On April 13, a delegation from the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA), visited NIA to discuss their various certification programs and expanding their interests in the Korean market. Welcoming the delegation was NIA Vice President, Jung-hyup Kang, NIA director of Global Planning and Consulting Department, Jeongwon Yoon and other NIA staff. The CompTIA delegation led by Todd Thibodeaux, the president and chief executive officer of CompTIA, has recently made arrangements with the Korea Productivity Center (KPC) and is starting to make its presence felt in Korea. Already there has been a small presence in Korea for the past eight years but now with more reach, they are developing and set to release a localized Korean language website that should allow them more cooperation with KPC and the government. Also joining the CompTIA president was Terry J. Erdle, executive vice president and Dennis Kwok, vice president for the Asia Pacific Region.

After NIA vice president Kang welcomed the delegation, he gave some opening remarks and a brief introduction of NIA, its work and history. CompTIA’s president Thibideaux then explained their organization and how much of their work is with the US Government and the US Department of Defense (DoD). It is a non-profit organization with the main mandate, dealing with vendor-neutral IT certifications, which, last year, certified over 300,000 people. In total, over 2 million people have been certified and out of the 320,000 people that took certification tests last year, there was a 70-80% passing rate. The vendor-neutral IT certifications cover a wide range of the IT sector but some examples include; securing of networks, cloud computing, Green IT and global standards. The main distinguishing characteristic of CompTIA’s highly recognized certifications is that, they are vendor-neutral as opposed to vendor-specific certifications that may only certify use on a certain brand or model. CompTIA’s certification is a higher level and teaches people how to do the job, the delegation stressed.

After some more discussions, some questions posed to vice president Kang and he included topics about the largest skill gaps found in Korea and how CompTIA may be able to work together to fill these gaps that may exist here in Korea.

In conclusion, the meeting was fruitful in learning more about both organizations respectfully and some further cooperation may be realized in the future between the 2 organizations.