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Press / 2005 / 27^th May

BCS Promotes Managed Awareness Programme at InfoBasis Digital Skills Summit

Presenting his keynote address at the Digital Skills Summit, BCS Chief Executive David Clarke will support the growing demand for greater formal recognition from the UK’s one million plus IT practitioners. This is because both industry and the public service sector are increasingly reliant on a profession that they expect to dramatically improve their ability to exploit information technology more efficiently, successfully and cost-effectively.

InfoBasis has long backed this drive towards recognised professionalism in the IT industry, and has provided the technology for a suite of supporting BCS products and services, including BCS Career Developer and BCS Skills Manager.

The BCS as the only chartered professional body for IT has now approved a proposal for a managed programme that will give substance to the ambition of the Society to lead the profession of the 21st century and to build IT professionalism to the level which is seen to exist in other areas of professional activity. It is also keen to extend the profession from its traditional engineering roots and to establish its Chartered IT Professional (CITP) accreditation as the profession’s gold standard.

According to David Clarke, “Following recent high profile IT project failures, there has been a rapid understanding of the need to improve the quality of product and service in IT if business and society is to secure the real benefits which the technology has to offer. The BCS has already played its part in championing the new IT profession through a high profile membership recruitment campaign and a raft of new professional qualifications to reflect the rapid evolutionary process that is the nature of the IT profession today. Already the Society has attracted over fourteen thousand new members in under a year, and this figure is continuing to grow by over 1000 a month. In addition, we have developed new relationships with a number of major employers of IT staff and with central government including the Office of Government Commerce and the eGovernment unit of the Cabinet Office.

“But the Society also recognises that we are still a long way from a mature IT profession when professional qualifications are seen as imperative rather than an optional extra. Even with the increase in BCS membership, there is still only a small minority of practitioners in membership of any professional body and few, if any, employers require professional qualifications as part of their recruitment practice. If we are to embed professional standards and professional qualifications in IT practice – in the way in which for example personnel management standards and qualifications are now embedded in HR practice – we need to work with the key stakeholders. All the indications are that the IT world is now ready for that move if given the right leadership.

“To this end, we are forming our core group of around 15 business leaders from large organisations, led by an acknowledged industry leader in delivering change. This group will pool their experiences, help to clearly define the issues that needs to be addressed, commission necessary research, identify the shape of viable solutions, and shape and support a programme of work to take the initiative forward.”

For more information on the Digital Skills Summit, or to register, please visit www.infobasis.com/events.