Standards Development

Scope

This document will recommend good practices for all elements of conformity assessment, including normative documents, bodies, systems, schemes and results.

It is intended for use by individuals and bodies who wish to provide, promote or use ethical and reliable conformity assessment services. These include, as appropriate, regulators, trade officials, calibration laboratories, testing laboratories, inspection bodies, validation/verification bodies, product certification bodies, management system certification/registration bodies, personnel certification bodies, accreditation bodies, organizations providing declarations of conformity, and designers and administrators of conformity assessment systems and schemes, and users of conformity assessment.

Purpose

At the CPC meeting on 5 December 2019 the members discussed about the results of the systematic review ballot that closed in September 2019. Although the SR of ISO/IEC Guide 60 was confirmed by a small majority, the members considered the comments and took into account the tight results. They recognized the importance of SO/IEC Guide 60. It is referenced in many national and international regulations including the Technical Barrier to Trade (TBT) agreement in the WTO. It covers all areas of conformity assessment and is a useful overview of principles and good practices. They agreed that the content needed to be updated to reflect the current situation in the conformity assessment world in order to stay relevant and to raise its profile considering that it was published some time ago (2004). The revision of ISO/IEC Guide 60 would allow to align with the recent versions of the related standards, to consider including further guidance/good practices for the users of the conformity assessment and update all the references.