The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia became an Associate of the CGPM on 10 October 2006.
The Bureau of Metrology (BOM) of the Ministry of Economy will soon become a participant in the CIPM MRA.

The CIPM MRA has now been signed by representatives of 67 institutes from 45 Member States, 20 Associates of the CGPM, and two international organizations, and covers a further 113 institutes designated by the signatory or other appropriate official bodies as holders of specific national standards.

  The full list of participants in the CIPM MRA is now presented as searchable html pages on the BIPM website. The domains of metrology covered by individual designate institutes are given when clearly specified by the signatory NMI.

In May 2005, the JCRB closed the transition period of the CIPM MRA, requesting that all CMCs published in Appendix C be covered by fully-implemented and accepted Quality Management Systems, compliant with ISO/IEC 17025, in all participating institutes. In April 2006, the JCRB reasserted the need for reference materials used as mechanisms for service delivery in CMC claims to be supported by a quality system compliant with the ISO Guide 34.

The subsequent actions were carried out:

- In July 2005, a number of CMCs in Physics that were not covered by an approved QMS were deleted from Appendix C. This procedure applied to 723 CMCs (79 from APMP, none from COOMET, five from EUROMET, 94 from SADCMET, and 545 from SIM) covering several different fields of metrology.

- In October 2005, SADCMET approved the QMS covering the CMCs that had been deleted, and these were immediately re-inserted in the Appendix C database.

- In April 2006, SIM reported at the 16th JCRB meeting that some 320 CMCs were now covered by an approved QMS. These were re-instated in Appendix C between May and September 2006.

- On 5 September 2006, another 11 CMCs declared by Greece were deleted following a letter from EUROMET sent to the Chairman of the JCRB (three of them were re-instated on 6 December 2006).

- At its 17th meeting, the JCRB examined the procedure of QMS approval in COOMET and decided that CMCs declared by laboratories that have not passed the step of "Recognition" should be deleted from the KCDB: this concerned 118 CMCs, mainly from Cuba and Ukraine.

- On 8 November 2006, 107 CMCs in Chemistry declared by Canada were also deleted.

The present situation of deletion/re-instatement is given by clicking here. This statistics page is also available from the KCDB website.

In summary, a total of about one thousand CMCs were deleted from the Appendix C of the KCDB over the last 18 months because they were not covered by an appropriate QMS. This procedure is now ended, and already more than 400 of them have been re-instated. From now on, all new entries will necessarily satisfy the QMS conditions, leading to full confidence in the international recognition of calibration and measurement certificates corresponding to Appendix C entries.

During the 16th JCRB meeting (April 2006) the JCRB discussed the process through which International Intergovernmental Organization (IGOs), who are signatories of the CIPM MRA, should have their quality management systems (QMS) formally reviewed. As a result, the CIPM decided on a process for the review of IGO QMS which was consistent with the CIPM MRA and equivalent to the process used by the RMOs. This resulted in the creation of a new document entitled - Guidelines for the Review of CMCs and the Monitoring and Reporting of the Operation of Quality Systems by International Intergovernmental Organizations who are Signatories of the CIPM MRA (CIPM 2006-03, copies can be obtained from your RMO Representative to the JCRB). The new policy was used for the first time on 5 October 2006, when Ken Shortt and Ales Fajgelj presented the IAEA QMS to a review panel composed of representatives from four RMOs and the BIPM. The review panel recommended the acceptance of the IAEA QMS to the JCRB which accepted the IAEA QMS on 6 October 2006.

The RMO-RAB (RAB = Regional Accreditation Board) group tasked with the harmonization of the terms BMC and CMC met in Nashville, Tennessee (US) and embraced the general terms of the current CMC definition as contained in document JCRB-8/18. The members of the redefinition group felt that they had achieved tremendous progress towards avoiding having separated terms and said that they would like to see the process completed as soon as possible.

The 17th meeting of the JCRB was held at the BIPM, Sèvres, on 6 October 2006. Among the issues covered were:
- the traceability of the mass CMCs to the International Prototype,
- the responsibilities of CC WG on CMCs on the review of CMCs in the context of new comparison results,
- the industrial thermometry protocol drafted by the CCT WG8,
- the traceability of industrial instrumentation with capabilities better than those of the local NMI,
- the temporarily suspension of some CMCs from the KCDB due to lack of QMS,
- the results of review of the IAEA QMS (see above),
- the status of the implementation of QMS in the area of Chemical Metrology (i.e., the implementation of ISO Guide 34 to certified reference materials),
- the progress towards the harmonization of the terms BMC and CMC (see above),
- how to assist NMIs that lack support of an RMO, and
- activities aimed at NMIs in the developing countries.

During the meeting it was also announced that Pedro Espina is to serve a third year as Executive Secretary of the JCRB; this will extend his term until the spring of 2008.

The next meeting of the JCRB will be held at CSIR-NML, Pretoria, on 3 and 4 May 2007. The JCRB meeting will be preceded by a day-and-half workshop on how to take the first steps for preparing CMCs so as to participate in the CIPM MRA. The workshop is aimed at signatory NMIs who currently do not yet have CMCs in the KCDB. Details on the workshop will be announced through your local RMO or on our web site.

