In this book the word "should" has been used to refer to action or guidance that is not mandatory. This has been applied to both the compliance and related audit criteria. The reason the compliance criteria are prefaced by should rather than shall, must, or other imperative terms is because the regulations described in this book that govern PSM programs from which the compliance criteria derived are performance-based in nature. Consequently, there may be multiple pathways to successful compliance and it is not the intent of this book to specify one method of compliance as being preferred or better than another, even inadvertently.
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