The International Accreditation Board (IAB) is dedicated to assuring competency, professional management, and service to the public by encouraging and setting standards for licensing, certification, and credentialing programs.
In 2013, a group of association executives formulated the IAB for the purpose of evaluating certification programs at a reasonable rate that smaller organizations can afford. Over the years the IAB has developed a comprehensive process to evaluate certification programs against international standards. In this way, accredited organizations can both improve existing certification programs as well as demonstrate to the public that their programs comply with industry best practices.
By accrediting certification programs, the public and the industries represented have an additional level of assurance, knowing that the program has been reviewed by a neutral third party and been found to meet or exceed reasonable levels of record keeping, security, objectivity, and professionalism.
The IAB itself operates under the international guidelines established as a quality assurance regime for accreditation bodies (ISO/IEC 17011 – Conformity Assessment: General Requirements for Accreditation Bodies Accrediting Conformity Assessment Bodies), and has established assessment tools and processes that assure certification bodies are in compliance with ISO/IEC 17024 (2012): Conformity Assessment – General Requirements for Bodies Operating Certification of Persons.
Members of the IAB Board of Directors and its various committees are volunteers who draw from many years of experience in management and auditing.