Workshop on accreditation for civil servants

The value and application of accreditation as a policy instrument

At the invitation of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate,  the RvA gave a workshop on accreditation on 9 November 2022 for policy officials and government legal experts at ministries who deal with accreditation and conformity assessment in their daily work. The RvA welcomed this opportunity to inform and enthuse more policy officials and government lawyers about the value of accreditation within the quality system.

Conclusion after this lively afternoon: the application of accreditation and conformity assessment is top off mind among policy officials. But it also emerged that there are still many questions.

The questions raised were mainly about the application and value of accreditation as a policy instrument. Questions that the RvA is happy to discuss. For example, the question: “How can supervision by national inspectorates and accreditation reinforce each other?” And: “When is accreditation an appropriate policy instrument to deploy?

Workshop program

This introduction to accreditation gave the participants a first impression of the working method, value and scope of accreditation within the quality system. They were also introduced to the field of work of the RvA and the (inter)national context in which the RvA operates. To give insight into how governments use and can use accreditation as a policy instrument, we discussed a number of cases, partly introduced by policy officials themselves.