European Certification and Qualification Association

Last updated
European Certification and Qualification Association
FormationJuly 2008 [1]
Type not-for-profit
PurposeUnify the certification processes
Location
Website ecqa.org

The European Certification and Qualification Association is a not-for-profit association that aims to unify the certification processes for various professions. It is joining institutions and thousands of professionals from all over Europe and abroad. The ECQA offers the certification of participants for numerous professions. Currently, 30 professions are active and some new professions are currently being developed. ECQA services are being offered in 24 countries across Europe by 60 ECQA members. The ECQA is also enhancing its activities by expanding to all over the world (e.g. USA, Thailand, India etc.).

Contents

The ECQA ensures that the same knowledge is presented to participants across Europe and all participants are tested according to the same requirements (quality criteria). Knowledge to be provided and tested for certain professions are defined by experts from industry and research, who know best what the requirements of the market are and what the state of the art knowledge is within certain domains. These experts work in ECQA groups called Job Role Committees. The EQCA coordinates their work and provides the infrastructure and IT support.

The ECQA has developed a set of quality criteria, which are used for the certification of the following types of service providers: trainers, training organizations, exam organizations, and certification organizations. The aim is to ensure the same level of training and certification quality in all participating countries. More information about ECQA can be found at www.ecqa.org.

Relationship between processes, job roles and skills

From the European studies you can see that above 58% of the success factors to implement learning organisations depends on human factors. Figure 1 illustrates that processes require roles and roles need specific skills to efficiently perform the job. In ISO 15504 a capability level 3 would, for instance, require the definition of competence criteria per role.

Combining this approach with the learning organisation related approach leads to a framework where it becomes extremely important to think in terms of job role-based qualification and skills.

This is the reason why the following skills acquisition strategies base on specific job roles and their qualification needed to efficiently manage the development (e.g. job roles SW project manager, SW architect, etc.) and enable learning (e.g. job roles innovation manager, SPI manager, etc.).

Skill acquisition strategy

There is a set of experienced partners in 24 European countries to create a pool of knowledge for specific professions. This pool can be extended to further professions. If there is a need a person can attend a course for a specific job role online through an advanced learning infrastructure. See Figure 2. You start with a self-assessment against the skills,. [2] [3] Then you can sign into an online course. Here you are guided by a tutor and do a homework which is being corrected by the tutor. Finally the homework and real work done in your project is sufficient to demonstrate the skills.

Moodle – This is a web-based learning management system which is public domain available. (www.moodle.com) Capability Adviser – This is a web-based assessment portal system with a defined interface database to connect the systems.

NQA – Network Quality Assurance – This is a web-based team working tool which was developed in the EU IST 2000 28162 project. [3]

So far the following profession have been established –

(more existing and upcoming on the ECQA webpage)

Related Research Articles

Professional certification, trade certification, or professional designation, often called simply certification or qualification, is a designation earned by a person to assure qualification to perform a job or task. Not all certifications that use post-nominal letters are an acknowledgement of educational achievement, or an agency appointed to safeguard the public interest.

A quality management system (QMS) is a collection of business processes focused on consistently meeting customer requirements and enhancing their satisfaction. It is aligned with an organization's purpose and strategic direction. It is expressed as the organizational goals and aspirations, policies, processes, documented information, and resources needed to implement and maintain it. Early quality management systems emphasized predictable outcomes of an industrial product production line, using simple statistics and random sampling. By the 20th century, labor inputs were typically the most costly inputs in most industrialized societies, so focus shifted to team cooperation and dynamics, especially the early signaling of problems via a continual improvement cycle. In the 21st century, QMS has tended to converge with sustainability and transparency initiatives, as both investor and customer satisfaction and perceived quality are increasingly tied to these factors. Of QMS regimes, the ISO 9000 family of standards is probably the most widely implemented worldwide – the ISO 19011 audit regime applies to both and deals with quality and sustainability and their integration.

Software engineering is an engineering approach to software development. A practitioner, a software engineer, applies the engineering design process to develop software.

Quality assurance (QA) is the term used in both manufacturing and service industries to describe the systematic efforts taken to assure that the product(s) delivered to customer(s) meet with the contractual and other agreed upon performance, design, reliability, and maintainability expectations of that customer. The core purpose of Quality Assurance is to prevent mistakes and defects in the development and production of both manufactured products, such as automobiles and shoes, and delivered services, such as automotive repair and athletic shoe design. Assuring quality and therefore avoiding problems and delays when delivering products or services to customers is what ISO 9000 defines as that "part of quality management focused on providing confidence that quality requirements will be fulfilled". This defect prevention aspect of quality assurance differs from the defect detection aspect of quality control and has been referred to as a shift left since it focuses on quality efforts earlier in product development and production and on avoiding defects in the first place rather than correcting them after the fact.

