[Fsfe-ie] Fwd: New Core Body Of Knowledge for the ICT Profession

Janet Hawtin lucychili at gmail.com
Fri Jun 29 19:02:42 CEST 2007


The proposal below is from a group which has criteria for inclusion.
This document is being proposed to government as a criteria for reducing
professional indemnity insurance for the IT sector. ie There will be a
relationship between the government getting cheaper insurance and
hiring people who match this kind of profile.

The group has projects which talk about ethics and being in the public
interest, They also have specific criteria for inclusion as a member
and their subjects they recognise tend to be more business computing
than computing science. MS product features strongly. FOSS stuff less
so.

It has been said by one of their people that this is because the
members do not have an interest in the foss subjects, or that the foss
things might be considered if they were of interest to members, but
this is sort of a closed loop, ie if youre in youre probably in
because you match the standard degree with msce kinds of training
which they match against.

The group disagrees with my concerns.

I feel they are scoping peoples' right to participate in the IT sector
by excluding people from their criteria because their criteria suit
the interests of members and also because the process of choosing
people by matching a standard process is a better match for broadcast
software liks ms. Following a standard path is something to do if
youre working with a supplied tool set. If youre a member of a
community which participates in constructing the tool set the sources
of reference and strategies for developing solutions will be more
diverse, informal learning from niche specialists in our communities
is a good fit for this kind of skill development.

It is a bad fit for distributed communities. FOSS groups often have
diverse experience and the act of participation in an open community
of development is the means of improving people.

There are other groups in AU following the same line of thinking.
Defining a scope for who is trusted in IT around a normal route to skills.
In my opinion at least in this form this is basically MS marketing in
a fancy frock. I think membership is a poor alternative for
transparent and reviewed
practices possible with open code.

Because these groups are interested in describing people who do not
fit their model as untrusted I am thinking about ethics and free
software and how we reflect the kinds of ethics we do have. Personally
it is my experience that foss people are the most authentic and direct
people i have met. There is nowhere to hide in foss.

Would be interested in other people's ideas about this kind of document and
whether groups where you are are doing the same kinds of things.

What kinds of approaches can foss communities use to provide a
constructive alternative conversation which does not exclude people
but which focuses on recognising the strengths of open collaboration
and peer review.

Probably the scoping will provide only one flavour of person and folks
will soon need to look beyond that source? tbh It just feels very old
fashioned.

Janet

---------- Forwarded message ----------

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>.

Contents:

List of Acronyms
1. Introduction
2. Core Body of Knowledge revision process
3. Defining the ICT/Computing Profession
4. Rationale for the ACS Core Body of Knowledge
5. Current Core Body of Knowledge
6. Some initial common ground
7. Moving forward
8. Remaining issues
9. References
Appendix A Professional Standards Board Membership
Appendix B ACS Qualifications Framework for ICT Professionals



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