I wish this were the setup for a joke, but it isn’t. There is something fundamentally wrong with an international accreditation scheme if those pushing for its improvement are subject to the level of harassment I am about to reveal.

As you likely know, for decades now, Oxebridge has led the charge to improve the ISO certification scheme. This forced us to confront the issue from two fronts simultaneously: to improve ISO standards themselves and to improve the surrounding conformity assessment audits. To this end, Oxebridge and its supporters have:

  • Implemented a robust, international Whistleblower Reporting Tool to allow users to report fraud, abuse, corruption and conflicts of interest without fear of personal reprisal
  • Provided free template kits to make it easier for companies to implement ISO standards, even if they have zero dollars to do so.
  • Provided testimony before regulators and oversight bodies, detailing roadmaps on how the scheme can be improved.
  • Provided independent reporting, free from all advertising and third-party influence, on problems facing the scheme, and how to fix them.
  • Developed a free, open-source QMS standard to further maximize the reach and benefits of ISO 9001 certification.
  • Provided free consulting to companies around the world via Slack, Discord, LinkedIn and multiple other channels.
  • Represented users on key committees to improve both standards and certification activities.
  • Pressed for low-cost supplemental health insurance for quality management professionals.
  • Taken the resulting harassment and threats on behalf of whistleblowers, many of whom may have faced dangers at home if they had argued for any of these actions on their own behalf.

All of that costs money — a lot of money — and yet each of these services is provided entirely for free. Oxebridge doesn’t even require email signup to access the services, so we have no way to monetize them via subsequent marketing activities.

I was never aggressive about trying to get compensated either. In the end, our Legal Defense Fund earned only a few hundred dollars over a fifteen year period, and our Ko-Fi and Patreon pages are essentially at zero. So no one was ever coming to help. But I understood that reality before getting into this situation, and I kept at it anyway.

People like to watch gladiator fights, so long as they don’t have to pay for them.

Now take a look around. What other body has done even a one of these things? Competing consultants are happy to sell services and leave it at that. “Professional” societies like ASQ and CQI simply build up multilevel marketing scams to sell products to members, and induce members to sell more products to other members. So-called “user” organizations like IFAN act as de facto sales teams for ISO, selling products to users rather than representing their interests. The few outlets for information we have bury their articles behind paywalls, refusing to give anything away for free.

Bad Actors Doing Bad Acts

But now let’s see how ISO and the certification scheme actors have responded. Remember, there are both official accreditation rules (such as ISO 17021, ISO 17011, IAF Mandatory Documents, etc.) and regulations (such as EU regulation EC-765-2008 and the WTO’s Technical Barriers to Trade regulation) that dictate how the parties are supposed to react to stakeholder feedback and complaints.

They have fallen short. To date:

  • A senior VP from BSI threatened to kill me.
  • A former NASA engineer, later representing the IAQG, threatened to beat me with a baseball bat.
  • Another IAQG official and DNV sales rep stole articles from the Oxebridge site and republished them while claiming I was mentally ill for questioning CBs.
  • An Indian accreditation body has also claimed that I tried to extort money from him, and faced no consequences after this was proven to be false.
  • A drag queen who runs a CB in the Philippines, and who posts videos of himself dancing in his bedroom next to Hello Kitty dolls, has taken to repeating the false extortion claims.
  • ASQ has banned me from speaking or attending any of their events, anywhere in the world.
  • The US TAG to TC 176 has banned me from participating in standards development activities.
  • UKAS and other ABs have silently branded Oxebridge as “vexatious” to shut down the Oxebridge ISO Whistleblower program.
  • The IAF and its regional bodies, including EA, IAAC, and APAC, have adopted a policy of silence, ignoring matters put to them, even allegations of crimes committed by their members.
  • The former Chair of TAG 176 urged ASQ to sue me after we revealed he had padded his resume.
  • NQA threatened a client simply for hiring me to help them resolve audit nonconformities. ANAB then provided false evidence to back up NQA, trying to further damage Oxebridge’s operations.
  • ISO attempted to sue Oxebridge — twice — for simply publishing reviews of its standards.
  • A known plagiarist in risk management tried to sue Oxebridge for defamation. (The case was thrown out.)
  • A sovereign citizen — the people who think that because their birth certificate lists their name in all caps, US laws don’t apply to them —  threatened a federal judge during a defamation case brought by Oxebridge. (We won.)
  • All Oxebridge-related posts are automatically redacted or banned on the Elsmar Cove website.
  • I am banned from writing for ASQ Quality Progress
  • I am banned from writing for Quality Digest
  • I am banned from writing for Quality Magazine
  • A racist ASQ member created entire websites that falsely accused me of being a terrorist; he then obtained copies of the floor plans of my home to identify where the windows were to my family’s bedrooms, so he could determine how many children I had, and posted threats on Twitter. ASQ awarded him a Fellowship.
  • A certificate mill operator made up a story that I had been arrested and then published it on over 100 fake news sites.
  • Oxebridge-related material is banned on multiple Reddit subreddits, including those for ISO 9001, CMMC, and more.
  • The former Elsmar Cove owner SWATTED me, sending armed police to my house to investigate a false crime.
  • The same Elsmar guy defamed Oxebridge for — wait for it — twenty-two years, falsely accusing us of fraud. We eventually sued and won.
  • A former felon — and Elsmar moderator — threatened to “destroy” Oxebridge through a defamation campaign.

