Environmental research academy honored by ARTDO

• By Esme Yeh / Staff reporter

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The National Environmental Research Academy won this year’s Human Resource Development Excellence Award from Manila-based ARTDO International, the academy said yesterday.

The award is the first major international recognition of training of environmental personnel in Taiwan since programs were first launched in 1991, the academy said.

Academy president Chang Shun-chin (張順欽) said that it has been providing professional environmental certification training for more than three decades.

Representatives from the National Environmental Research Academy receive this year’s Human Resource Development Excellence Award from ARTDO International at a conference in Sabah, Malaysia, on Sept. 7.

Photo courtesy of the Ministry of Environment via CNA

The training includes 22 programs, which have among them issued about 280,000 certificates since they began, Chang said.

The Human Resource Development Excellence Award went to the Green Human Resource Development Strategy, which was developed based on the academy’s rich experience in talent training, he said.

It integrated the academy’s environmental protection training management system by introducing batch issuance, digital signatures and QR code verification mechanism, he said.

That facilitated a complete digital service process from training and testing to certification, he added.

ARTDO International said that the academy won due to its contributions to human resource development through digital transformation and environmental sustainability.

With the strategy, the academy implemented a secure, integrated electronic certification platform, it said.

The platform issued more than 10,000 digital certificates, “significantly improving service delivery, saving applicants more than 17,000 cumulative waiting days, reducing administrative burden, lowering public expenditure, and promoting environmental sustainability through reduced paper consumption and carbon emissions,” it said.

Applications for electronic certificates accounted for about 60 percent of all certificate applications since digital issuance began last year, Chang said.

Digital certification saves time for trainees and companies seeking to hire talent, he said.

Companies recruiting environmental personnel can check applicants’ training backgrounds documented in the academy’s database by scanning the QR code printed on their certificate, he said.

ARTDO International was established in 1974 as the Asian Regional Training and Development Organization, with the Taipei-based Chinese Society for Training and Development as one of the founding members, the academy said.

Its members include government agencies, educational institutions, multinational corporations and human resources experts from more than 30 areas, including the UK, New Zealand, Australia, the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific region, it said.

This year’s awards ceremony was held at the Asian Regional Training and Development Organization’s 53rd international conference in Sabah, Malaysia, on Sept. 7, the academy said, adding that Taiwan hosted three of the conferences in 1992, 2011 and 2018.