ISO 19011 open review and analysis

The ISO is the International Organization for Standardization, a global federation of national standard bodies. The International standard is not responsible for setting up requirements, but it offers guidance regarding how to properly navigate through the audit program, whether it’s about how it's conducted and planned to how its evaluated and made competent.

The responsibility of coming up with these standards is usually carried out via its technical committees. Any interested member has a right to be represented on the committee that is looking into an issue of its interest. This international body works with various organizations such as governmental and non-governmental as well as Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) on issues regarding creating standards for Electrotechnical standards. 

The ISO19011’s preparation was done by Technical Committee ISO/TC 176, with its second edition replacing the first document thereafter; (ISO 19011:2002), incurring lots of technical revisions that have improved the standard and made it more effective.

Some revisions that took place were such as:

• The broadening of the scope in auditing to include management systems
• Clarification of the relationship between ISO 19011 and ISO 17021
• New audit methods such as remote audits and risk concepts introduced
• Upholding of confidence during the audit
• Classes were also reorganized presumably 5,6,7
• Additional information had to be introduced to do away with the use of help boxes
• The processes of weighing competence and the process of evaluation have been strengthened further.

Significance of the standard

ISO 19011 is one of the standards of the ISO that set out elaborate guidelines for auditing in management systems. The basic pillars on which the standard was formed are in order too:

• Establish clear principles on an audit of management systems.
• A clear guide on how to manage the programs involved during auditing
• Direction on external and internal audits
• An opinion on the credibility as well as performance of the involved auditors