In the past few months alone, I have been publicly called a white supremacist, a “nigger,” a liberal crazy, a right-wing lunatic, a terrorist, an extortionist, a con man, a homosexual, a homophobe, a racist, an antisemite, a “Jew-lover,” and a host more. Yes, not all are actually insults, but they were meant to be. And, yes, many of those things contradict the others.

If anyone had experienced just one of these things, it would be stressful. Now imagine how it feels to undergo all of them, and to know that it will never stop. Nobody is stepping in to help stop this. No one.

ISO and the attendant certification and accreditation bodies are largely above the law. They each operate as for-profit companies, but have duped governments into awarding them tax-exempt status on promises they have failed — for decades — to uphold.

The IAF, for example, has official Bylaws and Articles of Incorporation. These ensure the US government that the IAF exists specifically to uphold ISO 17011 and eject AB members when they fail to comply with that standard. In exchange, the IAF does not have to pay taxes. In reality, the IAF does the opposite, and works to help its members violate ISO 17011, giving them a sheen of authenticity by allowing them to do so with the IAF logo slathered all over their letterhead.

All these actors do this. ISO, the ABs, the CBs, and even the various IAF regional bodies like APAC. They each obtain non-profit status, promising to uphold standards, but then work to protect their members from complaints and reports when they violate them.

Supralegal Entities

A chart showing the traceability of world scandals back to the IAF. Had IAF bodies adhered to rules, the scandals may never have occurred. Click to enlarge.

This is tax fraud on a global scale. And, meanwhile, that simplification overlooks the wholesale criminality of their other actions, like violating sanctions, falsifying data, and committing scams that end up in thousands of people dying.

Imagine if I opened a soup kitchen to help the homeless, obtained 501(c)_(3) tax-exempt status, and later converted my soup kitchen to a for-profit, high-end, commercial restaurant. But, imagine then, if I continued to never pay taxes. Then imagine I used my tax-free income to launder Russian funds or falsify test results for fireproof materials. I’d be in jail.

But not the various ISO bodies.

These bodies are largely above the law because governments have thrown their lot in with them. UKAS narrowly escaped being nationalized after the UK government’s own team found it was culpable in the Grenfell Tower and Randox DNA testing scandals. Nevertheless, the government recently doubled down and threw its support behind UKAS, allowing it to continue to violate that nation’s laws. It doesn’t matter how many people die, the UK wants to keep up a brave face and pretend its crown jewel isn’t a fake.

The system is now irreparably broken, thanks to corrupt and lax governments, inept law enforcement, and largely undereducated lawmakers and regulators.

The entire scheme is now a huge certificate mill scam. If you buy a cert and pay your annual dues, the CBs and ABs will run to offer their protection when you are reported for some scam or fraud. If you fail to pay, they will oust you from the scheme and entice governments to ban you from national contracts for failing to have a certificate.

The solution, obviously, is to create an alternative scheme —one free of corruption and baked-in conflicts of interest. But with their hooks in government, ISO and the attendant bodies would strangle such an effort in its crib.

 

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Traditional Tri-System