Overhaul of FSC’s control system: field performance

FSC General Assembly 2011

motion passed at the General Assembly 2008 asked FSC’s quality control body Accreditation Services international (ASI) to address a growing concern among FSC’s members: Do the certification bodies consistently ensure compliance with the FSC standards on the ground?

Jakob Ryding of Forests of the World is concerned that FSC’s quality control body, Accreditation Services International (ASI), may be placing too little focus on field performance - a hallmark of the FSC system. In 2008, the membership asked ASI to ensure a higher level of assurance for field performance by certificate holders, through enhanced focus by ASI on the certification bodies, also known as CBs.

Earlier this year, Mr. Ryding set out to find out how ASI had followed up on the motion. He collected and analysed available ASI audit reports on certification body performance for their focus on field performance.

Field performance remains under-prioritised

Mr. Ryding acknowledges that ASI has taken some steps to address the motion. However, the survey shows that field performance has remained strongly under-prioritised during ASI auditing of certification bodies. “Our survey shows that only about five percent of the Corrective Action Requests (CARs) issued by ASI to certification bodies directly concern performance on the ground. This figure indicates that ASI has not yet addressed the core of the 2008 motion”.

Transparency test

The process of collecting this information was also a test of the transparency offered by the FSC system in practice : how easy would it be to gain access to relevant reports and documents?

“Only ASI surveillance reports related to forest management auditing are publicly available, which limits the possible scope of the study”, said Mr. Ryding. “We were unable to see how ASI handles CB performance related to Chain of Custody or Controlled Wood auditing”. In addition, less than half the reports that were supposed to be available at the ASI web page were actually online. “My conclusion is that ASI has got a huge transparency problem”, says Mr. Ryding.

Response from ASI

Carlos Ruiz, ASI’s Operations Director, has provided the following update on actions implemented as response to the 2008 motion (often referred to as “motion 50”). The actions include, but are not restricted to, basically 3 key operation components:

• Human resources: ASI has reviewed its organisation structure and started a decentralisation process. It has also increased its capacity by more than doubling its staff and strengthened its competence testing. New training and calibration initiatives were put in place to ensure consistency and enhance objectivity of ASI evaluations. ASI also strengthened its capacity in the Congo Basin.
• Quality Management System (QMS): ASI has put an improved reporting model in place to reduce report writing time, increased compliance audits following up on formal, review of sampling procedure to ensure it effectively manages risk.
• Tools/systems and projects: ASI has developed Accreditation Management Systems (AMS) with greatly increasing efficiency through managing NCRs, audit reports and schedules, suspension process and complaints processes. ASI is also implementing a research project to analyse the information captured in the accreditation processes as well as options for future models of accreditations.

These are in line with ISO 17011 (Requirements for Accreditation Bodies) and the service agreement that ASI has with FSC IC.

The preliminary results of Jakob Ryding’s survey, and ASI’s follow-up on Motion 50 were presented at a side event on Monday.