Accreditation Governance, Research and Innovation Staff unit at a glance

Accreditation governance

Conformity assessment and accreditation issues can arise in nearly all economic areas and across various departments. Given its high level of technicality, accreditation law is one of the most complex regulatory matters of technical law. This staff unit develops fundamental legal policy positions for accreditation in practice and upon request provides support to ministries and regulators at federal and state levels with the regulatory implementation of conformity assessment and accreditation.

In particular, the unit is the point of contact for:

• Coordination of ministerial departments on issues of conformity assessment and accreditation
• Matters relating to mutual recognition agreements under international law
• Statements on WTO law (in particular issuance of certificates of equivalence)
• Statements on European accreditation law
• Development of fundamental technical policy positions on accreditation and conformity assessment
• Coordination of the cooperation with the supervising ministries
• Point of contact for associations and civil society stakeholders on accreditation issues

Foreign accreditations

Further information on foreign accreditations

Innovation and future accreditation issues

This staff unit is responsible for ongoing strategic development of the technical basis for examinations, assessments and methods for conformity assessment and accreditation by implementing appropriate projects and supporting the introduction of innovative technologies in the accreditation process. Moreover, the staff unit carries out a foresight planning process to continually identify and monitor issues that might have an impact on the activities of accredited conformity assessment bodies and the reliability of accredited statements of conformity. The identified challenges are formulated as research questions and the results are published or included in ongoing planning of assessments. Another focus is on the support of relevant standardisation projects insofar as they include conformity assessment.

Current areas and activities include:

• Digital attestations of conformity (eAttestation) with digital accreditation symbol
  • Secure digital accreditation certificate
• Conformity assessment and accreditation in the area of the future European legal act on artificial intelligence (AI Act)
• Technical accreditation requirements for IT assessment at conformity assessment bodies (AAIT)
• DAkkS DOI: Digital object identifier for accreditation competencies
• Participation in DIN committee NA 043 “DIN Standards Committee Information Technology and Applications (NIA)”
• Participation in DIN and DKE mirror committee NA 043-01-42 GA on artificial intelligence at national, European and international level
• Collaboration on DIN standardisation roadmap AI 2.0
• Cooperation in the consortium project Quality Infrastructure Digital (QI Digital)
• Participation in the federal and state certification working group on the topic of data protection
• Collaboration with and support of the German Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices (BfArM) on conformity assessment schemes for digital health applications (DiGA).