One of the main objectives of the CIPM MRA is to "provide governments and other parties with a secure technical foundation for wider agreements related to international trade, commerce and regulatory affairs". The MRA requires signatory NMIs to implement an acceptable quality system that cover the calibration and measurement services provided by them. In the Asia-Pacific region, it is the responsibility of the APMP to review and confirm that each of its member NMIs participating in the MRA has implemented an acceptable quality system to support the CMCs published in Appendix C.

   In order to be able to give this assurance, the APMP requires that
(i) a quality system satisfying ISO/IEC 17025 (or for reference material producers, ISO Guide 34 or ILAC Guide 12) is implemented, and
(ii) the technical competence to deliver the claimed uncertainties is demonstrated through the quality system.

   The document "APMP Guidelines For Accepting A Quality System" * expands on these requirements and provides guidelines on how NMIs can demonstrate compliance with them. There are three recognised pathways to achieve this:
a) Third party accreditation Certification to ISO 9001 and attestation by technical peers Attestation by a team consisting of quality system experts and technical peers

   All three pathways will involve experts visiting the NMI and reporting on its quality system and its technical competence to achieve the CMCs. The APMP believes that this is needed to convince governments and other parties that the MRA can be used as a secure foundation for wider agreements.

   All APMP members participating in the MRA have been requested to complete the "Questionnaire QS1"* and submit information regarding their quality systems for review by the APMP. Seventeen APMP member laboratories have done so. All seventeen have ISO/IEC 17025 compliant quality systems in place, and have CMCs already published in Appendix C or are expecting to have CMCs published in the near future. Fourteen of these laboratories follow pathway (a), one laboratory follows pathway (b) and two pathway (c).

   The information submitted by these laboratories is now being reviewed in parallel by the Technical Committee for Quality Systems (TCQS) and the Technical Committees for the various metrology areas. The TCQS will be reporting on the acceptability of the quality system as a whole, while the other Technical Committees will be reporting
�Eon the acceptability of the technical experts who reviewed the competence of the laboratory, and
�Ewhether all the CMCs are adequately supported by the quality system.

   At the end of this process the APMP would be confident that all published CMCs of its member laboratories will be achieved through an effectively implemented quality system with proven technical competence. It will then be in a position to confidently recommend to any government or other party to use the Global MRA as a technical foundation for wider agreements leading to trade, commerce and regulatory affairs.