Our professional goal

Throughout the history of our industry, the biggest challenge for IT workers has been keeping up to date with the rapid pace of technical change.

New products, new versions of existing products, or whole new technologies have kept training courses full and manuals well-thumbed.

But qualifications, accreditations and certificates are no longer enough. And in many cases, they are not even what is wanted by employers.

The first part of Computing’s Professionalising IT campaign – see here – shows how the world has changed.

There has been much navel-gazing over the years about the subject of IT professionalism, and whether or not we need to have the sort of globally-recognised approval process used by doctors, lawyers, architects or accountants. It is a topic that has animated correspondents to our Letters page.

More than ever, there is certainly a recognition that IT can, and must, do better.

Professionalism means more than having technical knowledge. It is about soft skills, about taking personal responsibility and accountability, working to high standards and ethics, and caring about how IT is perceived by people outside the industry.

This point is reinforced by the annual IT skills survey by user group Imis, which says that programme and project management experience are the focus for employers. Technical skills are becoming commoditised or outsourced, it suggests.

The challenge is that IT workers – IT professionals, if you prefer – have to now be proactive about making this change. The Imis report reinforces the view that if the requisite skills are not available in two to three years’ time, companies in a globalised world will simply go overseas to find the talent they need. A government that supports globalisation and allows economic needs to drive immigration is not going to stop this taking place.

It is no longer a question of whether IT is professional or not, but how to make sure that it is.