RAG Learning: The Global Risk and Assurance Learning Platform

I was reading Eric’s candid post on diversity in the risk and assurance industry and two things came to mind. One, I believe these issues are faced in all industries and societies, but agree that we need to act; and consciously put effort into integrating ideas for everyone’s benefit. Two, the fact that we are in telecoms and the exposure we all have to technology, both provide additional tools to help this process. Telecoms and tech bring us closer.

In addition, to the initiatives that RAG is undertaking it also hosts RAG Learning, a platform providing training courses by the industry for the industry regardless of the location, race, sex, employer or any other characteristics of the student. As the administrator of the platform, I can assure that the participation is global and catholic with students from every continent. Each time I look at the user statistics I am amazed at the reach that this program has had. Although we also notice some regions with lower participation, possibly due to language barriers (eg South America with Spanish), we have users from all continents. We aim to deliver the content in other languages in the future. Our most recent stats show an increase in the traffic from Spain, Poland, Sweden, India, Iran, Tanzania and Mozambique, with new registrations and enrollments continuing from all over the world.

Further to the stats we have had students write to us directly to show their appreciation. These include employees from a regulator’s office of a large African country, a Middle Eastern telco, a telco of a small group of islands off Africa, as well as assurance vendors in Europe. RAG Learning showcases how the sharing of knowledge by one entity helps many to gain using technology as the medium.

The content of RAG Learning so far has been donated by MTN Group, an African telco, which has distinguished itself and pioneered this method of learning in our industry but also taken the additional step of sharing it with the community.

I’d like to call on all risk and assurance professionals who have developed a training course – be it a small presentation on sim boxing, an overview of telecoms, a way to load data more efficiently or a method to analyze a specific fraud – to share it with everyone. Please contact RAG here for details.

For those of you, anywhere in world, whatever your background, who want to take advantage of the material on RAG Learning you can register for free. Certificates are also offered for a small processing fee but the material remains free to take.

Michael Lazarou
Michael Lazarou
Michael Lazarou manages revenue assurance and fraud at Epic, a Cypriot telco, having joined their RA function in March 2011. His background includes a double major in Computer Science and Economics, as well as an MBA. Before being lured into the exciting world of telecoms he worked as a software developer.

Michael is interested to gain a better understanding of different aspects of RA and data analysis. He shares his insights on training courses he participates in with Commsrisk. Michael's accumulated experience of online training also led him to volunteer for the role of Coordinator of the RAG Learning online education platform.