GOST

All sorts of regulated standards are included, with examples ranging from charting rules for design documentation to recipes and nutritional facts of Soviet-era brand names.

At present, the collection of GOST standards includes over 20,000 titles used extensively in conformity assessment activities in 12 countries.

Serving as the regulatory basis for government and private-sector certification programs throughout the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the GOST standards cover energy, oil and gas, environmental protection, construction, transportation, telecommunications, mining, food processing, and other industries.

Creation and promotion of the Union Standards began in 1918 after introduction of the international systems of weights and measures.

The first OST standards gave the requirements for iron and ferrous metals, selected sorts of wheat, and a number of consumer goods.

This system is aimed to ensure safety and quality of products and services and involves obligatory certification of certain goods, both produced locally and imported.

List of products subject to obligatory certification is defined by the Russian Federal Technical Regulation and Metrology Agency.

At the same time active policy of Russia towards entering the WTO was the reason for adopting the federal law no.

184-ФЗ "On Technical Regulation" Evaluating the product's conformity to requirements of laws, standards, technical regulations and other kinds of normative acts appears to be one of the most important possibilities of providing safety of different kinds of products for humans, environment and the state.

The variety of certification systems in Russia is explained by these two factors and by the wish of some corporations to introduce their own requirements for the product's deliverers.

From the names, it is clear that the evaluation of conformity for the objects of obligatory certification system appears to be mandatory requirement for all Russian manufacturers and for the products from abroad.

The obligatory GOST R certification system consists of 40 sub-systems according to the kinds of homogeneous production.

For example, the following sub-systems: The management of state property in the sphere of technical regulation, organizing and performing works in certification in the GOST R system is performed by the Rostechregulation (former Gosstandart) which appears to be the Federal agency for technical regulation and metrology (now is called Rosstandart).