The European IT Certification (EITC) framework is one of the most recognized frameworks among the EU based IT certification standards. Established in 2008, it stemmed from a project funded from the European Regional Development Fund directly focusing on one of the targets of the European Commission's Digital Agenda for Europe (DAE), i.e. to disseminate professional IT skills and to develop a non-profit European attestation framework for vocational IT competences.
The project set up technical foundations for the EITC framework in attesting digital skills online, to develop across the upcoming years and to be able to compete with the IT sector dominating US based IT certification frameworks, as a a fully EU based standard. The EU funding was granted in order to develop online examination curricula along with examination platforms and infrastructures, with an objective in lowering digital skills certification access barriers in Europe.
In 2008 EITCI, a non-profit association seated in Brussels was designated to govern the EITC framework and to advance it with the EITCA Academy programmes, grouping individual EITC certifications into specialized domains of digital competencies, such as for example cyber security, AI, computer graphics, etc. EITCI is a non-governmental non-profit organization, established in order to govern the EITC framework, later extended with EITCA Academy programmes.
EITCI has been established specifically as an expert network non-profit association to undertake governance of the publicly funded EITC framework which was an outcome of a European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) project. It is an expert-centered and independent (non-vendor dependent, non-partisan and non-governmental) organization with currently over 12 thousands members, focusing its operations since 2008 on lowering access barriers to IT skills and competences attestation in Europe, pursuing its mission under the EU funding, in disseminating attested vocational IT competences. EITCI focuses on governance over the EITC framework, later extended with the EITCA Academy. It continuously competes with the market-dominating US based, mainly for-profit and vendor-dependent IT certification frameworks and advances certification barriers lowering on physical access and economic planes.
EITCI Institute's role is similar to many globally leading vendor-independent certification standards governing organizations, which are expert-centered and non-governmental. Many of these organizations are also non-profit. The vendor-dependent certification providers are most usually for-profit private corporations, seeking to promote their technologies and products, which creates a certain bias or conflict of interest regarding objective knowledge and skills attestation. The profile and history of EITCI and of the EITC/EITCA framework is in detailed described on the EITCA Academy's and EITCI Institute's websites in About, FAQ and How it works sections.
EITCI Institute, as an NGO non-profit expert organization, remains mostly publicly EU-funded through EU tenders and projects and disseminates its certification programmes under a legal requirement to cover its costs without a profit.
Since 2008 EITCI was implementing several European Social Fund (ESF) and European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) EU funded projects, addressing among others the problem of digital gender gap by certifying IT skills among women, enhancing digital education quality in public schools by developing and certifying e-learning and e-didactics skills among the teachers, as well as establishing e-government skills certification based on the IDABC/ISA reference standard for the public administration interoperability systems. EITCI Institute has been carrying this mission for over 17 years and have established one of not many vendor-independent digital skills certification frameworks based in the EU and able to compete globally.
The EITC certification framework from its beginning operates under the not-for-profit legal boundaries, in contrast to many leading global certification standards, primarily based in the US and operating for-profit.
EITCI's main goal is to reduce access barriers to professional IT skills certification, both procedural and economic ones in Europe and abroad, working on approaches that balance quality of competences attestation, including e.g. remote examinations integrity checks and automated proctoring with professional certification services accessibility.
A large part of EITCI activities focus on countries at high risk of digital exclusion, where EITC/EITCA vocational IT certificates are available with all fees waived, similarly as to people living with disabilities globally.
Although the main purpose of EITCI is in further development and dissemination of the EITC certification framework, it supports contributions to the standardization of emerging IT technologies, cooperating with international technical standards setting organizations, in funding from the European Commission's Horizon research programme. It is active in technical standardization and technology certification in deep and high-tech IT fields (e.g. the AI assisted smart energy) or quantum information and communication, supporting further advancements of AI and cybersecurity competences certification programmes curricula.
EITCI is continously participating in EU funded projects, including EIT, Horizon, Erasmus+, etc. It implemented several ESF and ERDF projects focused on briding the digital skills gap in the EU. The 2 most its recent EU projects include the AIM-PRO (a project under the Erasmus+ innovation programme, in which EITCI is responsible for providing a European AI literacy for multidisciplinary professional readiness and outreach certification framework) and the InnovPrecMed (a project under the EIT Health, in which EITCI is tasked with development of examination and certification framework for the set of AI/ML competences of deep-tech precision medicine practitioners).
EITCI expertise follows from cooperation of industrial, educational and academic experts who continously work on expanding and keeping up to date the EITC framework's certification curricula.
Vocational IT certification in Europe
Vocational IT certification focuses on validation and attestation of applied professional knowledge, skills and competences. This validation is done against set of criteria and curricula developed by industry relevant experts. The European Commission does not define and regulate vocational IT certification standards. Likewise in other non-regulated professions, vocational IT certification programmes are governed by independent expert bodies. These expert-centered organizations, mostly non-partisan and non-political, bring together relevant industrial expertise in corresponding fields and operate not-for-profit towards setting quality criteria, defining applied knowledge and skills curricula and dissemination of quality standards in vocational competences, lowering access barriers to professional certification.
