State General Laboratory Annual Report 2019

11 State General laboratory Annual Report 2019 VISION AND MISSION The vision of the SGL is to substantially contribute to the improvement of quality of life by providing reliable and high-quality services through the organisation’s continuous development and excellence. Based on this vision, the SGL has been continuously widening its mission to include: The provision to the Authorities and the citizens of high-quality services and independent opinions, through innovative administration procedures and technology. The SGL’s motto, "Excellence. The foundation to a better quality of life" , has been guiding the organisa- tion, based on its vision and mission, towards the following strategic objectives: 1. To safeguard public health and the environment, citizen’s safety and consumers’ rights mainly through prevention 2. To facilitate fair trade and competitiveness 3. To respond promptly and reliably to new obligations, emerging problems and crisis incidents 4. To promote applied research to prevent or solve emerging / existing problems 5. To contribute to the legislative process and policy making 6. To strengthen networking and enhance expertise 7. To scientifically support the judicial and police authorities To fulfill its mission, the SGL operates at many levels:  It ensures quality, reliability and accountability through its accreditation by EN ISO / IEC 17025:2005 and by embedding the value of quality at all levels of the organisation, while implementing the model of the Common Assessment Framework Programme (CAF) with benchmarking towards excellence.  It promotes new approaches at the managerial and technical levels and elaboration of its services, while keeping abreast of European and international developments and requirements.  It collaborates with all public sectors and respective EU Organisations and Committees.  It continuously develops and implements:  new preventive and targeted national control programmes,  a holistic and interdisciplinary approach, which reflects upon the design of monitoring, surveillance, control and research programmes with added value and synergistic efficacy, and  risk assessment for food/water and environmental safety (chemical, microbiological, biological).