TALKING NOTES BY THE PERMANENT SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF STATE FOR PLANNING NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND VISION 2030, DR. EDWARD SAMBILI, CBS DURING THE TRAINING WORKSHOP FOR THE MINISTERIAL STEERING COMMITTEE ON ISO AUDITING HELD AT THE KENYA SCHOOL OF MONETARY STUDIES ON 26TH JANURAY 2010.

Background information

•    Let me take this opportunity to welcome all of you to this one-day ISO Quality Management System (QMS) Internal Audit training. You will recall that we were here last year in August 2009 being trained as ISO 9001:2008 QMS process owners.

•    I want to commend all of you most sincerely for the progress the ministry has made so far towards ISO certification process. To-date we have finalized and approved the ministry’s quality policy, we developed and are implementing records management guidelines, we trained key members of staff as process owners and internal auditors, we conducted the first internal audit in December 2009 and we have documented our draft procedures. These are some of the key achievements realized among others.

•    We are already aware that by fully developing and implementing the ISO Quality Management System, the ministry shall be able realize its objectives as spelt out in our strategic plan in a much quicker way and ultimately improve on service delivery to our customers.

•    Those of you who attended yesterday’s presentation on the findings of 2009/2010 Customers Satisfaction Survey can bear me witness that a lot of areas operation  require a lot of improvement in order to not only meet our customer expectations, but to exceed them where possible. It is my conviction that we shall be able to address the shortcomings identified in the survey if we fully adhere to the principles and key fundamental spelt out in the ISO QMS.

•    We should also have in mind that we only have five months remaining towards the target we set ourselves to be ISO 9001:2008 QMS certified.  I therefore urge all of you to remain focused, be fully committed and play your rightful role for us to emerge successfully in June this year. As I pointed out in one of our senior management meetings, ISO Certification is one of our flagship achievements this year and I believe that if we work together as a team we shall achieve it.

•    The training we are going through today will enable us as a ministry to be in a position to carry out periodical audits even long after certification with a view to verifying that our set objectives are fully implemented and maintained. Most of you will be called upon from time to time to participate in the audit process.

•    As we leave this place today, it is prudent that each and every one of us actively involve our members of staff in development of the QMS process.

•    It is further instructive that the long pending issues particularly documentation of detailed procedures and finalized of the revised organograms be finalized in the next one week. I will expect a comprehensive report from the MR and the ISO Consultants on non-compliance in the next ISO Steering Committee meeting.

•    With these few remarks, I declare the training officially open

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