[LINK] New Core Body Of Knowledge for the ICT Profession

[Janet Hawtin]

On 7/1/07, steve jenkin <sjenkin at canb.auug.org.au> wrote:

> Once talked to Glen B Alleman <http://www.niwotridge.com/> about what
> they do at NASA.
> It takes a decade or two before they'll let someone work on code without
> "adult supervision".
> They're serious about Cost, Time, Quality, Reliability/Survivability,
> Function and Performance - and they do it.
>
> I'd rather have a Uni grad than most "self-taught" experts, very few
> understand the complexity and problems. The worst have the magic triplet
> "arrogance, ignorance and incompetence" in spades.  Even worse are these
> ppl with a chip on their shoulders...

Which gives us the perspective that working through a known program to
develop a starter kit of habits and skills is useful. So is
contextually relevant experience of producing work which is a good fit
for purpose. Some of these skills will be about the non IT work of the
client/employer/project and where the critical pressures are, on
speed, on reliability, on maintainability, on its match with other
projects in a family of work, the characteristics of the community of
use for the project.
Being able to hear or compare alternative approaches and understand
where the strengths and costs lie and to be able to negotiate in a
mixed perspective context in order to find the best outcomes. ie the
Social literacies of community practice are useful.

My underlying concern is that it sounds as though Australia is setting
itself up for another round of siphoning off our domestic capacity
into compulsory insurance which costs us in people's ability to
participate freely.

For many years the Wagga Wagga Carmelite nuns made the best coconut
ice in the country. I would post haighs chocolate to a friend there as
barter for it, and it was a fair trade, it was really lovely stuff.

Australia implemented public liability insurance and the nuns were no
longer able to make coconut ice as a fund raiser. The cost of
insurance meant they could not do it anymore. There have been similar
impacts on CWA and other grassroots community infrastructure projects
where a toll or tax on participation must be found in order for people
to book a room and meet.

Applying the same kind of blanket tax to participation in technology
projects feels again like a huge swathe of local capacity which must
be paid to an offshore interest before local value can be generated.
Again this kind of toll or tax will have local costs on projects of
value which are developed by smaller teams and companies.

I feel our nation needs to step back from adopting these blanket
suggestions regarding how we operate and to look at their overall
costs for Australia's domestic capacity. Blanket insurance is one way
to tackle risk, good project practice is another, the first is a block
of money which goes offshore, the second is a way of working and a
skillset which is applied locally. The skills and process approach is
a one time investment which returns consistent value locally over
time. The toll approach is a subscription which would mediate the
right to participate and imho has a tenuous connection to contextual
risk and quality of work.

I feel the proposal is one of a family of ideas around risk including
content blocking, policy around user data for ISPs, broadcast treaty,
RIAA copyright proposals etc, which are being posited in order to
secure a value around a broadcast model in a world where distributed
value is growing and becoming recognised as a useful component of our
economy.

I do think it is timely for us to be thinking about these ideas in the
public interest but my first thoughts are about a whole community
participation foundation with strategies for risk and safety which do
not cost those freedoms and local capacity. What kinds of approaches
are good for local economy encourage and orient new entrants, are
sound balance of trade ideas and good for the project itself.