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Platform: No ticket, no start

Peter Davidson, Information Age

17/06/2004 08:29:07

Walk into a hospital and ask for a casual job cutting off legs, and someone will want to know whether your credentials extend past owning a Swiss army knife. A desire to dress up won’t cut it for the bloke wanting to play being a QC for a couple of hours either.

But things are not quite so clear cut in our business: walk in and offer to implement a CRM platform and sooner or later someone might just believe enough of your story to hand over the passwords.

No recognised qualification or practising certificate, no professional credential to confirm an understanding of the critical conjunction of technology and business – just a desire to play merry hell with the enterprise.

It sounds silly, but as Gerald Murphy, ACS Certification (CMACS) program manager points out, ICT does not have an over-arching accreditation process like medicine or the law, and our industry suffers because anyone can claim to be an ICT expert.

“Doctors and lawyers are different in that they tend to provide service to other individuals. Engineers, whether employees, contractors or consultants, work in teams on projects for organisations.

“The first thing that differentiates an ICT professional from any other computer-literate person is that we make a living out of our expertise, and this applies to all ICT professionals not just new entrants.

“There is a need to commit to life-long learning to acquire not just technical skills but the knowledge and ability to function in business to meet the clients needs. ACS members need to recognise that their ability to apply ICT to solving real businesses problems is the key to their functioning effectively as an ICT professional.

“It is not technology for the sake of technology; they need to be part of the business team.

“In the Certification Program we offer specialist subjects to enable ACS members to acquire specialist knowledge to master’s level. We concentrate on the business application of ICT and how this can be managed effectively.

“It is significant that the feedback we get regarding our core subjects IT Trends and Business, Legal and Ethical Issues always stresses the benefits of applying ICT to solve businesses problems. IT Trends concentrates on how technology can be applied to business.

“Business, Legal and Ethical Issues puts the practice of ICT into context: when a member with 20 years’ experience in ICT says that he learned more from BLE than he had in any other subject, it indicates that we still have problems with the link between ICT and business.

Assignment-based assessment A change to an assignment-based assessment has seen significant growth in the ACS’ Certification Program, and about 250 candidates will study in the program in 2004.

The program has steadily gathered pace since its inception in 1993, giving ICT specialists an opportunity through distance learning to acquire skills and knowledge to develop their expertise and apply it to improving business performance.

The ACS Certification program is a part-time Master’s level distance education course. The program takes between one and two years to complete and articulates into a Graduate Diploma or Masters with Open Learning Australia and the Association of Professional Engineers, Scientists and Managers, Australia (APESMA) and a number of universities in Australia and overseas.

Among the benefits of CMACS is the ease with which candidates can pursue qualifications off-campus, an opportunity being exploited by people in remote locations in Australia and also outside Australia.

More than 10 per cent of participants are based in North America, UK/Europe, south east Asia, New Zealand and the Indian sub-continent, and while most are Australians working overseas, many are “locals” who have found the ACS content and credential valuable.

While their certification cannot be used for immigration entitlement, they join a growing alumni of practitioners with independently certified knowledge recognised by employers.

The South East Asian Regional Computer Confederation (SEARCC) has endorsed the program. SEARCC represents the computer societies of Australia, Hong King, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan and Thailand.

Essentially, candidates complete two core subjects – IT Trends and Business, Legal and Ethical Issues – and two subjects within one of the specialist elective streams: Knowledge Management, e-business, e-Learning Management and Strategy for IS, Project Management and Software Development.

The core subjects and the first subject in a specialisation are assessed by assignment and the second specialist electives by assignment and examinations held in June and November each year. Candidates can join the program at any time and have four years to complete it.

Each subject costs $825 for Australian or New Zealand Computer Society members and $1095 for others. It’s cheaper therefore to seek ACS membership (four years’ industry experience and an appropriate computing qualification are required) before starting the program. Existing ACS members who are less than fully employed in ICT may qualify for the special “unemployed” rate of $495 per subject.

A corporate discount package is also available.

Subjects are developed in consultation with and reviewed by a subject reference group of experts in the specialist fields of the program. These groups are drawn from both industry and academia. Knowledge management, for example, has several industry professionals, a previous CMACS student and two academics in its membership of the reference group.

Certification program manager Murphy says that the program provides much of its own research: “Because candidates choose their own assignment topics in both of the core subjects and some of the specialisations, we can track emerging industry requirements.

“Knowledge management and developments in e-business are cases in point. As industry calls for course content to be reviewed or new subjects to be introduced, we can develop programs to meet market needs.”

The practical application of new knowledge in the workplace is central to the program. “To ensure that we offer subjects tailored to the needs of those employing IT people, the program continues to be designed by practitioners for practitioners.

“Employers are encouraged to recognise certification and support their staff’s efforts in achieving it by knowing that attained skills can be effectively applied.”

The scheme’s acceptance by employers is difficult to gauge in other than anecdotal terms, he says, but the strong demand for enrolment among ICT practitioners indicates that the program is meeting a need for practitioners seeking to gain higher level knowledge and understanding of the application of IT to business.

Tribute to Murphy’s contribution After five years as program manager for CMACS, Gerald Murphy will stand aside from the position later this year, and a replacement will be appointed.

Although not describing it as retirement, he will reduce his involvement with CMACS but remain involved to undertake special projects for the program, particularly in conjunction with the corporate sector.

He joined CMACS from Swinburne University of Technology where he was principal lecturer, and deputy head (Education Programs) of the School of Information Technology, and feels that “it’s time for someone else to bring new visions”.