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The International Certification Accreditation Council (ICAC) is an alliance of organizations dedicated to assuring competency, professional management, and service to the public by encouraging and setting standards for licensing, certification, and credentialing programs.
In 1996, a group of association executives chartered the ICAC as a not-for-profit organization with the purpose of evaluating certification programs at an affordable rate that smaller organizations can afford. In order to accomplish this mission, the organization requires a substantial commitment of volunteer time from accredited associations, keeping administrative overhead to a minimum.
Over the years the ICAC has also developed a comprehensive process to evaluate certification programs against international standards designed not only to confirm the association is complying with industry norms, but also help correct any minor administrative concerns uncovered during the evaluation. In this way, accredited organizations can both improve existing certification programs as well as demonstrate to the public that their programs comply with industry best practices.
By accrediting certification programs, the public and the industries represented have an additional level of assurance, knowing that the program has been reviewed by a neutral third party and been found to meet or exceed reasonable levels of record keeping, security, objectivity, and professionalism.
The ICAC itself operates under the international guidelines established as a quality assurance regime for accreditation bodies (ISO/IEC 17011 – Conformity Assessment: General Requirements for Accreditation Bodies Accrediting Conformity Assessment Bodies), and has established assessment tools and processes that assure certification bodies are in compliance with ISO/IEC 17024 (2012): Conformity Assessment – General Requirements for Bodies Operating Certification of Persons.
To date, ICAC has reviewed and accredited nearly 100 certification programs, including those listed below.
Telecommunications Electrostatic Discharge Control (ESD)
Members of the ICAC board of directors and its various committees are volunteers who draw from many years of experience in managing not-for-profit organizations. [2]
Professional certification, trade certification, or professional designation, often called simply certification or qualification, is a designation earned by a person to assure qualification to perform a job or task. Not all certifications that use post-nominal letters are an acknowledgement of educational achievement, or an agency appointed to safeguard the public interest.
Conformance testing — an element of conformity assessment, and also known as compliance testing, or type testing — is testing or other activities that determine whether a process, product, or service complies with the requirements of a specification, technical standard, contract, or regulation. Testing is often either logical testing or physical testing. The test procedures may involve other criteria from mathematical testing or chemical testing. Beyond simple conformance, other requirements for efficiency, interoperability or compliance may apply. Conformance testing may be undertaken by the producer of the product or service being assessed, by a user, or by an accredited independent organization, which can sometimes be the author of the standard being used. When testing is accompanied by certification, the products or services may then be advertised as being certified in compliance with the referred technical standard. Manufacturers and suppliers of products and services rely on such certification including listing on the certification body's website, to assure quality to the end user and that competing suppliers are on the same level.
Accreditation is the independent, third-party evaluation of a conformity assessment body against recognised standards, conveying formal demonstration of its impartiality and competence to carry out specific conformity assessment tasks.
Certification is part of testing, inspection and certification and the provision by an independent body of written assurance that the product, service or system in question meets specific requirements. It is the formal attestation or confirmation of certain characteristics of an object, person, or organization. This confirmation is often, but not always, provided by some form of external review, education, assessment, or audit. Accreditation is a specific organization's process of certification. According to the U.S. National Council on Measurement in Education, a certification test is a credentialing test used to determine whether individuals are knowledgeable enough in a given occupational area to be labeled "competent to practice" in that area.
Product certification or product qualification is the process of certifying that a certain product has passed performance tests and quality assurance tests, and meets qualification criteria stipulated in contracts, regulations, or specifications.
ISO/IEC 17025General requirements for the competence of testing and calibration laboratories is the main ISO/IEC standard used by testing and calibration laboratories. In most countries, ISO/IEC 17025 is the standard for which most labs must hold accreditation in order to be deemed technically competent. In many cases, suppliers and regulatory authorities will not accept test or calibration results from a lab that is not accredited. Originally known as ISO/IEC Guide 25, ISO/IEC 17025 was initially issued by ISO/IEC in 1999. There are many commonalities with the ISO 9000 standard, but ISO/IEC 17025 is more specific in requirements for competence and applies directly to those organizations that produce testing and calibration results and is based on somewhat more technical principles. Laboratories use ISO/IEC 17025 to implement a quality system aimed at improving their ability to consistently produce valid results. It is also the basis for accreditation from an accreditation body.