A professional association is a group that usually seeks to further a particular profession, the interests of individuals and organisations engaged in that profession, and the public interest. In the United States, such an association is typically a nonprofit business league for tax purposes. In the UK, they may take a variety of legal forms.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">British Computer Society</span> British professional body in IT

The British Computer Society (BCS), branded BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, since 2009, is a professional body and a learned society that represents those working in information technology (IT), computing, software engineering and computer science, both in the United Kingdom and internationally. Founded in 1957, BCS has played an important role in educating and nurturing IT professionals, computer scientists, software engineers, computer engineers, upholding the profession, accrediting chartered IT professional status, and creating a global community active in promoting and furthering the field and practice of computing.

Knowledge workers are workers whose main capital is knowledge. Examples include ICT Professionals, physicians, pharmacists, architects, engineers, scientists, design thinkers, public accountants, lawyers, editors, and academics, whose job is to "think for a living".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Business analyst</span> Person who analyses and documents a business

A business analyst (BA) is a person who processes, interprets and documents business processes, products, services and software through analysis of data. The role of a business analyst is to ensure business efficiency increases through their knowledge of both IT and business function.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Certification</span> Formal confirmation of certain characteristics of an object, person or organization

Certification is part of testing, inspection and certification and the provision by an independent body of written assurance that the product, service or system in question meets specific requirements. It is the formal attestation or confirmation of certain characteristics of an object, person, or organization. This confirmation is often, but not always, provided by some form of external review, education, assessment, or audit. Accreditation is a specific organization's process of certification. According to the U.S. National Council on Measurement in Education, a certification test is a credentialing test used to determine whether individuals are knowledgeable enough in a given occupational area to be labeled "competent to practice" in that area.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Teacher education</span> Training teachers to develop teaching skills

Teacher education or teacher training refers to programs, policies, procedures, and provision designed to equip (prospective) teachers with the knowledge, attitudes, behaviors, approaches, methodologies and skills they require to perform their tasks effectively in the classroom, school, and wider community. The professionals who engage in training the prospective teachers are called teacher educators.

The Australian Computer Society (ACS) is an association for information and communications technology professionals with 40,000+ members Australia-wide. According to its Constitution, its objectives are "to advance professional excellence in information technology" and "to promote the development of Australian information and communications technology resources".

FINEOS is an Irish public software development company that was founded in 1993. It provides enterprise software for insurance, and government social insurance. The company is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, and has offices in North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chartered Quality Institute</span> Chartered body for quality professionals

The Chartered Quality Institute (CQI), formerly known as the Institute of Quality Assurance (IQA), is the chartered body for quality professionals. It improves the performance of organizations by developing their capabilities in quality management. As a registered charity, the CQI exists to advance education in, knowledge of, and the practice of quality in industry, the public sector, and the voluntary sector.

Software Quality Management (SQM) is a management process that aims to develop and manage the quality of software in such a way so as to best ensure that the product meets the quality standards expected by the customer while also meeting any necessary regulatory and developer requirements, if any. Software quality managers require software to be tested before it is released to the market, and they do this using a cyclical process-based quality assessment in order to reveal and fix bugs before release. Their job is not only to ensure their software is in good shape for the consumer but also to encourage a culture of quality throughout the enterprise.

Quality engineering is the discipline of engineering concerned with the principles and practice of product and service quality assurance and control. In software development, it is the management, development, operation and maintenance of IT systems and enterprise architectures with high quality standard.

Leövey Klára Gimnázium is a high school in Budapest, Hungary. Students attend the school from age 14 to age 18.

A competency architecture is a framework or model of predetermined skills or "competencies" used in an educational setting. Competency architectures are a core component of competency-based learning.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">European Foundation for Quality in e-Learning</span> Not-for-profit organisation

The European Foundation for Quality in eLearning (EFQUEL) was a not-for-profit organisation which was legally established on June 30, 2005, and is based in Brussels, Belgium. It was a worldwide membership network with over 120 member organisations including universities, corporations and national agencies. The purpose of the foundation was to create a European community of users and experts to share experiences of eLearning. Two of the main initiatives of the foundation were the "UNIQUe" accreditation for Quality in e-Learning and the annual EFQUEL Forum.

The European Quality in Social Services (EQUASS) is an integrated sector-specific quality certification system that certifies compliance of social services with European quality principles and criteria. EQUASS aims to enhance the social sector by engaging service providers in quality and continuous improvement and by guaranteeing service users quality of services throughout Europe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">International Council of Management Consulting Institutes</span>

The International Council of Management Consulting Institutes (ICMCI) has since 1987 been the professional body worldwide for management consultants. ICMCI since 2013 is called CMC-Global.

References

  1. MESSNARZ, Richard; and, others. "The Architecture of the ECQA – European Certification and Qualification Association" (PDF). ETCAATS. Retrieved 22 July 2022.
  2. Feuer, Eva; Messnarz, Richard (2002). Best Practices in E-Commerce: Strategies, Skills, and Processes. Amsterdam: IOS Press.
  3. 1 2 Messnarz, Richard; Stubenrauch, R.; Benrhard, R. (1999). Network Based Quality Assurance. Vienna: Proceedings of the 6th European Conference on Quality Assurance.

Further reading