Chris Campbell writes: "If you are a ISO 9000 certified organisation you may be able to persuade your certifying body to accept that ISO 15489 will be part of the documentation you follow. They should then be able to make some comments on the fullness of the implementation."

As a former ISO 9001 Lead Auditor, I would suggest that great care should be taken in linking ISO 15489 to ISO 9001 (or ISO 14001). Let me explain.

ISO 9001 is a mandatory standard that requires an audit by a qualified third party organization in order to achieve and sustain certification. ISO 15489 is a best practice standard and requires no third party audit.

ISO 9001 is benchmarks an organization's quality management systems (QMS). It does NOT benchmark the whole organization. Typically, an ISO 9001 QMS excludes human resources (with certain very specific exceptions such as training), finance, legal services and marketing. The scope of the QMS has to be clearly defined in the organization's QMS documents.

This leads to the next substantial difference between ISO 9001 and ISO 15489. ISO 15489 is a standard that applies to the records management system as a whole and therefore applies to the whole organization. ISO 9001 applies only to the QMS and therefore only to those records and documents that support or provide evidence of compliance with the ISO 9001 standard.

It is essential to clearly demarcate the border between the organization's QMS and the rest of the organization because the third party auditor can only look at the QMS and that part of the records management system that directly supports it. It cannot look at those parts of the organization that are outside the QMS UNLESS there is a reference in the QMS documents (e.g., a reference to IS) 15489) that effectively opens the door to the auditor to go outside the QMS. The third party auditor can pursue any reference in the QMS documentation, even those that do not relate to the QMS.

Those of us who were responsible for the QMS (document control was my special area) were very careful about NOT volunteering non-QMS information to the third party auditor for the very simple reason that it increased the risk that the auditor would find a non-conformance, something like a sin.

So, could you refer to ISO 15489 in your ISO 9001 documents? Yes, and more power to you if you can away with it. But you are also opening a huge door that your organization may not be too happy about.

Gerry van Houten
Information Policy Adviser
Archives of Ontario
77 Grenville Street
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
M5S 1B3
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