Good Governance in Quality Infrastructure Toolkit

Quality infrastructure is the national system of metrology, standardisation, accreditation, conformity assessment and market surveillance that underpins trade, consumer protection and industrial competitiveness. Whether it is trusted at home and recognised abroad turns less on technical capacity than on governance: clear mandates, demonstrable independence and impartiality, genuine stakeholder representation, and working coordination between the pillars. This package documents that governance layer for ministries, national standards bodies, metrology institutes, accreditation bodies and regulators, in line with the good practice promoted by UNIDO, ISO and the INetQI community.

The quality and governance manual establishes the governance model and records how mandate, independence, impartiality and coordination arrangements are defined. Procedures cover control of documented information, risk management and risk-based thinking, stakeholder identification, communication and engagement, internal audit, management review, compliance and anti-bribery, performance monitoring and key performance indicators, and transition and change management — the last mattering most where a national quality policy is being implemented and institutional roles are moving between bodies. Records include a risk register, a stakeholder register and mapping, conflict-of-interest declarations, corrective action requests and management review minutes, and a good-governance self-assessment checklist lets an institution test itself before a peer evaluation does it instead.