NetAcademy E-Newsletter México

To all of you, somehow involved in the Cisco Networking Academy Program, it is not a mystery that this is one of the most successful programs of its kind in the whole world.

But, what is success and how is it measured?.

1850 appears the telegraph and in 1876 the telephone, but it is until the second half of the 20th century that it became an essential element within the telecommunication systems.

One success measure is the program's worldwide number of academies, instructors, students and graduates. From this point of view, we have been very successful: with 450,00 students in 10,000 academies in 151 countries, the program can be considered the largest e-learning lab in the world.

From the academies perspective, success is measured in terms of the rate of registered students, by the added value it grants their students, by the way the students help the communities they belong to, by the way the relationship university-industry is getting stronger, by the research opportunities it generates and by the professional development and ongoing improvement of their members. We've heard that from this point of view, the program is being successful.

But from our students' perspective, the word success has a different meaning. The measurement is easier, the promise for better life quality or the opportunity for a better job. Which has been the program's performance on this matter? For many people, there has been an immediate reward as for they found better jobs. This has been the case in countries with high incomes, and with an obvious deficit in workers with high information technology skills and where there are still job offerings, however, in other communities this is not exactly the situation. Many communities have a total lack of technological infrastructure and job opportunities just do not exist. In those conditions, we realized that our program has played an important role by reducing what is known as the digital breach, and has helped in the generation of job opportunities.

Let me tell you a little bit more about the digital breach.

High-income countries contribute 15% of the world's population and 80% of Internet users. On the other side, the countries with the lowest income contribute 60% of the world's population, but they represent less than 5% of the world's Internet users. Internet's infiltration in wealthier countries reaches 30% average, while the infiltration in the poorer ones reaches scarcely 1.5% of the population. México is close to the middle of the curve. With 8 million Internet users, has 8% of infiltration.

This difference between rich and poor countries or communities is what we call the Digital Breach. It's considered as the modern version of the Analog Breach, which has been the gulf between rich and poor communities since the telephone's invention.

Lessen the Digital Breach has become one of the major goals of several governments and multilateral organizations. If we accept Internet as the most efficient way to transmit information, to share knowledge, to increase productivity and to improve life quality, we will understand why it is imperative that the poorest communities make an effort to reduce this digital breach.

The reduction of the digital breach is not an isolated effort of one institution or program. It requires several multisector and multidisciplinary activities, which include political and regulatory actions, access and connectivity, human resources development, knowledge creation and delivery, among other things. The Cisco Networking Academy Program has been an important contributor, but it is still part of an enormous and well-coordinated effort where government, private sector organizations and academic institutions share the same challenges and responsibilities.

It is in these kinds of good deeds where we can measure the real success of programs like ours. The program has been the only one of its kind able to call governments, multilateral organizations and other institutions to participate in a common effort to solve the technological challenges of developing communities. The difference springs from the technical knowledge base created by our program, which make people believe in the success of technology development projects.

Depending on the reality of your own community, you should define you role to ensure your students' success, if you are an instructor, or your own success if you are a students. You should be able to decide if you are best suited for a community with the need of technical proficient workers or for a community with a strong digital breach. Some of your students or graduates will need help in shaping their future. It may be possible that you have to equip them with a better set of tools to be able to face every challenge. We have confidence in our Latin American and Mexican academies, and we are sure they'll find the way to do he best on this matter.

Isaac Majerowicz
Technical Manager International Operations
Networking Academy Program

back to top