Devindra Chattergoon has stepped down from his role as Convenor of Technical Committee 176, the committee responsible for developing the upcoming ISO 9001 revision. He has been instead assigned a “supporting role” on Working Group 29, which processes comments on draft documents. Given the news from last week that BSI and the ISO Central Secretariat are largely ignoring ISO 9001 comments, it pretty much relegates Chattergoon to the dustbin.
This comes somewhat as a surprise, given he was a rising star in the ISO 9001 revision process, shot to sudden fame and power largely due to his willingness to go along with whatever the ISO executives told him to do. Chattergoon represents Trinidad & Tobago, and that country has only a few dozen ISO 9001 certificates out of the nearly 1.3 million that exist worldwide, so his rise to power was … well, unusual, to say the least. But he was a dutiful soldier, and recently issued an official memo curtly reminding TC 176 members to obey the dictates of the non-elected Technical Management Board, a position he probably should have been fighting against, since the TMB strips away the power of TC 176 to actually write ISO 9001. Here’s just a snippet of that recent memo, where Chattergoon reminds TC 176’ers they are prohibited from changing even a single word of Annex SL, referred here as “HS” (for harmonized structure):
Remember that the “HS” language was not written by any quality management subject matter experts or nominated delegates of TC 176 member nations, and merely by hand-picked folks within the TMB. The text can’t be voted on, altered, or edited… all of which violates ISO’s rules of procedures and the WTO regulations on Technical Barriers to Trade.
But supporters of the TMB — like Chattergoon and Nigel Croft — are usually rewarded with plum positions in ISO committees if they agree to this deal with the devil, so sucking up to them usually works.
I’m not entirely sure what went wrong with Chattergoon, although he was a bit of a bigmouth on LinkedIn and violated ISO’s Policy on Communication of Committee Work. When I asked him if he would avoid conflicts of interest by promising not to use his position on TC 176 to publish books about ISO 9001, Chattergoon thought it would be cute to tell me, “I’ll do it if you do.” The only problem is that I am not on TC 176.
When I asked Chattergoon to give his side of the story about his sudden demotion, he revealed that ISO had ordered him not to speak to me, which is chilling in its own right.
But even his answer broke the rules. Yes, he is supposed to direct me to my NSB (which would be ANSI), but he wasn’t supposed to reveal that ISO gave him orders to do so. I didn’t know that, so he still revealed information, even as he was trying not to reveal information.
Also, what kind of person volunteers for unpaid work for an organization that tells you who you can and cannot speak to? I guess the same people who volunteer to surrender their intellectual property to a commercial publishing company like ISO, and let them keep all the money while charging you a fee for your volunteering. And then make you pay again if you want to use your own IP.
These people are not particularly good at this whole “business” thing.
We can see what an absolute shit-show this entire ISO 9001 revision thing has been. But what is clear is that ISO is tightening its grip over every single drop of information that gets out about the revision, and the whole idea of standards being developed “by consensus” of international members is long gone.
Anyway, let’s see who is stupid / desperate enough to take on the gig, now that it’s open again.
UPDATE: Some TC 176 folks are trying to debunk Oxebridge reporting by claiming the group met in Detroit on August 6 (last week) to go over the “2000 comments received.” They are saying these comments are related to the Committee Draft (CD), which Oxebridge reported was scrapped and the comments largely ignored. So how to reconcile this?
The Detroit meeting did not go over “2000 comments” on the CD itself but, according to a press release, “2000 comments received from global experts on potential improvements.” This is a very different thing. The press release never mentions the CD at all, but only these vague “potential improvements.” People who were at the meeting said they were frustrated by the lack of consideration given to criticisms of the CD, which made nearly no changes at all to ISO 9001:2015.
In addition, ISO is using these press releases and meetings to give the appearance that comments are being officially dispositioned, but insiders tell me that is not happening. This is why a lot of TC 176 leaders are disgruntled and quitting. (I’m not saying that’s true in Chattergoon’s case, since I just don’t know.)
But, no: ISO is not listening to feedback on the Committee Draft. It is primarily working on a new CD2 to accommodate changes to the Annex SL core text and to make ISO 9001:2025 machine readable for future AI processing, under the ISO Smart program. The ISO Central Secretariat was angry that CD1 did not move in the direction of ISO Smart, and did not address changes to Annex SL.
To be completely clear: ISO Smart will allow ISO 9001 to be updated in real time, circumventing all voting, translation, and review steps. In short, ISO Smart will end all consensus rules for ISO standards development. Since ISO 9001 is ISO’s flagship product, they are starting there.
Christopher Paris is the founder and VP Operations of Oxebridge. He has over 35 years’ experience implementing ISO 9001 and AS9100 systems, and helps establish certification and accreditation bodies with the ISO 17000 series. He is a vocal advocate for the development and use of standards from the point of view of actual users. He is the writer and artist of THE AUDITOR comic strip, and is currently writing the DR. CUBA pulp novel series. Visit www.drcuba.world
