[LINK] More professionalism in IT needed

[Adam Todd]

At 12:17 29/03/2005 +1000, Bernard Robertson-Dunn wrote:
>More professionalism in IT needed
>By Staff Writers,
>CRN
>24 March 2005 14:30 AEST
>http://www.itnews.com.au/newsstory.aspx?CIaNID=18353
>
>The Minister for Communications, IT and the Arts, Senator Helen Coonan, has
>called for greater professionalism in the IT community, especially around
>insurance-related issues.
>
>Coonan has convened a meeting of IT and insurance industry leaders today to
>help promote and support professionalism across the IT sector.

You can't have more "professionalism" in IT when 75% of people are "in the 
industry" because to many it's a bludge and lusers are easy to push over.

To be professional in IT, one must have an understanding of the underlaying 
technologies and electronics so as to ensure the correct materials 
(hardware or software) are contended for each individual project.  With so 
many different choices and technologies today, what is good for one 
location is not necessary the right brand and equipment or software for the 
next.

I also think that more highly experienced educators are needed in IT.  We 
have all these "I learnt Word last night, I'm teaching it to the 400 office 
staff tomorrow" types running around "training" people.  Much like school 
teachers who are allocated to "in service" the other teachers in the school 
on legal frameworks, child protection, computers, telecommunications etc, 
but have NO IDEA and NO EXPERIENCE other than what was easily assessable in 
the manual, written by someone who has no experience, but picked up a stack 
of buzz words from somewhere.

Manual writers are critical, be it procedural or operational.  Man, I've 
seen some real shockers and continue to see more and more these days, 
rubbish training manuals and operation manuals.  In fact to be quite 
honest, most of these companies would be better installing monkey's and 
training them with a banana.

Hell, solve that problem, its repetitive procedure anyway, get a robot and 
animate it to do the job.  Save having to employ a person, cut down on the 
coffee bill, decrease the need for car parking, lessen the impact of carbon 
dioxide from the "employee" traveling to work, reduce the cost of mobile 
and fixed phone bills from the office to the "girls" or the "boy/girl 
friend" who is always in crisis.  No need for lights either, so more saving 
on electricity.

Yep, we need more professionals in IT in this country, and there are plenty 
around whom are rather bored right now twiddling their thumbs NOT helping 
the country advance, so instead we import people who have even less idea - 
but they are cheaper and you can send them away when you're done so no 
unemployment from the imports.

Hmmmm.