Agreements

Multilateral Cooperative Accreditation Arrangement

On September 20, 2003, ANAB and the Japan Accreditation Board for Conformity Assessment (JAB) signed the Multilateral Cooperative Accreditation Arrangement (MCAA) to provide "for the recognition of the acceptability of the results of each party's assessment and accreditation program based upon the determination of equivalence."

Though developed cooperatively by ANAB and JAB, the MCAA was written with the express intent of adding other national accreditation bodies as parties to the arrangement. The first to do so was the Joint Accreditation System of Australia and New Zealand (JAS-ANZ), followed to date by the Standards Council of Canada (SCC), the Korea Accreditation Board (KAB), the Taiwan Accreditation Foundation (TAF), the Entidad Mexicana de Accreditacion (EMA), and the German Association for Accreditation (DGA).

As signatories of the International Accreditation Forum (IAF) mMultilateral recognition arrangement (MLA), each of these accreditation bodies agrees to recognize and officially publicize that accredited certification under the program of any of the parties to the MCAA is considered equivalent to accredited certification under its own program. The MCAA came about because mutual recognition of equivalence as a signatory of the IAF MLA does not require the signatory to grant accreditation and the right to use its accreditation mark to any certification body accredited by any of the other MLA signatories.

To qualify for the MCAA, each party agrees to be assessed by a representative and competent team of the other parties to verify equivalence of its accreditation assessments, and agrees to be assessed on an ongoing basis to verify continuing equivalence of its accreditation assessments.

Certification bodies interested in joining the MCAA should review the MCAA documents (links below). Sections III.B and III.D of the MCAA outline benefits of and requirements for participation. E-mail ANAB to request a copy of Annex C that can be completed electronically.

Accreditation bodies interested in joining the MCAA should review the MCAA documents (links below) and contact the MCAA administrator, who will request the necessary information to update the MCAA and Annexes.

Multilateral Cooperative Accreditation Arrangement

MCAA Annexes

Other Agreements

In addition to the cooperative arrangements in force under the MCAA, ANAB has signed separate bilateral agreements with the Dutch Accreditation Council (Raad Voor Accreditatie - RVA); the United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS); the General Accreditation Coordination of the National Institute of Metrology, Standardization and Industrial Quality (CGCRE/INMETRO) in Brazil; and the China National Accreditation Service for Conformity Assessment (CNAS).

Certification bodies seeking cooperative accreditation by ANAB and another accreditation body should complete ANAB form AG 5000, Certification Body Agreement for Cooperative Accreditation [link to document on site]. Note: The link is to a .pdf version for reference; the interactive form is available via the EQM database.