[Qgis-psc] QGIS Certification

Fri Jun 27 10:44:18 PDT 2014

Hi

On Fri, Jun 27, 2014 at 7:10 PM, Vincent Picavet <vincent.ml at oslandia.com>
wrote:

> Hello,
>
> Le jeudi 26 juin 2014 23:51:17, Tim Sutton a écrit :
>
> [..snip building a platform for certification exams..]
>
> > The idea so far has been that Arnulf / Metaspatial will act as the
> > certification body offering a number of different certification tracks
> and
> > ensuring consistency and QA througout all testable topics. They would
> also
> > do the financial side and push a cut from every exam back to the relevant
> > projects, maintain the needed infrastructure etc.
> >
> > I would like to stress that these are just talks and so far we have just
> > been trying to come up with a workable system with the aim of bringing it
> > back to the PSC / community for comment and then going off to build a
> > prototype that others can pay with.
>
> I am quite puzzled by this.
>

Ok lets fix that!

>
> For me the certification authority should be a non-profit organization. You
> cannot be a certification authority, running a certification platform AND
> providing training and consultancy for profit.

I don't know if this is the case or the intention, Arnulf can comment on
that better. You can find general public information about their plans here:

http://www.metaspatial.net/en/institute

> This looks like a big confusion
> of roles.
> Certification should be a unification of training assessment. You cannot
> unify
> any other trainer if you are both trainer and exam provider ? There is a
> bias
> here.
>
> There should be a clear separation of roles like :
> * The Certification Authority would be an independant, non-profit
> organization
> in charge of creating the exams, and centralize all attributed
> certifications.
>

In my understanding of Arnulf's plans, QGIS.org would be the certification
body, we would determine what constitutes adequate certification and what
material needs to be covered etc. Metaspatial (if we use them) would
administer the platform providing its internet presence and managing
ecommerce etc. For me this seems like a symbiotic relationship since
personally I would not like to see the QGIS project further distracted by
managing the certification infrastructure. I don't know if there is anyone
at OSGEO planning to provide an equivalent service but I would be fine with
using them for that too provided we had similar control over examination
content and access to a share of certification fees.

> It could run a platform, or pay one or various private companies to operate
> the platform.
>

Ok that seems like a similar arrangement to using Metaspatial to administer
the programme....

> The CA could be a branch of OSGeo, but this has been discussed already ?
>

Not as far as I know.

>
> * Trainers and training companies would provide classes, and their trainees
> could pass the official certification after this with the CA.
>

Right the intention is that any trainer could provide instruction in QGIS,
but they would need to be a certified trainer in order to invigilate
examinations.

>
> If the CA is a trainer and for-profit, this is closed competition, and
> there is
> a strong risk of having the "metaspatial certification" and the
> "betaspatial
> certification" soon, and you have a balkanization of certifications, which
> leads
> to the point you started from. Seems contrary to any open innovation, equal
> chances and opensource values ?
>

I don't think this is metaspatials intention, any training company can do
training. My intention is only that we centralise and officialise
certification to maintain a minimum standard for anyone certified by
QGIS.org.

>
> Another model would be a CA certifying trainers, which in turn have the
> ability to deliver certifications.
> But the top of the certification pyramid should definitly be independant,
> objective, not for profit and have open governance.
>
>
I prefer that certifications are centrally administered, otherwise there is
no quality control. A QGIS.org certified user should write a standard exam
in order to have his/her qualification comparable to any other certified
user.

> Note that non-profit does not mean not having any money flowing in, on the
> contrary, it should get money for any certification delivered, employ
> people to
> manage this, give money back to projects, pay another company to operate a
> platform if needed. In an open and independant way.
>

Regarding non profit status of the CA, this is not a show stopper for me,
but sure if we can find or create a nonprofit to perform this function it
would probably be preferable - perhaps this is even something Arnulf has in
mind or could be convinced to set up. I think there are good reasons to use
Arnulf as the center point for such initiative as he has broad exposure to
the range of OSGEO projects and many high level contacts that would be
useful in getting such a programme accepted on a broad basis.

Personally am more interested in how the technical implementation of such a
certification process would work, and the governance of the CA you have
touched on is something I haven't spent much time thinking about. If you
are passionate about these things it would be great to have you become more
involved in our plans so that you can pursue your ideas in an actionable
way. My biggest concern is that we gain momentum and make things happen -
we have been working on this since the hackfest in Wroclaw and it has thus
far been difficult to get things past discussion phase and into something
concrete.

Regards

Tim

>
> Vincent
>
>
> > In practical terms for the person making the enquiry to you, we at this
> > stage have only the training manual (the idea being that we would match
> and
> > extend the training manual and the certification tests to correspond to
> > each other), while the certification platform is being planned for
> > hopefully the near future. If others are interested and have concrete
> ideas
> > of how things should work it would be great to form a little team and
> join
> > Arnulf and myself in actually building this. Naturally the testing
> platform
> > would be all open source but for obvious reasons the content would not be
> > and we would use funding from the exams to also help in development of
> the
> > examination content.
>
> >
> > Regards
> >
> > Tim
> >
> > > Sorry if I have been out of touch...
> > >
> > > -gary
> > >
> > > --
> > > =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
> > > Gary Sherman
> > >
> > > Founder, QGIS Project
> > > Consulting: geoapt.com
> > > Publishing: locatepress.com
> > >
> > > We work virtually anywhere
> > > =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Qgis-psc mailing list
> > > Qgis-psc at lists.osgeo.org
> > > http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-psc
>

-- 
Tim Sutton
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