The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) reminds all interested stakeholders of its call for assessors and committee members to lead a new accreditation program for organizations that issue demand-based education and training certificates to U.S. workers. Due to continued interest, the deadline for nominations has been extended to Monday, Dec. 8, 2008.

The new program is being developed in response to the findings of an advisory panel of key industry and government leaders that examined the quality and content of training programs that lead to a certificate, and the need or demand for accrediting these programs. No such nationwide regulation or criteria for the issuance of these certificates currently exists.

The evaluation process outlined in the international standard ISO/IEC 17011, General Requirements for Accreditation Bodies Accrediting Conformity Assessment Bodies, will be a basis for the program's procedures. This process includes using specially trained assessors to review documents submitted by applicants against defined requirements, conduct on site assessments of all applicants, and make recommendations to the Institute's newly established Certificate Program Accreditation Committee that is responsible for making the accreditation decisions.

ANSI is soliciting nominations from dynamic national experts in the fields of training, education, personnel certificates, federal, state and local government and policy development for consideration as assessors and members of the Certificate Program Accreditation Committee.