Course Overview

The Home of Digital Technologies Training is where individuals and all industries gain the digital skills needed to succeed and thrive, through outstanding and aspirational teaching, learning and skills development. It creates exciting partnerships between learners, employers and the community, with plans to develop Somerset into the country’s leading region for digital, engineering and manufacturing technologies. This occupation is found in organisations, large and small, in all sectors, and within public, private and voluntary organisations. For example, retail, finance, the armed forces and multi-national telecoms providers. Organisations increasingly rely on computer and communications systems in all areas of their operations and decision-making processes. It is therefore crucial to ensure the optimal performance and maintenance of systems. An Information Communication Technician (ICT) is critical to achieving this. The ICT makes their contribution through applying infrastructure management tools to automate the provisioning, testing, deployment and monitoring of infrastructure components. An ICT provides support to internal and/or external customers, by using tools or systems to problem solve and trouble-shoot routine and non-routine problems. This occupation also supports clients/customers to run their systems efficiently. They achieve this through monitoring and maintaining systems and/or platforms to maximise productivity and provide a positive user experience. An ICT could be installing and configuring computer systems, diagnosing hardware and/or software faults, solving technical and applications problems, either remotely or in person. Some examples of these issues are slow performance, connection problems, and an inability to access data. The work of an ICT can involve a vast array of specialist roles supporting business critical requirements and focus on customer solutions. Networking, Server, IT Essentials, Secure Communications, programming, and databases are just an example of typical tasks and projects undertaken within the likely areas of employment. In their daily work, an employee in this occupation interacts with a wide variety of internal or external users of digital systems, through digital channels, remotely and/or face to face. Units of study/what is involved The Information Communication Technician standard has options. At the end of the apprenticeship you will be competent in either: Support Technician or Network Technician • The Support Technician role is desk based resolving system user queries and resolving faults in a helpdesk environment. For example, a Support Technician in a Travel Agent business would help to ensure the operation of the customer bookings system. When the system fails the business would contact a Support Technician to report the problem and either get it fixed or escalated to an engineer. The Support Technician would be expected to rectify or escalate faults rapidly in order to reduce the financial impact and damage to the business’s customer reputation. Network Technician • A Network Technician role is usually desk based but may involve visits to client’s premises to resolve issues. For example, a Network Technician working in a university or a college they may be installing a computer lab as a training suite including cabling and hardware requirements. They may be required to install cloud services to support a business expansion and provide better network services.In a contact centre environment, they may use network management tools to collect and report on network load and performance statistics to improve commercial outcomes. In a retail bank they may contribute to the implementation of maintenance and installation work using standard procedures and tools to carry out defined system backups and restoring data.

Assessment Methods

Work product portfolio, documentating evidence of demonstrative workplace competencies. Knowledge delivery with formative assessment Scenario Demonstrations with questioning Professional Discussion underpinned by Portfolio

Progression Options

• Technical Service Support (at 2nd, 3rd or 4th line support) • Network Support Engineer • IT Support Analyst • IT Support Officer • Cloud Technician