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The concept of "Roskachestvo" appeared in our life relatively recently. However, this state organization has already managed to prove to society that qualified, open and progressive specialists are guarding the interests of the consumer. What first conclusions can be drawn about the work of Roskachestvo, we learn from Maxim Alexandrovich Protasov, head of the Russian Quality System.

Maxim Alexandrovich, millions of people in our country already know what the Russian quality system is. But can they count on the impartiality of the examinations?

– It takes time to earn trust. And we have such a tradition to be biased against government initiatives. Similar organizations have existed in more than 40 countries around the world for decades, and there is no bias against them anymore. For example, the German Stiftung Warentest has been operating for more than 70 years and has a very high level of trust. Higher than that of any government agency. She conducts the same tests as we do, and in the same way promptly and in detail informs citizens what exactly she has discovered. With this Stiftung Warentest tries to change the world for the better. The situation is similar in the UK, Belgium, France and other countries. The road will be mastered by the walking. Therefore, when the Government created Roskachestvo on the initiative of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, we understood that many people would have doubts at the beginning of the journey. Nevertheless, based on the methodology of our work, we do everything to avoid such doubts.

The activities of Roskachestvo are absolutely transparent and open. Our supervisory board consists of well-known and respected people, as they are now commonly called, opinion leaders. They closely monitor what we do, get acquainted with our methods and rules. Together with us, they go out for research and sampling, look at how the laboratory works. The work of our Design and technical committee at ROSSTANDART – the Roskachestvo Committee on the development of research methods is also very important in this regard. The task of this Committee is to familiarize every enterprise, organization and citizen with our research criteria.

We launched our research flywheel less than two years ago. And it works steadily on a weekly basis. That is, every week we tell citizens the truth about goods in one category or another. We want them, like citizens of the United States, Australia and other countries, to form the habit of receiving reports from Roskachestvo on goods of different categories every week. Our consumer market has already grown to this level, it needs awareness of information. People are able to carefully and intelligently choose a product based on the data provided by us.
It helps that from the very beginning we were sure that people were ready to accept our work and that it was in great demand. This is confirmed by millions of visitors to the Roskachestvo portal and our communities on social networks. Our research is being studied and discussed, they are being shared, which means they are really needed.

– How is the selection of products for testing?
Roskachestvo is, in fact, a kind of idealized consumer. We can­­make all possible conditions for the purchase of goods. In no case do we tell the manufacturers where and when the purchase will be made. Just like an ordinary customer, we come to an ordinary store in any region of our country, select a product from the shelves and purchase it without warning either the stores or the manufacturer. If we research cheese, we buy all the cheese of a certain grade. If we examine baby diapers, then we come and find all the existing diapers. 
And then in our laboratory we examine the products in detail, openly and in detail according to a huge list of indicators. No one has ever conducted such in-depth research with so many criteria of evaluation - an average of 120 for one single category. So we bear all the same risks as the average consumer.

– Where can I find out about the research results?
– On our portal roskachestvo.gov.ru and in numerous press materials.

To be continued.

Photo: shutterstock.com