IT Certification ReviewMaking the case for professionalism
Nick Tate had only been president-elect of the ACS for a few days when I spoke to him in December. I wanted to talk about his plans as president and the challenges the Australian ICT industry and the profession itself face in the year ahead. No stranger to dealing with technology change and upheaval – Tate was head of IT at the United Bank of Kuwait in London when Iraq invaded Kuwait – he is passionate about building an ICT workforce ready for the challenges ahead and able to avoid some of the major project failures we have seen in recent years. “A lot of the time, government and industry leaders are trying to work out how ICT services of projects are fit for purpose,” he said. “But it doesn’t matter how good the technology is if the workforce is not fit for purpose.” According to Tate, the ACS has a substantial opportunity to help develop an ICT workforce in Australia through its certification program, designed to allow ICT professionals to measure their skills against a globally accredited certification scheme. “Along with many great ICT project outcomes, that often go unsung, there have been some less than successful projects of recent times,” Tate said. “Let’s be honest; some could be perceived as spectacular failures. How many people leading those projects were ICT Certified Professionals? I would not be surprised to find that many did not have professional ICT certification.” Part of this process will be researching ICT successes and failures in Australia to see if the project managers and other professionals involved were appropriately skilled, Tate said. “Then, we will be able to go to industry and government leaders and say if you want to avoid these project train wrecks, employ professionals who can show they have the appropriate ICT skills through globally recognized certification.” Of course, the other area where work is necessary to strengthen our ICT workforce is education. “Our core ICT education is under threat,” he said, “It’s a case of the vanishing IT course, with student and academic numbers reducing. We need to take stock of where we are and how best to help our ICT tertiary education sector.” Ensuring the ongoing foundation of this core education is vital, he said, as well as giving ICT professionals opportunities to continue their education throughout their careers. “Technology is changing so much, that if you did a degree 10 years ago you would not have covered things like cloud computing,” he said. “We are facing enormous change in ICT through the cloud, mobile devices and consumer-led computing and our skill sets will need to change and adapt.” Once the research is in and we have an idea of the “state of play”, Tate argues we can work with Australian governments to create opportunities to build an ICT workforce with the required skills. “The US has had great success with centers of excellence in security,” he said. “By offering scholarships and sponsored research, they’ve grown the number of people with skills in the cyber security arena. We’ll be looking at ways to translate projects like this to our context.” As leader of a federal government project to build a storage cloud for researchers, Tate is dealing with many of these changes first-hand. The project, about a year in, has $50 million in funding from the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research (DIISR) and will provide a place to make collections of data accessible for researchers. “The data can be used again and again,” he said. “Sensor data from the Great Barrier Reef, for example, can be used by marine researchers, climate researchers and many other projects. There really is a tsunami of data.” On the issue of cloud computing, Tate believes there are some misconceptions in the market. “Industry is getting the message that they just need to move everything to the cloud, that you don’t need ICT, but that’s not the case. Companies will still need skilled ICT professionals.” Tate praised the work undertaken by the ACS during the term of immediate past president Anthony Wong and plans to build on that base by focusing on key areas like certification and education. “We need to make sure the ACS is also fit for purpose,” he said. “Part of that will be looking at our own internal communication – creating the infrastructure to operate across the country.”
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