About ISO 37301.
Let's see some generic aspects about the standard that we are going to talk about in detail from now
on.
I think it's important to start with a good understanding of what is the purpose of this standard,
who can use it and what is the structure of the document.
So, it is a management system standard whose first edition was published in 2021.
I say first edition because it's possible that in the years to come the standard will be revised and
updated editions will be published.
The standard defines the requirements for a compliance management system.
It also provides guidelines to help an organization who wants to implement such a system.
Is it the first ever standard published by ISO to address the subject of compliance management?
No, actually there was another standard before ISO 37301.
That one was ISO 19600 from 2014.
ISO 19600 was a guidance standard,
it did not have requirements.
It only offered guidance for a compliance management system.
The publication of ISO 37301 means that the old standard, ISO 19600, was withdrawn.
Why is it important that the ISO 19600
had only guidelines while here, in ISO 37301,
we have requirements.
It's important because a standard with requirements can be used for auditing and certification purposes,
while a standard with guidelines only cannot.
Guidelines can be taken into consideration by an organization, or not,
but requirements shall be complied with, in order to pass an audit.
I'm going to detail this subject of certification to ISO 37301 later, at the end of the course, after
we go through all of its requirements.
So, by then you'll have a good understanding of what the company should do in order to become certified.
Coming back to what we were discussing.
So, ISO 37031 is not the first ever standard published by by ISO on compliance management.
So, who can use this standard?
Well, according to its first clause, or its first chapter, that is called Scope,
the standard is intended to be applicable to all types of organizations, regardless of size or nature
of activity.
A compliance management system, according to ISO 37301, can be implemented by a multinational corporation,
by a public institution, by a political party, by an NGO or by a small private business.
So, it's a standard for everyone. For every organization, I mean.
The requirements and the guidelines in this standard are intended to be adaptable and their implementation
can differ depending on factors like the size of the organization, its context, the nature and the
complexity of its activities, or the level of maturity of the compliance management system.
So, speaking of the standard's requirements, I should tell you that ISO 37301 has a similar structure
to that of other popular management system standards, like ISO 9001, for example.
What this means? It means that an organization can integrate its compliance management system within
an existing system and with existing processes and procedures, to make it easier to manage.
This is not a requirement,
of course. The company can very well operate its compliance management system independent of other
existing standards and maybe other certifications that it holds.
The high level structure of the standard includes ten clauses or ten chapters.
They are Scope, Normative references, Terms and definitions, Context of the organization, Leadership,
Planning, Support, Operation Performance evaluation and Improvement.
The first three chapters in the standard do not include requirements.
So, an organization looking to implement a compliance management system will have to fulfil the requirements
that are in clauses 4 to 10.
Each of those clauses includes subclauses, as you can see from the table,
and we also have an annex in the standard, that's Annex A, which provides guidelines for the implementation
of a compliance management system.
So, the purpose of this annex is to offer solutions and approaches on how an organization can fulfil
the requirements of the standard.
I have uploaded this table with the structure of ISO 37301 as a supplementary resource to this video,
so you can download it if you want to study it more closely, or if you need it for other purposes.
Beginning with the next video, we will start discussing the requirements for a compliance management
system, as they are formulated in the standard.
So, this means we will start from chapter 4 - Context of the organization, because that's where the first
requirements can be found.