2015 “The Year of Quality”, ISO 9001 Update and New ISO Standards/Guidelines

In Chinese Astrology, they say that 2015 is the “Year of The Goat”.  For those of us in the realm of quality management, we’re affectionately labeling 2015 as “The Year of Quality”.  This is primarily due to the new update of ISO 9001:2015, which is projected to be published at the end of the year.

Here’s a quick recap on where things stand, as it seems like the last 2 months have been a blur.  We went from the QuEST Forum Leadership Council and Work Group meetings straight to a flurry of year-end implementations and training projects, just as ISO announced critical new timeline updates for the new ISO 9001:2015 standard.

The New Year kicked off with the QuEST Forum Leadership Summit where new ICT quality initiatives we announced.  Then the ISO/TC 176/Sc 2/WG 24/TG 5 committee, responsible for the ISO 9001:2015 revision, began working through some important member responses to the FDIS.  Like we stated, 2015 is going to be a very busy year in the world of quality management.

 

ISO 9001: 2015–UPDATE:

We can report this,—it’s progressing.   In November 2014, ISO 9001 moved to the final stage of the update process, FDIS (Final Draft International Standard).  Nigel Croft, Chair of the ISO subcommittee revising ISO 9001 (ISO/TC 176/ Sc2) released a video and provided an update on the status of the FDIS stage.  He maintains that new ISO is on track for scheduled publication.   The updated version is resting on a new core concept of “risk basked thinking”, which is aimed at preventing undesirable outcomes.  Here is that video update:

 

 

The ISO 9001:2015 revision will impact other standards and there is much complexity to the update as defined in previous articles on our blog.  For example, standards like ISO 14001 (environmental management) and ISO 27001 (information security management) will share the new alignment.  Ultimately, TL 9000, the ICT quality management standard will be updated (TL 9000 6.0) to incorporate the new changes in ISO 9001.

Recently the ISO/TC 176/Sc 2/WG 24/TG 5 committee published their Validation Report, incorporating and scoring comments from member organizations that have the duty to provide input (both positive and negative) about the proposed revision.  In the USA, ANSI provided critical input, for the UK, BSI submitted detailed comments and other global member organizations such as SCC (Canada), AFNOR (France), DGN (Mexico) and BIS (India) all contributed to the Validation Report data.  At this point, the comments are now being reviewed by ISO and its up to the committee to acknowledge and address the input.  Right now things are fluid, as the ability to “audit” risk based focus and activity is being weighed.

 

NEW ISO Standards and Guidelines

The update to ISO 9001:2015 certainly hasn’t curtailed the release of new guidelines and standards.  In fact, in just the past few months, ISO has released and updated several standards and guidelines.  Here are just a few pertaining to the sectors and clients we serve:

 

ISO 37500:2014  Outsourcing

This standard aims to provide general guidance for outsourcing for any organization in any sector.  It provides a general vocabulary for outsourcing practitioners across all industry sectors.  It includes typical outsourcing concepts to improve the understanding of all stakeholders, by providing a set of practices that can be used to manage the outsourcing life cycle.

 

ISO/IEC 27018:2014  Data Protection, Cloud Privacy

This International Standard establishes commonly accepted control objectives, controls and guidelines for implementing measures to protect Personally Identifiable Information (PII) in accordance with the privacy principles in ISO/IEC 29100 for the public cloud computing environment.

(Microsoft just certified to this standard)

 

ISO/IEC 27040:2015  Guide On Data Security, Storage

This provides detailed technical guidance on how organizations can define an appropriate level of risk mitigation by employing a well-proven and consistent approach to the planning, design, documentation and implementation of data storage security.

 

ISO/DIS 37101  Sustainable Communities, Management Systems and Guidance For Resilience and Smartness

In our rapidly changing world, ensuring cities and communities are fit for the future is a key priority for many city leaders. Providing sustainable energy supplies, coping with environmental and climate changes, building and maintaining durable infrastructures and meeting the needs and expectations of citizens is the focus of this new standard.

 

As you can see, nothing is slowing down in the world of quality management as it pertains to ICT, the cloud, data security and sustainability.  So stay tuned, there’s much more to come in 2015 and we are creating a resource for our clients to check in on the latest updates on the ISO 9001:2015 revision.

For more information on ISO 9001 or implementing any of the standards above, please contact info@bizphyx.com.