Of her 16 years in employment, Ms Islyamova has spent nine supporting the work of government bodies, specialising in border security with a focus on combating terrorism and passport fraud, radiation control compliance, gender issues in border management and other aspects.
Previously, Zhanna was Head of HR at a government body and worked to introduce performance and competency assessment for the public sector employees; she is now Acting Head of the Department of Advanced Studies and Professional Training at the Educational and Methodological Center of the State Revenue Committee of the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Kazakhstan.
Ms Islyamova is constantly improving her competencies and adding to her expertise in border security. For example, in 2022, having successfully made it through a competitive selection process, she studied at the OSCE Border Management Staff College in Dushanbe. At the end of the programme, Ms Islyamova defended a research paper on ‘The advantages of a gender-balanced approach to supporting border security’.
In March 2022, Ms Islyamova gave a presentation on ‘Implementation of a training system based on developing employee competencies’, as part of a Regional consortium workshop for the Heads of Customs and Border Guarding services’ training institutions from Central Asian countries, in Tashkent. Following the workshop, she was sent to Latvia for work experience training at the State Revenue Service and Riga Technical University, where she also had the honour of giving a presentation on Kazakhstan’s experience with a system for assessing the competencies of public sector employees,
In 2023, Ms Islyamova attended the BOMCA 10 Programme’s Regional workshop on introducing a Customs Competency Framework, putting forward suggestions and taking part in the development of guidelines for creating a description of the roles of a customs competency profile. She also helped to develop recommendations on introducing a training system based on developing the necessary competencies.
With her wealth of experience and expert knowledge, Ms Islyamova runs professional development seminars and courses on various aspects of border security and customs control. In addition, Zhanna is the main employee involved in organising support work for customs employee training at the Training Center. As recommended by employees taught at her seminars, she has also started providing training on anti-terrorist security and counterterrorism for employees of establishments vulnerable to terrorism in Astana (shopping centres, cinemas, etc.).
At present, Ms Islyamova is actively working together with Uzbekistan’s Customs Institute with the aim of fostering cooperation between customs services and providing mutual assistance in the training of customs administration employees. She has also developed a plan of cooperation to increase the potential of trainers and teacher exchanges to support international qualification, covering the period to 2024.
Her outstanding professionalism has earned Ms Islyamova multiple certificates of appreciation and letters of gratitude from the Ministry of Finance. In 2023, she was recognised as the best public sector employee at a government body.