An international workshop to help local governments implement quality management systems based on ISO 9001 will be held May 22–23 in Veracruz, Mexico. The aim of the meeting is to produce an international workshop agreement (IWA) to allow more-rapid ISO 9001 implementations in governments, shorter process as compared to the traditional ISO process of developing standards through its technical committee structure. The workshop will be hosted by the Dirección General de Normas, Mexico’s national standards body. The agency hosted a similar workshop in 2002 that developed IWA 2: “Quality Management Systems-Guidelines for the Application of ISO 9001:2000 in Education.”

“Since the first ISO 9000 standards were published in 1987, this approach to ensuring the quality of the output of organizations has been taken up first by the manufacturing industry, then by the service sector, and in more recent years, by public administrations,” says Alan Bryden, ISO secretary-general. “This evolution wouldn’t have taken place unless the ISO 9000 approach provided concrete benefits for the organizations that implemented it.”

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