{"id":34807,"date":"2026-08-27T09:11:51","date_gmt":"2026-08-27T13:11:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/?p=34807"},"modified":"2026-08-27T09:11:51","modified_gmt":"2026-08-27T13:11:51","slug":"iso-casco-hands-get-out-of-jail-free-card-to-accreditation-bodies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/iso-casco-hands-get-out-of-jail-free-card-to-accreditation-bodies\/","title":{"rendered":"ISO\/CASCO Hands “Get Out of Jail Free” Card to Accreditation Bodies"},"content":{"rendered":"

You cannot make this stuff up. The corruption at ISO is so comprehensive, overwhelming, overt, transparent, and shoved-in-your-face, it has reached nearly comedic levels.<\/p>\n

ISO\/CASCO, which writes the ISO 17000 series of standards affecting accreditation bodies, just handed a free pass to those bodies in a ruling related to ISO 17025. In its decision, CASCO — a body literally comprised of the accreditation bodies<\/a> who then write the rules governing themselves — ruled that accreditation bodies are not required to be treated as suppliers<\/strong><\/em>. (See the story here<\/a>, from Management System World.)<\/p>\n

Everyone else<\/strong><\/em>, sure. You must apply supplier controls over them to ensure their performance. But not the accreditation bodies themselves. They are not subject to any controls at all.<\/p>\n

According to the report from CASCO, the question was raised by Standards Malaysia<\/a> — you know, one of the accreditation bodies working on CASCO — who apparently objected to being held to account by their ISO 17025 customers. CASCO, of course, folded like a wet tuna sandwich and handed the ABs this glorious gift, relieving them of all such oversight and control.<\/p>\n

\n

[CASCO] has clarified\u00a0that\u00a0I<\/u>SO\/IEC 17025:2017does not require laboratories to treat their accreditation bodies as external service providers subject to the standard\u2019s supplier controls. This applies when the body meets\u00a0two conditions: it provides accreditation\u00a0as defined in\u00a0ISO\/IEC 17000:2020 and conforms to\u00a0ISO\/IEC 17011:2017.<\/p>\n

The maintenance group concluded that accreditation services meeting the two conditions do not fall within Clause 6.6.1 and therefore are not subject to the controls in Clause 6.6.2. Accreditation is an independent assessment of a laboratory, not a service used to perform or support its testing, calibration or other laboratory activities.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The ruling admits that “laboratories may still choose to apply those controls to their accreditation bodies<\/em>,” but then goes on to say that the rule “may be considered for inclusion in a future revision of ISO\/IEC 17025<\/em>,” suggesting that a rewrite might override any lab’s internal policy to treat an AB as a supplier anyway.<\/p>\n

There was apparently some disagreement, though, as CASCO admits, “the clarification is not binding and does not necessarily represent agreement among ISO\/CASCO member bodies.<\/em>” Is there some AB on CASCO that isn’t a corrupt scamhouse? I have no idea who that might be, to be honest.<\/p>\n

Despite this being limited to ISO 17025, you know any such rule will eventually be flowed down to all<\/strong><\/em> ABs operating under all<\/strong><\/em> ISO 17xxx schemes. Then, I suspect we will see it flowed down to certification bodies as well, who already strongly resist being treated as suppliers and being subject to quality and delivery monitoring.<\/p>\n

It comes at an interesting time, too. I recently learned of a case where a CB was supposed to undergo an AB assessment, and the AB auditor never showed up<\/strong><\/em>. Now the CB’s accreditation is at risk because the AB couldn’t be bothered to do the one job<\/strong><\/em> they are hired for. Behind the scenes, I know why, too: the assigned AB auditor was running around the country doing training and seminars for the AB, which has repositioned itself as a training org and has lost interest in the less-lucrative accreditation part of their job. Most of the AB’s auditors have been repurposed as speakers and trainers, and now the accreditation service is suffering. But, per CASCO, you can’t hold them accountable!<\/p>\n

What a monumental, astonishing bit of self-dealing scammery. Well done, ISO!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A ruling says that accreditation bodies don’t have to be treated as suppliers.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34810,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","mc4wp_mailchimp_campaign":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[198,8928,43,181,11,789],"class_list":["post-34807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","tag-casco","tag-cristina-draghici","tag-iso","tag-iso-17011","tag-iso-17025","tag-iso-casco","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34807"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34807\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34809,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34807\/revisions\/34809"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.oxebridge.com\/emma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}