Certification/Petition

From Apache OpenOffice Wiki
Jump to: navigation, search

Mision

To enhance the appeal and popularity of OpenOffice.org through the training and recognition of people skilled in its use. This will be done through the creation of a training and skills certification program, which combines centrally-defined skills standards with flexible and accessible implementations across diverse geographies and economies. The program will provide a trusted path for IT workers to prove their OOo skills, and it reduces barriers to OOo use by enabling implementors to more-easily find qualified practitioners.


The Certification Process

A network of training centres (private and public) is maintained by the OOo Certification Group ("OOoCG"). These centres are authorized to test students after training, and to certify students who pass the tests. The method of testing is to be flexible, however the criteria of subjects to be tested will be consistent and centrally maintained by the OOoCG.

A list of students eligible for certification will be sent to the OOoCG, which which will electronically issue the certifications and manage a database of certified students. The OOoCG will collect a fee per certification (tentatively in the range of €5-10) to offset expenses; it may alternately offer additional services (such as the production of printed certification documents). Training centres are free to set their own prices for test delivery, but are encouraged to include it in their training fees and to be locally competitive. The intention is to provide suitable incentive for training centre participation while keeping the program accessible to students.

The OOoCG will work with the network of authorized training centres to help promote their certification services, indirectly promoting OOo in general.

In collaboration with the global OOo community, the OOoCG will investigate complaints of abuse of the certification system and revoke the status of centres that have proven to violate OOoCG abuse policies.


Strategy

An OOO-endorsed certification group would be established, with the authority to handle funds. This could be done either internal or external to OOo itself. The group would create and maintain:

  1. A set of certification "criteria" (what students must know in order to be certified). This effort will synchronize with current OOo education, documentation and marketing projects.
  2. Guidelines, policies and resources to attract and manage a network of instructors and training programs -- private, government-run and others -- that are verified to test students in the certification criteria.
  3. A mechanism to approve, monitor and (if necessary) revoke the validated status of training programs and instructors in order to minimize abuse.


Status

Currently the certification project is hosted as a project of Education and has a completed syllabus and an ongoing work regarding the documentation literature label as "study guide" for the delivery of the training.


Current needs (what we want from CC)

While ultimately the OOoCG will be financially self-sustaining, it will require initial funding to launch operations. Such funding is NOT being directly requested from OOo; rather, we are simply seeking endorsement of the project so that we may solicit external sponsorship.

At the present time we have found interest from a body that is interested in providing the required funding; however they will only do so if the project has the approval of OOo and the authorization to use its names and branding. In order to proceed with this opportunity we need the CC to recognize the project as an official effort that will represent OpenOffice.org.

We also need a name for the project: OOoCG is simply an interim name and should not be the "brand" that the public sees.


===Project Team (tentative)=== The initial OOoCG Advisory Board is to consist of: * Richard Holt * Alexandro Colorado * Gabriel Gurley * Solveig Haugland * Evan Leibovitch * Aile Filipi *Blibrestez55

Personal tools