Alexey Khersontsev: Digital Transformation of National Accreditation System To Create Benefits for Diligent Businesses
March 15, 2019
The Head of RusAccreditation Reported on this at the Technical Regulation Forum on “The EEU System of Technical Regulation: Digital Challenges and Global Opportunities” that took place within the framework of the Russian Business Week organized by the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs. This year the Forum was devoted to issues Related to the use of tools for standardization and technical regulation in The implementation of digitization programs in Russia and abroad. In his speech, Alexey Khersontsev informed about key legislative novelties in accreditation and described the progress of the digital transformation of the national accreditation system.
According to the Head of the national accreditation body, the legislative changes adopted in 2018 largely address challenges, which the technical regulation system faces. First and foremost, they contribute to ensuring trust for the results of conformity assessment. This point of view draws attention to the changes taking place in the control activities of the Federal Service for Accreditation that obtained new instruments. “The shift to implementation of the risk-oriented approach to the full resolves the situation with the multiplicity of accredited persons and unfair behavior of market participants,’’ the Head of RusAccreditation noted.
The Federal Law “On Accreditation in the National Accreditation System” has a new regulation stating that a report on failure to perform an on-site assessment should be drawn, had there been a failure to carry out an on-site assessment due to either the absence of the accredited person, his authorized representative, his supervisor, another manager of the accredited person, or non-execution of operations by the accredited person, or other actions (inaction) of the accredited person entailing the failure to perform the mentioned assessment. Upon the review of the mentioned report, the national accreditation body decides on the suspension of the assessment and suspends the accreditation of the accredited person in the entire scope of accreditation. In the second half of 2018, the Federal Service for Accreditation suspended nine accreditations on this ground.
Alexey Khersontsev reported that the Ministry of Economic Development of Russia had approved the amendments to the Accreditation Criteria that limit the scope of work of certification experts (auditor experts) in several certification bodies. “It will significantly raise the value of the certification expert profession and bring to consideration reputation risks from issuing certificates without testing,” the Head of RusAccreditation noted. He also underlined that the EEC Council had adopted a similar rule by Decision No. 100 dated December 5, 2018. The said document also states that one of the conditions of including a certification body into the Unified Registry of Certification Authorities of the Eurasian Economic Union is the lack of employees engaged in violations that had entailed the issuance of non-complying products and cases of mass or systematic erroneous issuance of conformity assessment certificates. “This rule will enter into force no later than July 1st, and we estimate that it will provide further impetus for conformity market stabilization,” Alexey Khersontsev said and noted that the trend for a decrease in the number of new mandatory certification bodies observed in 2017 and 2018 would remain in 2019.
The Head of the Federal Service for Accreditation devoted the second part of his speech to the opportunities of the digital ecosystem of the National Accreditation System in terms of challenges that the Russian economy was facing. “Certification and declaration refer not only to the process of conformity assessment; today they add new information value in terms of commodity flows, producers, production sites, and range of products. Five EEU countries have formed registers of declarations and certificates, which serve as guidelines for all enterprises worldwide exporting products to our country. It is obvious that in terms of digital economy the value of this information will continue to grow,” Alexey Khersontsev underlined. According to him, the decision to form the unified registers of certificates and declarations within the country was right and now it’s important to learn to use these data in the economic turnover and public administration.
The Head of RusAccreditation reported that the process of integration of RusAccreditation Federal Government Information System into information systems of other agencies would continue in order to improve the transparency of the conformity assessment market. The Federal Service for Accreditation has already established close cooperation with the Federal Customs Service of Russia. Next thing on the agenda is the integration into traceability and control systems of the Federal Service for Veterinary and Phytosanitary Surveillance (Rosselkhoznadzor) — its employees will be able to file declaration withdrawal prescriptions into the registers in cases of detected non-compliance of products. An opportunity is being explored to connect declarations and certificates registers with registers of other bodies in charge of control over the market turnover.
