it – that the NAB has the necessary level of competence and has implemented appropriate accreditation mechanisms to give confidence in the level of performance of its accredited conformity assessment bodies (CABs)? Shall the peer evaluation confirm – as probably our stakeholders expect it – the level of performance of the NAB through an extensive check of the operation of accredited CABs? Or most probably, shall a combination of both be fulfilled? How to design a renewed peer-evaluation process will largely depend on the outcome of the discussions.
The second challenge – obviously linked to the first one – is how to ensure that enough peer evaluators are available, offering the necessary level of experience and understanding of NABs’ operation. This means that EA Members should be ready not only to propose evaluators with optimal assessment competence, but also to allow their management staff to contribute to the peer-evaluation efforts.
Finally, Nicole, would you have any wishes for Paulo Tavares from IPAC, the Portuguese NAB, who has been taking over the EA MAC Chairmanship from you since the end of 2015, and the EA MAC Secretariat? What advice or wisdom would you like to hand down to them?
The distribution of tasks and responsibilities between the EA MAC, the MAC Management Group (MG) and the MAC Secretariat has recently been revised and the new MAC Chair and Vice-Chair have largely contributed to this evolution. I am fully confident that both will receive the necessary support from very committed MAC and MAC MG Members, which will allow them to manage EA MAC activities in a constructive and efficient way. The MAC Secretariat has already largely developed its support to the MAC and MAC MG as well as to the evaluation teams – and I am sure it is only the beginning of a nice story.
The watchwords to keep in mind for the future are: be creative but pragmatic, be demanding but open to dialogue and, above all, be convinced in what you do and enjoy it as this is one of the keys to success.