Advancing the Global Quality Infrastructure: Key Insights and Trends from GQII 2023

The “GQII-Report 2023: Insights and Trends on Economies Using Metrology, Standards, Accreditation and Conformity Assessment Services” was published earlier this year using 2023 data. The GQII database and ranking integrate information on quality infrastructure (QI) in 185 economies. Each edition collects and analyses data on standardization, metrology, accreditation and conformity assessment activities. Data from multiple sources is used to ensure comparability and a formula is used to calculate each economy’s score and position in the global QI ranking.

Transparency and digitalisation of accreditation data

Data was received from 166 accreditation bodies and focal points worldwide. The GQII promotes transparency of QI data using publicly available data from national, regional and international QI institutions or provided to the GQII team. The authors suggest practices to improve future data access and transparency for accreditation bodies:

• Publish data reported annually to IAF and ILAC on accredited bodies and scope and create sections or search engines for easy data access and download on the bodies’ websites.

• Further digitalisation can be achieved by providing practical and open data access options, such as data visualisation services or downloadable and machine-readable data file formats.

The support of regional and international accreditation organisations was crucial in achieving a high response rate, demonstrating their role in promoting digitalisation, transparency, and reliability of public data on accreditation.

Highlights of the GQII 2023 Report

Key findings and conclusions from the GQII 2023 include:

• Germany, China, and the United States continue to lead the Index. Germany maintains its overall leader, but the United States leads in metrology and accreditation, while China leads in standardization.

• Quality Infrastructure is particularly robust in North America, Europe, and China, followed by the other BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), Japan, Australia, and New Zealand.

• Ukraine and Saudi Arabia have made the most significant gains in the ranking.

• The data confirm the increase in management system certification. Between 2021 and 2023, the number of accredited management system certification bodies increased by 11.3%, from 3,061 to 3,407. Accredited testing laboratories also increased by 7%, from 3,061 to 3,407, while certified product certification bodies decreased by 5.0%, from 3,987 to 3,786.

• The importance of private standards and related certification schemes has increased recently. In response, the 2023 GQII collected this information for the first time and plans to expand its scope in future reports.

Perspectives of Global QI Indices

Recognising the importance of data and information on the evolution of QI at the international level, representatives from the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), the German National Metrology Institute (PTB), and Mesopartner have started to coordinate their work around the Quality Infrastructure for Sustainable Development (QI4SD) Index and the Global Quality Infrastructure Index (GQII).

The joint vision is to publish an integrated global QI index in 2026. The principles for this integration were established at a workshop held in Vienna (April 2024), attended by 23 experts from 19 countries. The new index will maintain the International Network for Quality Infrastructure (INetQI) definition of QI, combine the objectives of the GQII (evaluation of QI performance) and the QI4SD index (QI’s contribution to sustainable development and specific Sustainable Development Goals), promote data transparency, and produce various reports and informative products.

The full GQII 2023 report is available for download, and the dataset has been made available as an open resource in Excel format. The authors encourage the scientific community, QI organisations, and policymakers to use them to promote innovation and research in this field.

This article was first published in the IAF Outlook on 19 September 2024.