VIS: Operational Training – Advanced Level (L3)

On 21-22 March, the first cycle of eu-LISA VIS Operational Training was concluded with the “Operational Training – Advanced Level (L3)” training course that took place in Strasbourg, France. The 3-part cycle started in 2017 with Entry Level (L1) and continued with Intermediate Level (L2) in January 2018.

The aim of the training was to improve the participants’ general usage of the VIS system by providing updated information on VIS technical and business topics. Over the two-day course the following subjects were touched upon:

• Overview of the Change Management Procedure,

• Incident Management,

• VIS testing,

• VIS in operation,

• BMS,

• VIS business aspects

• Data quality,

• VIS Mail,

• The future of VIS and NIST.

Seventeen participants from fifteen different countries took part in the training that was targeted at national IT operators, Single Point of Contact (SPoC) managers and senior operational staff. The course ended with an assessment test and many participants were awarded the eu-LISA “VIS Expert” certificate.

The course satisfaction rate was 82% with the average score given by participants being 4.1 out of 5. The participants described the course as ‘going in-depth’. The topics particularly liked were: data quality, BMS and the future of VIS.

This training session was the last, for now, in the line of VIS Operational Training courses delivered in the context of eu-LISA Development Training Program for IT Operators (DTPITO). IT operators can progress further by obtaining the appropriate instruction skills and methodologies to be able to train their national peers. For this purpose eu-LISA offers a “Train the Trainer – SIS II, VIS, Eurodac for IT Operators” which gathers national IT Operators from all three systems. The next scheduled course will take place on 13-14 June in Tallinn, Estonia.

A new cycle of VIS DTPITO is scheduled to start in November 2018 with “Operational Training -Entry Level (L1)”.