Staff reporter
Windhoek-The Namibian Institute of Public Administration and Management (NIPAM) and the Namibian Standards Institution (NSI) yesterday signed a five-year memorandum of understanding (MoU) to promote cooperation and ensure NIPAM develops and complies with applicable standards within its own mandate in providing training, consultancies, operational research and capacity evaluation to its clients. Their clients are all government agencies and institutions.
NIPAM and NSI will develop an action plan to implement the MoU.
The agreement will be valid from March 8 for a period of five years.
A press statement issued by NIPAM’s communications and public relations manager Ester Nakanduungile said both institutions recognise the value of cooperation in upholding international standards and best practices, accreditation, research and certification in national capacity development.
NIPAM’s executive director Andrew Ndishishi said they intend to become a certified ISO 9001:2015 institution with the assistance of the NSI.
“ISO 9001 certification will assist NIPAM to operate on quality management. This means that when NIPAM provides services it has to be within the framework of necessary local and international standards. For example and amongst others when NIPAM offers training on professional norms and standards for coaching, this has to comply with local and international standards and NSI is the guiding institution for ensuring the standards.”
Nakanduungile added that the motive for establishing professional norms and standards is to provide a good level of quality training and development for all facilitators, trainers and learners. This is also to meet the need of skills development in the public service and to provide more attention to issues of training management, leadership and governance at NIPAM.
Namibian Standards Institution (NSI) chief executive officer Chie Wasserfall said at NSI they believe that quality is only possible if institutions, businesses and government apply standards as a basis, and conduct certification to ensure compliance with applicable standards.
Wasserfall said to ensure compliance to the applicable standards, it is encouraged that independent third-party certification is done which is one of the NSI’s services to its stakeholders.
The certification division consists of highly competent staff and experienced auditors who provide services for product and management system certification based on international requirements.