Finally, as of December 2006 there are 44 laboratories authorized to use the CIPM MRA Logo in the measurement and calibration certificates of their services listed in the KCDB. Others who want to use it can do so by application to the BIPM.

(Reported by Dr P. Espina, JCRB Executive Secretary)

  Open-access JCRB documents

The 6th meeting of the Directors of national metrology institutes (NMIs) was held at the BIPM at the beginning of October 2006. The meeting ranged over a variety of topics - from presentations by senior BIPM staff of the future workplan of the BIPM to considerations of the document Evolving Needs for Metrology in Trade, Industry and Society and the Role of the BIPM, which is an updated edition of the text published in 2003 and presented to the 22nd CGPM. In addition, Dr Seton Bennett (NPL) gave a progress report on the activities of the Working Group on the Metrology of Materials.

During a general discussion section, the Director of the BIPM, Prof. Andrew Wallard, commented that in his next Message for World Metrology Day (20th May 2007), he would be writing about the importance of applying good metrological principles to measurements needed for investigations in environmental science, in particular in measurements related to climate change. This comments caused a great deal of interest from the Directors who expressed their support and willingness to undertake similar actions in May of 2007.

Prof. Wallard spoke about the important events at the BIPM over the previous year, saying that a notable achievement had been the publication for World Metrology Day 2006 of the eighth edition of the SI Brochure and the publication, for the first time, of Concise Summaries of the SI Brochure in both English and French and of an English 'pocket size' summary of the SI Brochure. There was a strong feeling from the audience that this had been a significant move and a number of Directors asked about organizing translations of these documents. Prof. Wallard commented that as of that date, translations had been made into Russian, Chinese, Japanese, and Spanish.

Dr Robert Kaarls (Secretary of the CIPM) gave a presentation about the Kaarls Report (Evolving Needs for Metrology in Trade, Industry and Society and the Role of the BIPM). He asked for comments and suggestions to be provided before 15 December 2006, and commented that the report will be distributed in March 2007 for presentation to the 23rd General Conference on Weights and Measures.

The general feeling from the Directors was very positive about the content of this Report, and a number of Directors made suggestions for additions and changes which they felt would better focus the impact of the document on the national funding authorities. There were also suggestions from some Directors that what was needed to better improve the image of metrology at the national level was a campaign of marketing - giving visible examples of where international metrological agreements had impacted positively on trade and commerce. There was also a call for more activity in promoting metrology in developing countries. It was suggested that the BIPM could have a roll in identifying issues that are important for developing countries and then setup programs to help in these areas

Dr Claudine Thomas gave an overview of the KCDB. She outlined recent developments in the KCDB and its mode of operation. Dr Thomas demonstrated the new search engine which has been installed, in its prototype version, to help provide better navigation in the BIPM's website and in the KCDB. The feeling of the meeting was that the new search engine was a big step forward.

Dr Pedro Espina gave an overview of the JCRB and JCDCMAS. He spoke about the CIPM MRA Logo and gave a report of the recent meeting of the JCRB. He reported that the CIPM MRA Logo would help promote the use and acceptance of the CIPM MRA.

Prof. Ernst Göbel (PTB and President of the CIPM) gave an overview of the issue of redefinition of several of the base units of the SI. This item precipitated a lively discussion about a subject of wide interest.

(Reported by Dr J. Williams, Head of the Publication and IT Section of the BIPM)

Searching the KCDB is an exercise that is often felt as too difficult by our users from the industrial community, mainly because it requires knowledge of metrological classification of terms. To overcome this difficulty, and also to increase the visibility of the BIPM web applications, a group composed of three BIPM staff, the Webmaster, the IT Manager and the KCDB Coordinator, has studied the advantages of implementing a semantic search facility, able to interpret a text-based inquiry, on the main BIPM website and on the KCDB website. Several such search engines, all commercially available, were compared, and the BIPM has now purchased such software.

The new search engine is now completely implemented on the prototype database. Work is under way for re-formatting the html pages of the KCDB website in order to host the searching facilities; it will be the last step before launch onto the public web.

Our text-based search engine presents the following features:

- It is implemented separately on the Appendix B and on the Appendix C, so returned comparisons and CMCs are not mixed-up. But, no selection of a specific Metrology Area is necessary to search the Appendix C database.

- The user types an entry in an intuitive way. For instance, the precise nomenclature of a key comparison is not needed: typing "BIPM Co 60" would retrieve all BIPM key and supplementary comparisons involving the BIPM and Cobalt 60, such as "BIPM.RI(II)-K1-Co-60".

- The search engine is implemented in such a way that there is no need to enter linking words or symbols such as "and", "or", "+", "-", etc.

- The user enters a series of words. The search engine returns the information in the center of the screen and generates dynamically search axes on the left of the screen. These can then be used to refine the search: one can choose one or several among the items proposed by a simple click, and come back to the previous situation if the choice reveals to be unsatisfactory.

- Links are provided to the details of comparisons recorded in Appendix B (information, participants, results, etc.) and to .pdf files of CMCs recorded in Appendix C.

- The search engine uses a thesaurus made of synonyms of current terms, such as for instance "ammeter" and "ampere meter", or for Chemical formulas such as "C3H8" and "propane".

We are fully aware that, once first launched, this facility may not meet completely our users' expectations. This is the reason why we strongly encourage any feedback that may help us improving its operation; mail address is provided for this purpose.