For Assayers
Become an Accredited Assayer
An Accredited Assayer is independently authorised by the Foundation to test Engagements against a Stewarded Standard and to certify the result. Accreditation is held by universities, assurance firms, and qualified independents, against a published Accreditation Standard, and is subject to audit.
Accreditation is granted to an organisation, or to a qualified independent, that can demonstrate the competence to test an Engagement against a Stewarded Standard and the independence to do so without favour. At summary level, the criteria cover four things: technical competence in the methodology and its gates; a documented, repeatable assessment process; the independence to reach and record an adverse finding; and the standing — institutional or professional — to be relied upon by a third party reading the Register.
The criteria are the same whoever holds the accreditation. A university, an assurance firm, and an individual expert are measured against one published Accreditation Standard, so that a Hallmark certified by one Assayer means precisely what a Hallmark certified by another means. The criteria are set out in full on the Accreditation Standard page.
Accreditation is held, not awarded once. An Assayer is subject to a continuing audit regime: its assessments are reviewed against the standard it certifies to, its independence is re-examined, and its findings are sampled for consistency with the wider regime. Where an Assayer falls short, its accreditation may be suspended or withdrawn. Because the Register is permanent, the Engagements an Assayer has already certified remain on it; a change in the Assayer's standing is itself recorded.
Each Accredited Assayer is allocated a short cipher — for example, OII for the Oxford Internet Institute, or ICL for Imperial College London. The cipher is the Assayer's mark within the Hallmark, and it is also the final segment of the canonical identifier carried by every Engagement that Assayer certifies, in the form AF-2026-0001-OII.
The identifier therefore records who certified the work on its face. A reader does not need to open the record to know which Assayer stood behind a given Hallmark; the cipher is in the identifier, and the identifier is on the Register.
Independence is the whole value of an Assay, and it is protected by a plain rule: an Assayer may not certify work in which it holds a commercial interest. It may not assay an Engagement it helped to build, sell, or resource; it may not certify the work of a Platform or Practitioner with which it has a stake in the outcome; and it may not let a commercial relationship colour a finding.
The rule is auditable, not aspirational. An Assayer declares its interests, and an Assay made in breach of the conflict rules is grounds for suspension. The point is that a Hallmark certifies a test by a certifier with nothing to gain from the result.
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