“Though the number of public institutions and companies using Korean software is increasing, people still have serious reservations about the idea of using Korean software as part of their major systems. Besides, there is a huge mismatch between the skills and aptitude of the majority of college graduates and the needs of the Korean software industry,” said Shin Seok-kyu, Head of the Telecommunications Technology Association (TTA) Academy.
“The localization and internationalization of homegrown software is an urgent task,” Shin added.
Since 2003, the TTA (a non-government and non-profit organization dedicated to ICT standardization, testing and certification services) has been running courses designed to produce software testing and quality assurance experts. This is because the TTA judged that reinforcing the fundamentals of the Korean software industry and market should precede efforts for the localization and internationalization of Korean software.
Building on the TTA’s abundant expertise in ICT standardization and certification, the TTA opened the TTA Academy last January, with a view to proactively responding to growing demands for IT technologies and experts.
“There is no doubt the demand for Korean software is on the rise. Yet information system managers in almost every industry and every size organization unite in saying that they opt for foreign-made software because they can’t trust the quality of Korean software. I sympathize with them, but I can’t help feeling dispirited,” Shin mentioned.
The growing importance of software quality assurance has sent the software industry into feeling the need for experts in software quality assurance and testing. But the nation’s education infrastructure for carrying out industry-focused skills training was far from sufficient. Hence the TTA stepped in to nurture future software talent packed with practical skills that industry badly needs now.
For such reasons, Shin has opened a master’s degree course (which offers fully-funded government scholarships) in software quality assurance and testing at Dankook University in Seoul. He is planning to open more at other universities.
The TTA Academy has been providing a variety of courses aimed at producing professional ICT experts. The TTA has been holding a 3-day “software testing expert education” program for over a decade, which is divided into basic and advanced courses.
On top of that, the TTA has been running a private certification program, called the Certified Software Test Specialist (CSTS) since 2008. As of May 2015, a total of 1,498 people (1,440 from basic courses and 58 from advanced courses) earned CSTS certificates. Shin is now determined to develop the CSTS into a government-authorized certificate program.
“The CSTS is the first and only software tester evaluation system. Some Korean software companies give extra points to job candidates with a CSTS certificate. To raise public confidence in the CSTS certification, we need to have the CSTS authorized by the government. With all the domains combined, there are only roughly 90 national licenses. Thus, having it government-authorized is very meaningful,” said Shin.
Along with the CSTS, Shin is also working on the development and expansion of the Certified Software Quality Specialist (CSQS) certificate program.
“In addition to software testing training courses, prominent overseas providers of specialized courses in software quality, especially those in the US, are running a range of courses, such as software quality engineering, software quality management and software quality analysis. But in S. Korea, even universities are reluctant to conduct research on software owing to a lack of awareness and poor research environments,” he continued.
“I expect that the CSQS certificate program will play a pivotal role in ensuring software quality by producing experts in software quality testing,” Shin said.
What’s more, the TTA is also running a program aimed at teaching people how to test information protection products against the Common Criteria (CC) (an international set of guidelines and specifications developed for evaluating information security products).
In order to have products CC-certified, software developers need to have a strong document preparation capability. In other words, they have to write complex documents and have their products go through rigorous evaluation processes. By offering such an education program centered on the CC, we look to help small- and medium sized developers of information protection products prepare themselves for the CC,” Shin added.
His untiring endeavors are believed to not only strengthen the fundamentals of the Korean software industry but also expedite the localization and internationalization of Korean software.
No matter how excellent Korean companies’ products are, they will end up sitting on the shelf gathering dust if the companies fail to enter overseas markets. “We plan to furnish education programs on localizing and internationalizing products. Localization (sometimes shortened to "L10n") is the process of adapting a product or service to a particular language, culture or market. This process is somewhat too much of a burden to Korean developers. As regards internationalization, abbreviated as “i18n,” companies have to internationalize their products before localizing them. This is a tough task as well,” Shin said.
The TTA is set to push for a deal on the mutual recognition of certificates with the US-based International Institute for Software Testing (IIST).
“Once the two organizations have signed a mutual recognition agreement (MRA), Korean companies will get a lot of traction. We are doing our best to sign an MRA with the IIST at an earlier date,” Shin added.
