ISO 26000 has first been published in November 2010; that is why the correct denomination is ISO 26000:2010.

The “Systematic Review”, as started mid October 2013

A letter dated 15 October 2013 was sent out by ISO Central Secretariat to the ISO national member bodies and to the D-Liaison organizations that participated in the development of ISO 26000:2010. This letter includes a very helpful attachment that clarifies ”If I vote for a revision of the standard, can I request a modification of the scope of ISO 26000 such as to become a requirements standard or a Management System Standard (MSS) or both? No modification to the current scope (Clause 1) of ISO 26000 is possible. Any changes to the scope of the standard will require a new proposal to be drafted. ISO 26000 was deliberately created without requirements and is not suited to certification. It was also developed….”

ISO national member bodies and D-Liaison organizations are requested to submit their answer to the following questions
before 15 March 2014:

Systematic Review questions (valid since 2007-01)

Question Possible Answer
1 Recommended action Withdraw
Revise/Amend
Confirm
Confirm, with correction of errors *
Abstain
Abstain with survey replies
2 Has this International Standard been adopted or is it intended to be adopted in the future as a national standard or other publication? Yes *
No
3 Is the national publication identical to the International Standard or was it modified? Identical
Modified *
4 Is this International Standard used in your country without national adoption or are products used in your country based on this standard? Yes
No *
5 Is this International Standard, or its national adoption, referenced in regulations in your country? Yes *
No
  • (*) A Comment is required for this answer value.

In preparing their viewpoints the participating ISO national member bodies and D-Liaison organizations will surely have intensive discussions of the pros and cons of a revision of the now three years old standard. Some of the possibly major arguments have been composed in an article “Is ISO 26000 Ready for Revision”  which may provide helpful arguments for these discussions.
The article can be downloaded there in PDF format.

IFAN Position on the possible revision of ISO 26000:2010

IFAN is the International Federation of Standards Users, see www.ifan.org . IFAN thought it would have merit to consider and discuss this possible revision among IFAN members and to publish its position found some weeks before the deadline for ISO national members’ voting. IFAN’s key statement reads:

IFAN recommends leaving ISO 26000:2010 unchanged for the time being, in order to gain more practical
experience and to eventually develop a revised ISO 26000:20xx on the basis of:
a) a systematic evaluation of that increased experience;
b) the outcome of a research project (yet to be conducted) on “Globally Agreed Set of Societal Values;”
and
c) an investigation of the relevance of ISO 26000 in the context of practised sustainability management.

The position can be downloaded here as a PDF document.

Voting results

The voting period ended on 17 March 2014. The results as given in document PPO SAG N 31 can be summarized as follows:

P-member vote total: 34

  • thereof having voted “to confirm”: 20
  • having voted “confirm and correct”: one
  • having voted “revise/amend”: eight
  • having voted “withdrawal”: zero
  • having voted “abstain”: five.

Subtracting the five abstentions from the 34 total votes (because abstentions don’t count) leads to this result:

out of 29 votes 20 are “to confirm”.

Document N 31 shows the countries having participated in the vote, and thereby gives some impression on how ISO 26000 may be used. However, it seems also to be interesting to note that ISO has in total 117 P-members (see “member bodies” at http://www.iso.org/iso/home/about/iso_members.htm?membertype=membertype_MB) and that 82 of them did not participate! See file Non-participation in the vote on ISO 26000 revision.xlsx:

These 82 include a broad mixture of developed and developing countries and their nonparticipation does not mean that ISO 26000 would not play any role in their country. As examples may just be mentioned

  • Nigeria: from a LinkedIn discussion it can be taken that a national version of ISO 26000 has been developed
  • Bangladesh: in a project sponsored by the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Bangladesh a book was developed to promote the use of ISO 26000 particularly in this country; in the meantime, several thousand copies have been demanded from the provider
  • Tanzania: it was reported, about a year ago, that the content of ISO 26000 would be transposed into national regulation.

So, it would be a wrong conclusion that ISO 26000 would not be used in these 82 countries.

On the basis of this data the ISO group PPO SAG recommends to ISO/TMB (ISO Technical Management Board) for its meeting early June 2014 according to document PPO SAG N34:

“We recommend ISO/TMB to:
* decide that ISO 26000:2010 is confirmed and kept as it is
* decide that the next systematic review should be begun within the next three years.”

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