IT Ecology & the BCS

by Professor Mike Rodd & David Evans

Working at the British Computer Society (BCS) at the moment is perhaps best described by the famous Chinese curse 'May you live in interesting times'. Times certainly are interesting and, for the most part, exciting. The IT field is a rapidly developing complex ecosystem, and a highly productive one.

In academia the UK is arguably producing the highest intellectual return on investment there is, with the UK representation in terms of leading academics and research output hugely disproportionate to its size. In industry, we are one of the largest exporters of IT services in the world and a centre of excellence for many different markets. Perhaps more importantly, the UK's IT workforce is enabling the private sector and public services to deliver value in a range of areas; so much so that our ability to measure our success is outstripped by the new ways we are finding to create value.

As a community, we have so much to be proud of, and we need to become more comfortable with celebrating success. Our own identity as a profession needs to reflect our enormous value to society and result in a bit more self-confidence.

That doesn't mean that everything is going well, and the new place of the IT profession brings with it new responsibilities. When so much relies on IT, delivery of IT must be reliable. In short, while we are going well, we are not as good at delivering value as we need to be. Part of that is the challenge of making best practice common practice rather than the exception.

Both of these are being addressed by the work of the BCS on IT Professionalism. Through the Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA), it is for the first time possible to benchmark an individual's or organisation's IT competencies. By achieving chartered status as an IT Professional (CITP), an individual can demonstrate not only competence in their area, but ability to take on a higher level of professional responsibility; responsibility for delivering benefit not just technology.

Neither SFIA nor CITP are brand new, but both are undergoing rapid evolution. Both are at a baseline of maturity that makes them useful, but we are still addressing some important questions. For example, we know how people have reached a suitable level of professionalism for CITP in the past, but how will or should they do so in future? For instance, the educational experience received twenty years ago by someone who is now mid-career in IT has little in common with the educational experience today. The international competition that today's students will face through the next 50 years of their career is totally different to that when the BCS was formed in 1957.

This raises challenging questions about an educational basis for the IT profession. It is important to make sure, for example, that university degrees the BCS accredits will give a graduate the best possible chance of success throughout their career. As academic research and teaching are also evolving rapidly, particularly at the moment, it is not an easy time to be trying to re-examine industrial requirements for education, but we must nevertheless. When those in industry are struggling to see what will happen in the next few years, it is not an easy time to build a coherent view of educational needs for the next twenty years, but we must nevertheless. Amidst all the confusion, and a rapid decline in interest in studying computing amongst young people, it is not easy to make the case for why we need many more, but we must nevertheless!

Putting together some kind of picture that makes sense to a software engineer in Cardiff, a computer science student (and their professor) in Swansea and an IT/business analyst in Aberystwyth is not easy to say the least. Some might even argue it was not possible. For the BCS, this is the daily task, and why working at the BCS is so interesting!

If that wasn't enough, there are different needs and challenges beyond the profession. Internet misuse and e-crime present issues that the average person is ill-equipped to face. Digital divides are separating groups across many different lines within society, and risking alienation. Social networking and computer games are changing the way we grow up and interact, positively and negatively. In each of these areas the BCS has a role to play; to promote use of 'our' technology that brings benefits, and to mitigate against or prevent adverse consequences.

The BCS in 2007 is a very different place to a year ago, let alone 1957. We are looking forward to a very interesting 2008.

Useful links:
BCS: www.bcs.org
Chartered IT Professional: www.bcs.org/server.php?show=conWebDoc.1076

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