Europe wide industry certification using standard procedures based on ISO 17024

摘要

ECQA (European Certification and Qualification Association) is the result of a series of EU funded projects from 2005–2012. This included European projects such as EQN (European Quality Network, 2005–2007), EU Certificates Campus (2008–2009) and DEUCERT (Dissemination of EU Certification), the ECQA nowadays acts as an organization that is independent from funding. The members of ECQA are widely spread all over Europe and vary from universities to companies as well as individuals. ECQA is aimed at a demographic problem of education and training in the European Union. For people at 40–50 it is many years ago that they attended the university and required skills nowadays are changing every 2–3 years. This means that their skills get outdated and we experience in Europe a growing unemployment from the age of 45 upwards. Universities in Europe are currently not addressing this problem. EQN developed a so called role based qualification concept where e.g. an existing software engineer (who studied informatics some 15 years ago) can identify job roles to upgrade so that he remains a value for the organization. He might receive additional industry qualification for e.g. a safety architect (additionally learning how to enrich existing software architecture with functional safety aspects). This way the person, would for instance, grow into a safety architect position and a younger person who knows more about new programming techniques gets his old position. EQN then developed certification mechanisms for this role based approach for university and industry educational partnerships. EU Cert Campus collected about 15 job roles, structured the corresponding skills sets and established online services. The online services comprise skills browsing, skills assessment, and online training. So people from industry can attend job role based qualification training from the work place. DEUCERT established ambassadors for this new job role based q- alification concept Europe and worldwide. DEUCERT also helped to create a critical mass of partners. At the moment we do have 26 job professions (ready and in progress) that are certified all over Europe and already outside of the European Union. The concept is meanwhile supported by approx. 60 universities and training bodies in Europe. Human resource managers from leading multinational companies called ECQA “a success story” because so far the universities in Europe do not address the mentioned demographic problem and ECQA has already achieved more than 11000 online trainings and more than 6600 certificates in European industry and at university PhD programs. The processes of the ECQA are mapped onto the ISO 17024 international standard for the certification of persons. The PAC project will integrate further skills sets and certification options into the ECQA platform.