Individual Standards
To meet the rigorous ANAB ISO/IEC 17024 accreditation standard for personnel certifications, Capital Academy demonstrated its adherence to nearly 120 individual standards, including those summarized in the following broad categories:
Credibility: ANSI/ISO/IEC 17024 is assessment-based, meaning certification may only be conferred upon candidates successfully completing a competency-based certification examination. The certification examination must be fair, valid, and reliable. The examination must be fair and cannot discriminate based on non-competency related factors such as race, age, gender, or ethnicity. A valid examination correctly measures whether an individual has the necessary competencies for the job. Validity indicates that the process measures what it is intended to measure. Reliability demonstrates that the examination consistently measures a person’s abilities.
Impartiality: The certification body must ensure its structure, policies, and procedures maintain impartiality and objectivity, managing conflicts of interest arising from certification activities.
Independence: Certification functions must be independent of training to ensure that confidentiality, information security, and impartiality are not compromised.
Transparency: The certification body is required to have an active complaints process to resolve complaints against its activities as well as complaints against certified individuals.
Accountability: The certification body must have due process for revoking a credential for unethical or incompetent behavior.
Balanced Representation of Stakeholders: The standard requires the certification body to involve key stakeholders in making certification-related decisions. Additionally, subject matter experts (SMEs) must be involved in creating the certification scheme requirement based on a valid job or practice analysis, which forms the foundation of a fair, valid, and reliable examination.
Continuous Quality Improvement: The certification body must develop a management system for continual improvement of its program.
Other Requirements:The standard is comprehensive, covering all aspects of certification, including examination and data security, recertification, resource requirements, confidentiality, competence of personnel involved with certification activities, financial requirements, and use of certification and logo marks.
To maintain accreditation, ANAB requires more ongoing rigor by the credentialing body than other standards. ANAB requires annual surveillance applications, coupled with annual audits by assessors, and reapplication every five years.
