The quality criteria and directives of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) and Spanish legislation state that higher education institutions should report back to society on quality activities, commitments and compliance.
The UPM's Facultad de Informática has defined quality as a key point in its educational policy and pursuits. The first goal it has adopted is to conform to the directives and criteria set out in the AUDIT Programme standards developed by the National Quality Evaluation and Accreditation Agency (ANECA).
The UPM views the AUDIT Programme as a great opportunity for its schools and colleges to deploy a comprehensive and integrated quality assurance system governing their activities and management.
With the firm persuasion of advancing towards the goals set out in its mission and vision, the Facultad de Informática's Executive Board, like the UPM, is formally committed to its IQAS and determined to establish mechanisms to progressively institute a culture of continuous improvement. The IQAS is an all-round effort by the school to design a system assuring that the services that its offers conform to and maintain a set quality level. The Facultad de Informática's Internal Quality Assurance System was passed at the School Board of 29 March 2008 for submission to ANECA's AUDIT Programme.
This system is now being deployed. The deployment involves implementing all the IQAS stipulations using Polymita business process management (BPM) software.
One of the key requirements of a quality assurance system is documentation. To do this, the documented quality policy stipulations and quality goals and procedures have been developed and specified in the School Quality Manual and Process Map, respectively.
Improvements deployed as a result of IQAS deployment
The AUDIT certificate is awarded to internal quality assurance systems (IQAS) whose design is considered, after evaluation, to be well-defined, conform to the programme directives and have the support of an organizational structure that is capable of implementing the system.
ANECA has evaluated the Facultad de Informática's IQAS design and found it to comply with the standards set out in the applicable AUDIT Programme specifications (Certificate No. 18/09, issued 16/09/2009).
Associate Dean for Quality and Strategic Planning
