Governance of the AA1000 Standards

Dear Colleagues,

First and foremost we want to thank you for your ongoing interest and support of the AA1000 Standards. The purpose of this note is to bring you up to date on several recent governance developments that have been guided by the leadership of the Interim Standards Board (ISB) formed nearly 12 months ago. With the full support of the AccountAbility Management Team (AMT), the ISB has worked independently to advance the standards, building a strong foundation around three core elements (Governance, Technical Development, and Professionalisation & Promotion).

What follows is a document on the governance of the AA1000 Standards. We very much welcome your comments and suggestions on these and other areas aspects of AA1000 to provide the stakeholder counsel that lies at the core of the standards themselves. This will further inform the ISB as well as the forthcoming Standards Board as they invest and build out the AA1000 Standards going forward.

It is now that the ISB is keen to pave the way for the permanent Standards Board and invest in building out the leadership of the AA1000 series. The AMT have committed to establishing a Standards Board via an independent nominations process and will do so building on the work of the ISB from the past year.

Additional communication on the formation of the Standards Board will be provided to stakeholders in the near future, along with progress on other Standards related issues including the Technical Development and Professionalization and Promotion Working Groups.

In the spirit of building on the practice of good stakeholder engagement, communication will be actively led by both the Standards team at AccountAbility and the Interim Standards Board. We would request that feedback on this or any area of the working groups be provided any ISB member or via standards@accountability.org

Respectfully,

The Interim Standards Board