Digital accreditation symbol and digital calibration certificate: DAkkS and PTB prepare for introduction

Fast, simple and useful - this is how the pilot customers rated the use of the digital accreditation symbol of the German Accreditation Body (DAkkS). Since March 2023, the digital accreditation symbol has been issued as an "eAttestation" on electronic results reports from selected pilot customers on a trial basis. The digital calibration certificate from the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) served as a machine-readable version of the eAttestation. This enables conformity assessment bodies to issue digital results reports in a machine-readable and cryptographically secured format and automatically integrate them into Industry 4.0 applications. Accredited bodies can apply for the digital accreditation symbol from 30 March 2024 and put the applications into practice.

What is the DAkkS digital accreditation symbol?

The digital accreditation symbol is based on an electronic seal, a kind of company stamp with additional accreditation information. The application is comparable to the application of digital signatures of natural persons. The digital accreditation symbol thus enables correct proof of accreditation in the digital space.

With the digital accreditation symbol, DAkkS is the first accreditation body worldwide to provide a digital identity for accredited bodies with cryptographically secure key material via a trust service. It thus actively supports the digital transformation and makes an important contribution to a digital verification chain of the quality infrastructure to support a global paperless trading system.

Pilot phase: The digital accreditation symbol in use

DAkkS and PTB announced the official conclusion of the pilot phase at the AKKKO 2023 accreditation conference, which took place in Berlin on 11 and 12 September. Four of the six participating pilot customers from different accredited areas presented the results and impressions of the pilot phase in Forum 1 "Digitalisation in testing and accreditation".

During the pilot phase, the participating bodies affixed the digital accreditation symbol invisibly to their digital results reports in order to verifiably confirm the integrity of the information (integrity) and the origin of the document from this accredited body (authenticity). Verification is possible worldwide and in real time by both machines and humans. The focus of the development of the digital accreditation symbol is on automated, machine-based application and verification.

The experience reports of the pilot customers at the AKKKO showed a positive picture. The embedding of the sealing process and the software applications used for manual or automated sealing depend on the specific circumstances of the conformity assessment body. The individual solution approaches were briefly presented by the participating customers.

As a result, the pilot customers confirmed the simple sealing and verification of the digital accreditation symbol on common digital file formats - regardless of whether the process within the body is manual or automated. The application of the digital accreditation symbol to PDF and XML files was just as successful as the verification of the sealed documents with the corresponding standard software applications.

The digital calibration certificate (DCC) successfully tested as an eAttest station

The combination of the digital DAkkS accreditation symbol with the Digital Calibration Certificate (DCC) developed by PTB enables the fully automated processing of the DCC as an "eAttestation". On this basis, automated and networked production processes and their quality assurance can be realised in the future. This will enable efficiency increases and cost reductions in the process flow - for example in Industry 4.0 applications.

The content of the DCC is being harmonised via the PTB and the German Calibration Service (DKD). The expert committees in the DKD are thus making an active contribution to making quality assurance "Made in Germany" more widely known and successfully utilised in an international context.