[LINK] Where Are the Software Engineers of Tomorrow?

Tom Worthington Tom.Worthington at tomw.net.au
Mon Jan 14 15:45:20 AEDT 2008


At 05:06 PM 13/01/2008, Stephen Wilson wrote:
>... I remember a year or two when the ACS proposed enhancing the 
>professionalism of the IT sector.  The suggestions floated included 
>an continuing education and a code of conduct.  Pretty innocuous 
>stuff, and way, way short of regulation.  ...

The ACS is pushing along that path. However, "IT" is a very broad 
discipline. It can be very difficult to find what the common things 
everyone needs to know are. The ACS is aiming to have a revised Core 
Body of Knowledge (CBOK) by June 2008: 
<http://www.acs.org.au/attachments/acs_CBOK_Position_Paper.pdf>.

There is ACS and government sponsored research being done on what a 
code of conduct should be and how to get people to do it 
<http://www.acs.org.au/news/170205.htm>. Surprisingly there is little 
research in this area; most professional bodies just impose a code on 
members and then try and enforce it: they do not check to see if the 
code is something the members can or will do. There is a readable 
series of articles about this in Information Ages magazine, which I 
tell the ANU IT students about: 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/technology/it/ictethics.shtml#iareports>.

With the continuing education, ACS uses much the same approach as 
other bodies. Members are encouraged to do training to get their 
"points". This doesn't have to be ACS provided training, just 
something relevant. There is also the  Computer Professional 
Education Program, which is a post graduate online training program 
run by ACS (using the Australian developed Moodle software): 
<http://www.acs.org.au/cpeprogram/>.

The ACS is also working with other similar bodies around the world to 
do common standards for IT professionals: 
<http://www.acs.org.au/index.cfm?action=notice&notID=740&temID=noticedetails>.



Tom Worthington FACS HLM tom.worthington at tomw.net.au Ph: 0419 496150
Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd            ABN: 17 088 714 309
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617                      http://www.tomw.net.au/
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, ANU  




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