Accreditation plays a vital role in ensuring trust, quality, and compliance across all sectors, especially in the increasingly regulated sectors. The efficiency, transparency, and credibility of a National Accreditation Body (NAB) hinge not only on its technical capacity, competence and integrity but increasingly also on the strength of its IT infrastructure.

EA organized a workshop for its NAB members, attended by over 100 participants, to present three IT systems conceived by 3 EA National Accreditation Bodies: HAA (Croatia), TURKAK (Türkiye), and UKAS (UK). An appropriate IT system can significantly enhance the operations of a NAB by improving efficiency, transparency, traceability, reporting, and quality assurance.

 

First, Ida Trninić Ružić, and Marina Duplančić from HAA introduced e-Akreditacija, an IT system that, among other functionalities:

  • enables the management and monitoring of the accreditation process, communication and exchange of documentation between Conformity Assessment Bodies (CABs) and HAA (internal staff and assessors);
  • adapts the view and access level of the application to the user roles in the process (CABs, assessors, HAA internal staff);
  • integrates with HAA internal systems and external systems and registries.

The system is dedicated to CABs (interested entities for accreditation or accredited subjects), external associates (involved in accreditation process in roles of assessors/experts), and HAA internal staff.

 

Then, Serhat Gok from TURKAK presented the ASIST portal that includes:

  • an Accreditation module where applications are made online, and file processes (uploading documents, planning of assessments, post-assessment processes, decision processes)
  • an assessor module to receive interview applications, gather documents about experience, evaluate after interview, and an assessor pool
  • Information request letters
  • Appeals and Complaints
  • Training, Reporting, and Finance Module
  • TDVS (TURKAK Document Verification System for Management System and Calibration Certificates)

 

To finish, Georgia Alsop from UKAS explained the different tools they put in place to facilitate the assessment process, the digitalisation of quality credentials, and their certificate database.

The digitalisation of the Assessment process displays milestones to customers and internal users through infographics, providing visibility over project status and the full pathway to accreditation, helping customers understand their progress. It includes a readiness evaluation tool that assists customers in understanding their progress, and a workflow built in the background to trigger each milestone’s completion on the infographic.

The digitalisation of quality credentials facilitates the search for accredited services, creating a level playing field for our customers, and improves searching functionality on the UKAS website, using Geo-location. It enhances the automation of the production of the UKAS Accredited Schedule, and the accessibility, Data Sharing and improved market surveillance, enabling alignment with international digital initiatives and standards and data sharing capabilities.

It also includes a publicly accessible database of certificates issued by UKAS Customers (CABs), that can be used to verify the validity of a claim of certification.

 

This event will be presumably followed by a next edition in the coming months.