Re: [libreoffice-marketing] LO/OOo certification

On Tue, 2010-11-02 at 10:52 +0100, Charles-H. Schulz wrote:
> Hello everyone,
> Le Tue, 02 Nov 2010 10:29:38 +0100,
> Monfort Florian <florian.monfort@gmail.com> a écrit :
>
> > Le mardi 02 novembre 2010 à 09:27 +0000, Ian a écrit :
> > > > I'm going to suscribe to the French mailing list ( as I am French
> > > > lol ) and I think there are some people who could be interested
> > > > of being representative for France.
> > > >
> > > > Should I talk about it ? Or is this something we should wait TDF
> > > > to be a legal entity ?
> > >
> > > Bonjour Montfort,
> > >
> > > Je ne pense pas que vous avez besoin de retard. Il n'y a pas
> > > beaucoup de temps si les délégués veulent obtenir du financement
> > > pour la réunion par leur Agence nationale de l'UE.S'il vous plaît
> > > diffuser aussi largement que possible. Cela va m'aider si ces
> > > e-mail intéressés moi si je sais que la mesure de l'intérêt.
> > >
> > > Merci
>
> I think it's perhaps safe to remind everyone that this "certification"
> is not exactly a Document Foundation certification. First, we're in the
> process of establishing the foundation; second, we need to be working
> on a certification programme and I am not the only here, obviously, who
> thinks it's an essential matter :-) but we need to be working on it and
> give the time to do that. While I'm sure Ian has a lot of input on
> this, I would like to remind everyone here that the meeting Ian
> organizes is not done on behalf of the Document Foundation; as
> productive as it might be. I would have loved to join myself, but am
> running out of time.
>
> Thanks
>
> Charles.

Just to add to this for further clarity :-). If we are to make an EU bid
for money it has to be done in February so the January date is the last
realistic time that we can leave that possibility open. 

My involvement started with Alexandro Colorado who is the lead for the
OOo Certification project (before we knew anything about LO). The big
problem for the certification project is no resources (as for many
things :-) ). We already have a system for accrediting qualifications
that is referenced to the QCF and we already have successful grant
applications to the EU for developing more generic IT qualifications and
a qualifications framework for people with learning disabilities to
under-pin the EQF. 

We have some strong partners in Malaysia where there is a policy to
migrate the government admin. to FOSS. We have partners in other
countries built up over several years with varying degrees of activity
linked to teaching and training. We have developed the supporting
technology infrastructure all based on FOSS apps and that development
continues funded by certificate sales, EU grants and our own investment.
It is innovative and designed to get qualifications to people who could
previously not afford them and to provide a sustainable income to
support free learning content and applications. It's wider than just IT
and can extend to all subjects.

We already provide accredited qualifications in WP, SS, DB, Drawing and
Presenting. (also in web technologies, mobile technologies etc) These
are simply software agnostic and we have demand for other subjects. All
that changes is the context of the specific application(s). So even if
LO and OOo diverged it would be a long time before the differences were
such that the certification would need to be different for each.
However, it might be useful for employers to know that the person did
the certification in the context of LO/OOo rather than say K-Office,
Google Docs or MSO. One option is for TDF to endorse the fact that the
certification was achieved using LO and charge a small amount for each
certificate containing that endorsement. That then provides potential
for community members to get paid for providing training that leads to
that endorsed certificate and to get an income stream to TDF without it
having to do anything labour intensive since we can manage this on its
behalf. Of course that certificate then benefits from the credibility of
being issued from both the community and an Awarding Organisation
accredited by at least one National Government (and some more soon), and
being referenced to the new European Qualifications Framework which has
a high priority for grant funding. We also have the mechanism for
providing evidence and issuing and authenticating certificates in place
through Drupal with some custom modules and our own LAMP stack.

The exact mechanism for working with TDF/OOo has yet to be worked out
but we have to move otherwise we miss the opportunity to tap into
hundreds of Euros in potential grant funding. The reason for a meeting
in January is to work out how we can work together in partnership to
help both sets of aims (our over-arching goal is to get free on-line
education to everyone in the world funded through certification). Will
we submit an EU grant application(s)? Who leads those applications? How
does the certification work and how is it sustained? etc. 

At any point TDF can make a decision whether or not it wants to work
with us or not, there is no obligation to do so. Oracle has given us
clearance to use the name OpenOffice.org on certificates but that is all
at present and again that was before TDF became known.

If anyone has any further questions, I am quite happy to answer them on
or off the list.

-- 
Ian
Ofqual Accredited IT Qualifications
A new approach to assessment for learning
www.theINGOTs.org - 01827 305940

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