October, 2020 –
Representatives of YMS and Slovak National Accreditation Service (SNAS) met for the first time after 5 years of successful cooperation at the Accreditation Information System (AIS) at a joint meeting with AIS end customers.
The goal was to deduce the effectiveness of AIS and to create the next development strategy, with the the final result being under the consensus of the entire team of developers, users and clients. The meeting took place at the end of September in Bratislava before the widespread introduction of safety measures related to the second wave of the pandemic.
The participants were welcomed by the director of SNAS, Martin Senčák, who stands behind the idea of AIS and is the driving force behind its long-term development. “The electronisation of public services is getting to the point, where it is verifying its function and practical usefulness for clients. Team SNAS and YMS made a great effort 5 years ago in order to make AIS into a functional and useful application and today all accreditation processes run electronically. After five years we are reviewing the functionality of AIS, customer satisfaction and we are prioritising future development, where the primary goal is to introduce electronic signature. This would remove the last pieces of paperwork, which today are only contracts with external collaborators and output of accreditation in the form of an authorised certificate of accreditation,” says Martin Senčák.
The major part of the meeting were live demonstrations of the functionality of AIS, in two blocks, from the point of view of an external entity applying for accreditation and from the perspective of internal processes of SNAS issuing an accreditation. Both demonstrations, which were presented by the YMS team, were intended to provoke discussions and to uncover the preferences of users for change and further development. “The results of the discussion were for YMS as creators of the application very stimulating, because they brought up several dozens of topics, which with the help of the users we immediately evaluated and prioritised,” says project manager of AIS for YMS, Štefan Hudák. “The majority of the topics concerned increasing effectiveness of work in the application. For example, if a client requests an extension of an accreditation or a re-accreditation, they would like to work on versions of forms that already contain information about previous requests. Perhaps they would like to return back to an already requested accreditation form with the option to edit in case they discover a mistake or shortcoming,” continues Štefan Hudák.
The SNAS working team ended with a closing message about the current functionalities of AIS and about the results of the satisfaction inspection, with which they concluded 5 years of operation of the system. “AIS currently has approximately 3,000 users, of which 2,600 are active from 500 different organisations in 12 countries of the world. In less than 5 years 2,500 accreditation services have been implemented and there were nearly a 100 requests for system development and changes,” says Andrea Cucorová for team SNAS. “The satisfaction survey contained 6 questions, in which the first and last were in regards to overall satisfaction and other areas for change and growth. Three quarters of the answers to the first and last question about the simplicity of working in the app and overall satisfaction with the work in it were the highest possible degree, very satisfied, possibly more than satisfied. With such a result in the survey, SNAS is delighted and it is a confirmation that we have chosen the right path in electronisation,” closes Andrea Cucorová.
AIS is presently apparently the most advanced digital accreditation system in Europe, given that the whole process, involving the cooperation of many stakeholders, takes place electronically. In the last user conference YMS, Geospatial Visions, this also proved to be the case according to a representative of TUV SUD, one of the largest certification organisations, which took part in the conference panel discussion about the theme “Better services” led by YMS.