IAF MLA - IAF MLA and ISO 17024

IAF MLA and ISO 17024

There is currently a debate in the personnel certification world regarding the validity of peer evaluation. Some people criticize the concept of peer evaluation because it implies that the larger personnel certification bodies can impose their standards on others. These people would prefer to see the personnel certification bodies be certified to ISO 17024 with the national standard bodies. Thus, certification bodies would have a fixed set of standards (ISO 17024) to comply to and they'd be evaluated by independent bodies (the national standard bodies).

But many people criticize the ISO 17024 approach for two reasons:

• The requirements of ISO 17024 are easy to achieve and do not guarantee the quality of the management system personnel certification.
• Being certified to a national standard body rather than by one entity (peers) means that all personnel certification bodies can have different criteria to comply to, thus reducing the mutual recognition advantage of having similar criteria.