Impartiality Policy

The Jamaica National Agency for Accreditation (JANAAC) takes every precaution to ensure that its operations demonstrate the highest level of impartiality and professionalism. These characteristics are important requirements of the international standard ISO/IEC17011 and other guidelines of the International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation (ILAC) and the Inter American Accreditation Cooperation (IAAC). Impartiality is one of the critical pillars on which an accreditation body must be built to ensure its continued strength and integrity in delivering the important service of accreditation and accreditation-related activities.

In order to be accepted and recognized internationally, an accreditation system must comply with the requirements of ISO/IEC17011, including the need to have an effective system for establishing and safeguarding the impartiality of all aspects of its operations.  This is accomplished by implementing and maintaining policies, procedures and programmes for the identification and monitoring of all areas of its operations where the potential for bias exists and taking the necessary steps to mitigate these risks (see Doc 27 – JANAAC’s Impartiality Programme).

JANAAC will ensure that at all times, and in all situations, all aspects of its organization and operations are so designed to safeguard objectivity and impartiality.  JANAAC will also ensure that immediate action is taken to address any aspect of its organization or operations, perceived by any stakeholder to be partial or discriminatory. In this regard, JANAAC ensures that:

• commercial, financial, or other pressures are not allowed to compromise impartiality.
• all JANAAC personnel and committee members commit to acting objectively and impartially in the duties that they undertake on JANAAC’s behalf, and that they disclose any potential conflicts of interest whenever they may arise.
• the members of the JANAAC Accreditation Council and related committees are drawn from different stakeholder groups, with no one group predominating.
• risks to impartiality are identified and analysed on an on-going basis and suitable monitoring and mitigation actions applied. JANAAC will consult with the appropriate parties, as necessary to assure impartiality.
• when risks to impartiality are identified,  suitable actions are taken to eliminate or minimize such risks and documentation maintained accordingly. If the risk to impartiality cannot be mitigated to an acceptable level, such accreditation will not be undertaken.
• the agency’s policies, processes and procedures are non-discriminatory and are applied in a non-discriminatory manner. JANAAC makes its services accessible to all CABs whose requests for accreditation fall within the scope of its activities, in accordance with its established policies and procedures.  
• the agency does not offer any conformity assessment service that is covered by accreditation, neither does the agency offer consultancy. Additionally, the agency is not linked to any consultancy and never makes any claims on the use of any consultant or consultancy service to make the accreditation process simpler, faster, easier or less expensive.

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