IEC 61508 is an international standard published by the International Electrotechnical Commission consisting of methods on how to apply, design, deploy and maintain automatic protection systems called safety-related systems. It is titled Functional Safety of Electrical/Electronic/Programmable Electronic Safety-related Systems.
The Electronics Technicians Association, International, Inc. is a US-based not-for-profit 501(c)(6) trade association founded in 1978. The association provides certifications in industries such as basic electronics, fiber optics and data cabling, renewable energy, information technology, photonics and precision optics, customer service, biomedical, avionics, wireless communications, radar, and smart home. ETA is also one of the 12 COLEMs for U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) testing. ETA works with technicians, educators, and military personnel. ETA also partners with companies such as Motorola Solutions to provide certification to their employees.
The Standards Council of Canada (SCC) / Conseil Canadien des Normes (CCN) is a Canadian organization with the mandate to promote voluntary standardization in Canada. The SCC is responsible for:
Certification and accreditation is a process for implementing any formal process. It is a systematic procedure for evaluating, describing, testing, and authorizing systems or activities prior to or after a system is in operation. The process is used extensively across the world.
The International Accreditation Forum, Inc. (IAF) is the world association of Conformity Assessment Accreditation bodies and other bodies interested in conformity assessment in the fields of management systems, products, services, personnel and other similar programs of conformity assessment. Its primary function is to develop a single worldwide program of conformity assessment which reduces risk for business and its customers by assuring them that accredited certificates may be relied upon.
The International Accreditation Forum (IAF) Multilateral Recognition Arrangement (MLA) is an agreement for the mutual recognition of accredited certification between IAF Accreditation Body (AB) Member signatories. This agreement allows for the acceptance of accredited certification in many markets based on one accreditation. The worldwide recognition of certificates granted by IAF MLA signatories and their accredited bodies removes technical barriers to trade, reduces costs and adds value to business and customers.
An ESD simulator, also known as an ESD gun, is a handheld unit used to test the immunity of devices to electrostatic discharge (ESD). These simulators are used in special electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) laboratories. ESD pulses are fast, high-voltage pulses created when two objects with different electrical charges come into close proximity or contact. Recreating them in a test environment helps to verify that the device under test is immune to static electricity discharges.
The United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS) is the sole national accreditation body recognised by the British government to assess the competence of organisations that provide certification, testing, inspection and calibration services. It evaluates these conformity assessment bodies and then accredits them where they are found to meet relevant internationally specified standards.
IEC 62443 is an international series of standards that address cybersecurity for operational technology in automation and control systems. The standard is divided into different sections and describes both technical and process-related aspects of automation and control systems cybersecurity.
The Korea Testing & Research Institute, abbreviated as KTR, is a testing and certification institute in South Korea which performs integrate testing, certification, and technical consulting for all fields of the industry.
eCOGRA is a London-based testing agency and standards organisation in the realm of online gambling. The company was established in 2003 in the United Kingdom at the behest of the online gaming industry as the first industry self-regulation system. eCOGRA is a testing laboratory, inspection body, and certification body, specializing in the certification of online gaming software and the audit of Information Security Management Systems.
The testing, inspection and certification (TIC) sector consists of conformity assessment bodies who provide services ranging from auditing and inspection, to testing, verification, quality assurance and certification. The sector consists of both in-house and outsourced services.
OpenChain ISO/IEC 5230:2020 is an international standard on the key requirements for a high-quality open source license compliance program. The standard was published jointly by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) in late 2020. The standard is based on the Linux Foundation OpenChain Specification 2.1. It focuses on software supply chains, easier procurement and license compliance. Organizations that meet the requirements of the standard can self-certify to ISO/IEC 17021, from an accredited certification body or after successfully completing an audit.
