I was at a holiday party last weekend, talking with a lawyer about how standards are going places these days that they never have before! She mentioned that she is getting involved in city politics and part of her responsibilities is reviewing practices in various departments. Well, I just had to mention that there is a new release that provides guidance for applying ISO 9001 to police forces. The document is IWA 12 and it’s titled “Guidelines on the application of ISO 9001:2008 in policing organizations.”
IWA stands for International Workshop Agreement. The documents are published by ISO and available from Document Center Inc. This 60-page standard was developed to help police departments worldwide improve services to the citizenry they work for. It is not a compliance document per se, but a guide on how to meet compliance requirements. It is based on a program developed by the Abu Dhabi police force. So it clarifies and explains the requirements of ISO 9001 in policing terms.
With all the news regarding inferior services provided by some of our U.S. police forces, a move to requiring ISO 9001 certification might not be such a bad idea. The IWA document does not add any requirements to the source document, but just explains how the ISO standard can help promote customer (citizen) satisfaction and the security and safety of the citizens a police department serves.
As the document reviews the various clauses of ISO 9001, it provides concrete definition of those aspects of police work that apply to each section. For example, in reviewing the documentation requirements of the quality system, a flow-chart is provided showing how this relates to the documents maintained by police departments.
IWA 12 will certainly be helpful to management in defining and enacting plans to promote quality within a police force. When faced with the generic ISO 9001 document, staff may not be able to readily understand how the clauses relate to their activities. The IWA 12 allows any policing organization to review the basic quality concepts with direct examples of how they translate into supporting it’s unique mission.
You’ll be able to purchase both the ISO 9001 and the new IWA 12 at Document Center’s web store, www.document-center.com. Or you can certainly contact us by phone (650-591-7600), fax (650-591-7617) or email (info@document-center.com). We will not only provide you with the standards you need, but monitor them for you so you’ll always be aware when changes are issued. Thousands rely on Document Center — make us your Standards Experts too!
