Online IT courses for members of the Swiss Association of Municipalities
Alongside infrastructure projects and finances, digitalization and cyber security are the topics that are currently of greatest concern to Swiss municipalities. This is the result of the latest survey of municipalities conducted by the Swiss Association of Municipalities, the MyniGmeind association and the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland.
The majority of municipalities still see themselves as laggards when it comes to digitalization and diagnose a need to catch up. To help meet this need, the low-threshold Cisco Networking Academy courses (more than 50 courses, with over 1,000 hours of learning material in various national languages) are now available for self-study to the more than 1,500 member municipalities of the Swiss Association of Municipalities. The individual courses take between six and 70 hours to complete and are designed to provide a comprehensive overview of community-relevant topics such as "Introduction to Cyber Security" or "Cyber Threat Management". Successful participants receive free certificates of achievement and can obtain industry certifications if required.
For more than 25 years, Cisco has been working with institutional partners worldwide to offer IT education courses that improve participants' digital skills. There are currently 62 active institutional partners offering courses in Switzerland and over 20,000 people have already taken advantage of the Networking Academy's educational programs.
"Cyberattacks do not stop at public administrations and the consequences are far-reaching. Cisco's online courses now give municipal employees an easy introduction and allow them to familiarize themselves with the topic without any prior knowledge. They learn how the administration can protect itself against cyber attacks and how to proceed in the event of an incident," says Claudia Kratochvil, Director of the Swiss Association of Municipalities.
"The rapid development of digitalization is also influencing administration at municipal level. Digitization skills are more in demand than ever and we are pleased that we can meet a need of Swiss municipalities with our course offering," says Garif Yalak, Head of the Country Digital Acceleration (CDA) program at Cisco Switzerland.
Focus on education
The collaboration with the Swiss Association of Municipalities is part of the Cisco Country Digital Acceleration (CDA) initiative in Switzerland. The global innovation initiative aims to accelerate the digital agenda of countries through targeted projects and create sustainable added value. The initiative is represented worldwide with 1,600 projects in 50 countries. One focus of the CDA program in Switzerland is digital education.
Source: www.cisco.com
