Section two: International benchmarking

Country:  Germany 

Germany’s competitor development framework incorporates a three-tiered system, where past competitors, current competitors, and age-eligible future competitors work collaboratively as a cohesive team. This structure fosters knowledge transfer, mentorship, and experience-sharing across different competition cycles, ensuring continuous improvement and skill sustainability.

Germany has established Centres of Excellence for each skill they compete in across the country. For example, a dedicated institution may take responsibility for leading the training and development of digital skills. These centres provide state-of-the-art infrastructure, including equipment, labs, and resources, to support training programs, pressure testing, and competitions.

This approach effectively addresses infrastructure challenges by ensuring that both competitors and institutions benefit. Competitors gain access to high-quality facilities, while partner institutions enhance their prestige and engagement in skills development. The collaborative model not only enhances technical proficiency but also promotes a culture of excellence and continuous learning within the German TVET system.

WorldSkills Germany offers a strong example with their centralised approach to outreach, training, and development. They produce magazines detailing competitions and competitors from the past decade, including industry sponsors, and maps highlighting training institutions across the country that support each skill. There is a dedicated training hub, the Multi-Media Berufsbildende Schulen in Hanover, where the Training Manager organises and oversees the squad’s activities. The infrastructure, tailored specifically for WorldSkills training, includes dedicated servers and remote access capabilities, enabling squad members to engage with training materials remotely, thereby reducing the need for frequent in-person sessions and cutting costs while improving efficiency.

A key strategy employed by WorldSkills Germany involves long-term engagement and rigorous, continuous practice specifically aimed at excelling in the WorldSkills Competition.

Country:  Indonesia 

Indonesia has been an early adopter of automation in network configurations. This gives more confidence for the competitor in all four areas of the skill.

Indonesia adopts a rigorous and consistent long term training program with its students. There is an exceptional attention to detail and adherence to best practices, reducing errors and enhancing operations.

Country: Hungary 

Like Indonesia, Hungary excels in troubleshooting skills and network automation, building on their strong foundation in Cisco technologies. Hungarian competitors are trained to follow a systematic, structured approach to problem-solving rather than relying on trial-and-error methods.

Their process involves conducting a root cause analysis within a defined time frame, ensuring efficient diagnosis and resolution of network issues. This methodical troubleshooting approach minimises errors, improves accuracy, and enhances time management skills during high-pressure situations. Additionally, the emphasis on automation tools, such as Python scripting and Ansible, enables competitors to streamline tasks and increase operational efficiency.

Four key components: Modular network design, real-time troubleshooting, automation and security.

Excellence can be showcased by the following:

• ability to design and implement scalable, high-performance networks benchmarking industry best practices

• configurations, that include but not limited to, dynamic routing protocols, redundancy, secure connectivity, firewalls, role-based access controls and multi-factor authentication

• resolving issues under time constraints and real-time diagnostics, including but not limited to, packet flow analysis, systematic elimination of potential causes, and ability to do root cause analysis

• approach to simplify the task by automating the infrastructure.

Current key trends, practices and techniques can we share from international pressure testing:

• using automation in network administration, software defined networking/ network programmability

• Linux based server management and server configurations: use of command line tools for efficient server management

• methodological troubleshooting.