Certificates of Excellence - InCert
Wireless technology, networks, multimedia and www technologies have taken the ICT (Information & Communication Technologies) industry and the global consumer market by storm in the past several years. We believe this momentum will continue into the future.
Our project entitled International Certificates of Excellence in Selected Areas of ICT (InCert) focuses on the most hot subjects of ICT (e.g. WLANs, IEEE802.11, HIPERLAN/2, Bluetooth; mobile phone systems 3G and 4G; Internet protocols TCP-IP, VoIP and others; www technologies; signal processing in telecommunication transmitters and receivers) and connects them with labour market needs and expectations. The major project aim is to develop and test a set of certificates in carefully selected areas of ICT, especially those non-addressed by the existing certification offer. The main features of the proposed certificates are: vendor-neutral character and adaptation to specific needs and possibilities of regional labour markets.
The development of an ICT certification system in the project means:
- defining certificate requirements (range of knowledge, skills, etc),
- describing competencies for a certificate possessor,
- developing testing procedures for ICT certification (software package for on-line testing via the Internet; building the test structure, i.e. test questions, problems, answers; test administration …),
- testing the certification procedures using ICT,
- introductory steps to establishing an international (European) organisation which would consist of the project partners and organisations from outside the project. (The role of this certification body is to promote the proposed certificates, watch over their quality, as well as to manage the certification procedures worked out in the project after its completion.)
- the project undertakes also the dissemination of its results and exploitation of the certificates in every day practice of ICT employees and employers, especially those representing SMEs.
- Primary target groups of the project can benefit from the proposed certification system in the following way. The ICT professionals can use certification to accelerate the rate at which they climb up their career ladder. In particular, the certificates offered by the project would ensure much better access to validation procedures for the SME employees. Unemployed people from both ICT and other sectors can use the certificates to update and/or change their qualifications and thus increase job opportunities. Professionals (technicians, engineers, etc.) from outside the ICT area can prove their expertise in the range of certification. For the students of ICT-related studies certification allows validation of competencies on?specialised topics.
The European dimension of the project is guaranteed by the selection of project partners from 7 EU member countries, among them 2 countries that accessed the community in 2004 (Poland and Slovakia). There are altogether 9 partner institutions, 5 of them universities and research institutes, 2 training organisations, and 2 organisations involved in the ICT sector. The significant part of the consortium consists of the previous European project partners. The long-lasting co-operation of these experienced partners results in the stability of the project realisation.
The project has close relationship with another project proposal entitled Vocational Training for Certification in ICT (Train2Cert), although they can be realised independently because the projects address different areas of certification theme: an offer of certificate procedures and an offer of certificate-oriented training
There are few factors more influential and more helpful than certification as far as the opportunities of finding a job, changing a job, or moving up a career ladder are concerned. The ongoing effort of obtaining certificates pays off, because it helps to establish a person professionally as having up-to-date knowledge and skills in such difficult technical area as the communication technologies which shape the modern world. We think that the role of certification should become much greater in the European Union. This concerns particularly the certification proposed in the present project proposal, i.e. vendor-neutral and well-matched to the regional market needs (in national language, price depends on a region). These features distinguish the certification proposed in the application from other ICT-related certificates, and make it particularly valuable for the SMEs.
The strong demand for IC professionals with highly specialised and certified qualifications has been clearly identified by the project partners. This is especially the demand of SMEs, employing a vast majority of people active in the labour market.