It is important to note that there are two sectors of education in Europe, the formal education sector with governmentally regulated educational degrees, including certain specialistic professions (for example architecture and construction, medicine, legal services, etc. which require licenses for professional operations), and the non-formal vocational education sector addressing mostly non-regulated professions, such as e.g. IT sector, which has no legal regulation frameworks imposed, with vocational certificates, comptences badges and so called micro-credentials, focused on practical and applied knowledge and skills.
In the formal education sphere, there are legal regulations applying to attestation of educational outcomes, however academic independence is assured for expertise-based governance and universities are not directly subject to partisan shifts in the governmental control. In contrary, governments focus on legalislation for educational institutions operations and in cooperation with the academic sector develop accreditation frameworks which regulate formal education sphere, including education degrees, such as bachelor, engineer, master of science, doctor of philosophy, etc. under the European Bologna higher education reform process. The scopes of curricula are left to educational experts.
On the other hand, vocational training providers and certification bodies which accredit training centers and award vocational certificates to individuals meeting in non-regulated professions (such as for example in IT sector) constitute part of the informal education sphere, functioning independently in expert-centered way, without governmentally established framework of educational degrees, and not being directly regulated by governments or the European Commission.
European Commission instead programs funding that support various vocational education frameworks development. The role of vocational certification bodies, often operating not-for-profit and funded by the public funds (including EU funds) is to establish quality criteria for attesting knowledge, skills and training outcomes. Certification providers usually accredit training centers and award vocational certificates to individuals meeting set knowedge and skills criteria.
Division of roles between European governmental and non-governmental institutions
Vocational IT certification is not a governmental-competence sector under the EU legislation and the European Commission leaves it to experts-managed organizations. The European Commission has no accreditation programs for IT skills and competences certification frameworks, including those which were funded under the EU funds, but legislative initiative to accredit digital skills certification standards competing on the EU market by the European Commission is currently on a level of the feasibility study, in which EITCI has been engaged since 2022, promoting the quality standards towards accreditation framework. Most of the European organizations, including those working in the domain of digital and educational twins, are organizations not directly governed by the European Commission, which is responsible rather for implementing the EU legislation, and managing the EU budget in funding those organizations through relevant programs and tenders. Those European organizations are expert-centric associations, NGOs and networks, which are mainly funded by the EU funds.
The role of the governmental institutions of the EU is to provide policy direction and the law-making for a common EU legislative framework. The EU governmental institutions are not tasked with direct governance of various non-governmental economy sectors (in contrast to governmental-competence sectors, such as e.g. judicial system, law enforcement, aviation, immigration, public finance, drugs control, etc.). Especially expert-relevant sectors, such as e.g. the vocational IT competences attestation are outside of the governmental regulation. The role to address quality and standards is taken by non-governmental and non-profit European associations present in the EU in various sectors, including health, education, employment, environment, housing, trading, social, digitization etc., such as for example the European Association for International Education (EAIE), the European Institute of Public Administration (EIPA), the European Institute of Health and Sustainable Development (EIHSD), the European Forestry and Environmental Skills Council (EFESC), the European Forensic Institute (EUFOR), the European Institute for Export Compliance (EIFEC), the European Institute for Health (EIH), etc., which are non-governmental and non-profit expert organizations of the public utility, or the so-called third sector of the EU. More information on NGO European associations can be found for example at EU Single Market Associations, along with the legislation of the European cross-border associations (ECBA).
On the other hand, governmental institutions of the European Union include the European Parliament, the European Council, the Council of the European Union and the European Commission. Additionally there are also EU government public justice and public finance bodies: the Court of Justice of the European Union, the European Central Bank and the European Court of Auditors, as well as a few governmental-competence sector agencies such as the Frontex (for border control), European Union Drugs Agency (EUDA, for drugs control), European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO, for intellectual property), Europol (for the European Union police cooperation), European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA, for aviation control), European Union Agency for the Space Programme (EUSPA, for the EU joint space programs), European Union Agency for Railways (ERA), European Union Agency for Asylum (EUAA). European Commision does not constitute governmental bodies to govern expert-related areas of non-regulated professions, due to the competence requirements. It leaves such expert activity to European industrial organizations.
In this ecosystem European IT Certification Institute is an expert-centered European organization, statutorily established to implement the European IT Certification (EITC) framework for IT competencies attesting, operating in the legal form of a European non-profit association of public utility and aiming at improving accessibility to professional IT knowledge and skills attestation. EITC has been established as a pan-European IT certification framework in due of the EU funded project, and EITCI was established and designated to govern this framework under non-profit operations limits, in contrast to many industry dominating US-based digital skills certifications, most of which are for-profit and vendor-centric. Although the majority of EITCI members are EU citizens, EITCI does not limit its scope of operation to the EU, extending its certification programmes outreach globally, including special fees waived programmes for low socio-economic status developing countries, where EITC and EITCA certification programmes are widely available to minimize economic access barriers to professional IT certification.
In particular, in the domain of skills certification, there are also many other European not-for-profit organizations implementing similar competing frameworks, such as for example: the European Certification Institute (EUCI), the European Computer Competence Certificate Foundation (ECCC), the Central European Training Institute (CETI), the European Centre for Certification and Privacy (ECCP), the European Digital Initiative Policy (EDPI), the European Certification & Qualification Association (ECQA), the European Quality Certificate (EQC), the European Communication Certificate (ECC), the Institute of European Certification of Personnel (ICEP), etc.
