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

[Janet Hawtin]

On 6/28/07, Tom Worthington <Tom.Worthington at tomw.net.au> wrote:

> The Australian Computer Society have released a Discussion Paper
> "Redefining And Building The ICT Profession: Core Body Of Knowledge
> Review" (21 June, 2007 Version 2.0).
> In January the ACS combined its Accreditation, Assessment and Appeals
> Board and Membership Standards Board into a new Professional
> Standards (PS) Board. The new Board is reviewing the ACS Core Body of
> Knowledge (CBOK) by June 2008. The Board has invited comment on the
> Discussion Paper (details in the paper):
> <http://www.acs.org.au/attachments/acs_CBOK_Position_Paper.pdf>.

Hello Tom

I have expressed concerns about this approach before so you are
probably aware of them. I will try and explain them clearly here in
the hope that something different from disagreement could emerge.

My primary concerns about this kind of approach to selection of people
in the IT sector is that in my opinion it is unable to represent the
public interest effectively because it assumes that exclusion from
participation is a public good and that formal models of practice are
the only recognisable forms of learning.

I feel these issues are in part a result of the documents being
written by a group of people who match the criteria they are choosing.
If you start with a group of people who have self selected around a
style of learning, topics to study and a membership oriented
restricted access business model then that organisation will find it
difficult to find within its ranks voices which represent alternative
approaches to professional practice.

This does not mean that formal learning and formal ethics training are
not potentially useful, it does mean that the kinds of choices which
are available as a result of excluding alternatives to these
approaches tend to be leading in terms of business model, technology
choices and selection for people who follow well trodden career paths
which are easily recognised by others on the same path.

I feel that exclusion as a strategy for reducing risk profiles for
professional indemnity insurance, (which I believe is the original
core of the purpose of this line of thinking), is a problem
specifically for government because the criteria ACS is selecting for
will disadvantage people who have not had access to higher education.
This is more of an income level restriction than something which
assesses the person on the merits of their skills and work. Prejudice
and access to opportunity are sensitive issues and I feel the proposal
does not look at the impact of exclusion on the wider community.

Formal learning in academic spaces is useful, but here too there have
been criticisms of the way that existing businesses and products have
increasingly scoped the range of educational experience at university
so that they do not always provide opportunity for fundamental
research and exploration of ideas and practices which are not a part
of a standard route for learning product A or for following business
process C. This means that students have reduced opportunity for
critical thinking, for exploring diverse ways of approaching problems
and for inventing solutions without a known outcome. Alan Kay raises
this idea towards the end of this interview.
 http://video.google.com.au/videoplay?docid=-3163738949450782327

Blooms taxonomy similarly has inbuilt perspectives which bring their
own implications.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxonomy_of_Educational_Objectives
Written in 1956 with some later revision this model too is about a
formal way of looking at learning. It values some kinds of learning
over others.
http://www.performancexpress.org/0212/mainframe0212.html#title3
Blooms taxonomy can be viewed as a class structure from manual labour
through to craftsmanship to theory. Embedded in that class approach is
a prejudice against sophisticated hands on skills which could underpin
innovative change in technology. I feel again that the model selects
for project management and views hands on skills as unthinking work,
because those skills in a closed code context are not skills which
have a dimension of questioning built in.
For music performance, sport, and tangible technology
mastercraftsmanship and innovation there is a direct relationship
between fingertip knowledge of materials and the ability to engineer
new forms.

The inherent congruence between closed source business models, closed
member  groups, formal accreditation and Blooms taxonomy create a
scoping structure which selects for homogeneity. Homogeneity is not
inherently a reduction in risk.

My feeling is that the open source community mediates risk differently.
Open code is able to be vetted by the whole community in terms of its
overall technical construction and it is also able to be inspected by
the customer/client/agency/ using the code in relation to its fit for
purpose on the task it is being used for. It is able to be modified
and adapted to ensure a good match with requirements.

Similarly open source development communities are visible.
Conversations and thinking which occurs in community based projects is
publically accessible including to the communities which use the
software. The discussions and efforts to develop collaboratively are a
process of negotiation of diverse points of view to develop an
outcome. This makes the processes challenging but also is a factor in
making the choices robust.

New approaches to learning include online communities of practice,
often these are international in range and can be focussed on niche
interests, collaboration is generally informal. Tools including
delicious, irc, wikis, blogs, email lists like this one, enable people
to gain a broader base of input from diverse perspectives.
I was impressed by the thread on digital voting where technologists
were able to discuss the issues and to conclude that a computing
related solution was not in the public interest. This kind of open and
grounded perspective is what I find common in open communities. It is
hard to confuse self interest and public interest in an open community
because perspectives vary.

Barcamps are another form of learning which are informal and are open
for anyone to contribute, the idea being that everyone has something
to offer and that everyone will learn something from the experience of
contributing as well as from the efforts of others. Microsoft up until
recently has sponsored some camps.
Recently some of the Barcamp groups have reconsidered the sponsorship
because they feel that the patent FUD is an attack on the kind of
participative practice that Barcamps are all about. the approach is
considered unethical.

I feel that this document is a reflection of this moment in time more
than anything else. Broadcast structures are no longer the only means
of learning or finding useful conversations or technologies. Broadcast
based or restriction based forms are characterised by central control
and an audience which subscribes to an output. Distributed communities
are diverse and discursive they enable different outcomes and the
users or customers are more engaged as partners in an ecology or
fabric around the ideas and value generated.
There are advantages and costs in open practice too.
It is probable that both models will be useful in specific contexts.
I do not know what a 'web2.0' version of ACS might look like or if it
is best suited to hold to its current approach, but would be much
happier to recommend the organisation if it was able to better
distinguish between recommending its value to its members and being
able to see that value as a component of a wider range of educational
and professional approaches which inform and implement Australia's
technology sector.

The right to participate is a public interest.
I would hope that Australia was the kind of country where risk is more
a matter of careful consideration and implementation of the project at
hand than membership or buying your way through a series of courses to
gain brokered access.

I do hope this helps as the ACS has a lot to offer and it would be
great to be able to look at the public interest from a collaborative
perspective.

Janet