In the Promotion of the Software Industry Law website, it stands: “Remember that from 3/05/2008 on, every organization needs to possess a quality certification, as regards its products or services, fulfilling the stablished statements in article 10, law 25.922 and article 8 clase c) of decree number 1594/04”. Despite being close to this date, Macarena Pereyra Rozas, at law bufete Carranza Torres & Asociados which provides legal advice in terms of technology, believes that “at least 40 per cent of the benefited companies is still going through the certification process. And there are plenty dealing with profit issues and they should be all certified by May”.

Deadline
Sistemas Activos has been receiving benefits since 2007 and is progressing on the certification of ISO 9001:2000 regulation. CEO Vanina Vidondo assures that they decided to go for a certication because they had “very well developed and recorded, but we lacked of official accreditations. The legal requirement that was finally established by the Law appeared to be a determiner as regards pushing ourselves to speed up the formalization. We are reaching the process’ final stage: we started a year ago using only internal resources and we had a turning point in december, where –after presenting our project before the Fonsot, for our total budget is close to $ 100.000- we hired a counselor to take care of formal agreements. And even though we are already hiring certificational auditings, for us to arrive on time is not a sure thing. Three people are under full-time dedication; five, on partial-time and we are an amount of 30 taking part in the project. Having an additional step for those who have gone throught the pre-certificational auditing process before May 5th would be a total incentive”.
A similar situation is taking place in Elinpar, a company that has entered the promotional period on March 2006. Miguel Cinca, vicepresident of the organization, remembers that they had started the ISO 9001:2000 certification operations a year ago and they are on the “selecting the examiner” step: “This law was useful in order to promote a certification, something that we have always wanted to achieve. We hope to have our first auditing session on April and be already certificated by May 5th. If not, the promotion reaches an expiration level. The total amount will be of $ 100.000 and as we are very few employers inside the company, there are no people fully dedicated to the project”.

The duties
Law 25.922 has provided the certificated companies a three-year-term in order to achieve a qualified certification. Macarena Pereyra Rozas, from Carranza Torres & Asociados, talks on the time issue: “There was an important misunderstanding. Some people thought that the term as regards three-year-time should be taken into account from the enactment of  the law (in August 2004), some others were of the opinion that it should start taking effect as regards the launching of 61/2005 resolution (May 2005), created by the National Registry of Software and Computing Services Producers. There was another theory that suggested the years should be counted individually from the benefit-allowance”. Miguel Calello, president of the Chamber of Software Computing Services Companies and Open Solutions CEO, says that “we had been talking on this subject with former functionaries and employers, but the present Industry Secretary administrators have a much more strict vision about fulfilling a specific term”.
This Industry, Business and PyMES Secretary, commanded by former car-industrial-businessman Fernando Fraguío, is in charge to apply the National Period for Softwarre Promotion. There’s a nine-person “evaluating team” coordinated by Gabriela Camilletti. When Information Technology researched at SICPyME, we were said that the authority was on holiday and no one else could speak about the subject.
But once the term was set, plenty of companies delayed the beginning of the certification process. Pereyra Rozas explains the situation and says that “costs had a remarkable impact, as well as the lateness of benefits allowances and the doubts about the start-date to begin the registration procedure. This project, already functioning in May 2005, was thought to last no more than 120 days. If that term had been fulfilled, companies would have had more time to certify their quality and optimize saved money. But the truth is, there were delays and uncertainties when examining expedients, and not every company was able to invest on quality without perceiving promotional benefits”. Calello assures that “to evaluate in CMM costs around US$ 15.000 and to reach an ISO-labeled certification varies from $6.000 and $ 8.000. Besides, there is the cost of advisers’ services during at least a year or a year and a half. But the most important cost is the internal one: hour-dedication, people-dedication. Anyway, the particular business model is what states if an ISO or a CMM is convenient and which one should a company go for.

The rules
The quality rules that are accepted by the promotional process are:
For production processes: CMM, CMMI, IRAM-ISO 15504, IRAM-ISO 9001:2000 (with Performing Guide IRAM 90003) and IRAM 17601
For products (software): ISO/IEC 9126. IRAM-ISO is the accurate version of the rule, translated into Spanish by the Argentinean Institution for Standarization and Certification (IRAM), which officially represents ISO in Argentina.

 

Translated by Natalia Bocassi