Working Group on the Governance of Quality Management of Data and Advice (WGQuality)

The Working Group on the Governance of Quality Management of Data and Advice (WGQuality) supports the ICES aim of creating an end-to-end quality assurance framework for advice production - from data management, data integration, data analysis, and data use, to the process of translating that data into ICES advice. In this report, WGQuality analyse existing ICES quality management processes within advice production in the context of an international quality standard (ISO 9001:2015). A draft of a quality manual that follows this standard is presented. Where it was found that a requirement of the standard could not be currently fulfilled, it is identified as a gap, and proposed procedures to fill these gaps are presented. Data quality tools proposed by the ICES Planning Group on Data Needs for Assessment and Advice (PGDATA) are also evaluated and, where possible, progressed towards an operational state. The next steps required to implement a quality management system are proposed.