16th Session of the EA Communications and Publications Committee

The Communications and Publications Committee (CPC) of the European Co-operation for Accreditation (EA) held its 16th meeting in Bled, Slovenia, on 30th September and 1st October 2009, and was organised by the Slovenian Accreditation (SA).

The Committee held four sessions tackling the following: preparing proposals for the Newsletter to be reissued, revision of the document entitled EA-1/08, drafting of the corporate identity study, updating EA website and to create a forum for EA members and committees to exchange information and knowledge about EU directives.

As agreed during the previous Committee meeting the work on revising the document entitled EA-1/08 continued: signatories to multilateral and bilateral agreements with the EA in order to draft an informative document and for regulatory bodies and interested parties to understand the importance of multilateral agreement (EA MLA).

On the recommendation of Project Group 2 a task force (TF) was formed to host a database that would enable the exchange of information and knowledge about EU directives. The aim of this TF is to create a communication infrastructure which would enable EA members to establish a user-friendly access to all relevant data pertaining to the requirements of the directives. The TF took into account all the directives in order to explain how the information regarding the directives and other regulations can be made available to all accreditation bodies.

The proposal of the TF envisaged the creation of a network for collecting and publishing a list of hyperlinks to websites where relevant documents could be found, while adequate moderators could edit the network that was hosted for each directive.

The same TF developed the idea of using on-line forums to promote communication between accreditation bodies and EA bodies, especially within the CPC Committee during the trial period when topics, moderators, rules and other technical requirements would be defined. The proposal was for the TF to report at the next Committee on the achieved progress and also to submit the analysis of experience gained and assess the appropriateness of the project.

Furthermore, it was agreed that the TF had to prepare EA corporate identity study that would be developed in detail by a professional designer thereafter.
It was proposed that the newsletter should be published twice a year, whereas the first issue should be ready by the end of the year and published in electronic format on the EA website for website visitors to download or print. National accreditation bodies would provide short news, and the newsletter would serve as a means to facilitate communication with interested parties. As suggested a proposal would be sent to the EA Executive Committee to decide on re-launching the newsletter.

In terms of the adoption of the 2010-2011 Work Programme and 2010Budget, it was agreed that the draft Programme would be sent to committee members for comments by the end of the year.

Additionally, it was agreed that the proposed review of the document entitled EA-2/12 Procedure for the Development and Approval of EA Documents and the Adoption of ILAC/IAF Documents (it will become 1/14) would be finalised by the end of the year and sent for comments, and adopted by the CPC Committee at the beginning of the year for the next phase of the procedure to come into effect.

Ms Jasna Stojanović participated in the work of Committee on behalf of the ATS.