By Tom Espiner, 24 May 2007 11:18
NEWS
Microsoft UK's national technology officer, Jerry Fishenden, has called for a single professional body with powers to strike off IT professionals in the same way the General Medical Council (GMC) can discipline doctors.
Both public and private sector organisations experience a high failure rate for IT projects. Fishenden said a professional body with powers of imposing sanctions for failure or incompetence, such as the GMC being able to strike off doctors, could improve the standing of the IT profession.
He said: "If you look at what you regard as the traditional professions - doctors, teachers, lawyers - their professional bodies can fire people, can investigate complaints, can impose penalties, and the ultimate sanction is to remove them from the profession, so you can't practice any more. It would be good, if we want to be respected as a profession, for there to be some method of ensuring the industry as a whole maintains professional standards, otherwise it just seems to be hollow words."
The UK body that charters IT professionals is the British Computer Society (BCS), which currently has no powers of censure equivalent to the GMC's. Fishenden said giving bodies such as the BCS more power would be "sensible".
He said: "There are bodies like the BCS, which charters IT professionals, and other standards. It would be sensible to build on these rather than start again, otherwise it will take even longer to get something into place."
David Clarke, chief executive of the BCS, agreed with Fishenden that in principle there should be a body which could strike off incompetent IT practitioners but said, in practice, it would be difficult to achieve.
Although the BCS can revoke the Chartered IT Professional (CITP) qualification, this makes little difference to employers, who prefer more specific IT qualifications, such as database management, said Clarke.
He added: "If we chuck someone out and revoke their CITP it makes little difference to their getting a job, because employers mostly go for people whose certification is job specific, say, in Oracle databases. The battle we have is to get employers convinced that they must look for general qualifications of professional competency."
There is little appetite in government for an Act of Parliament to license IT professionals in the way doctors are licensed, as there would currently not be enough CITPs to satisfy demand, Clarke added. The usual driver for an Act of Parliament to license professionals is a disaster - such as people dying, in the case of doctors' malpractice. Although IT projects can be financial disasters, people rarely die as a direct result, said Clarke.
The relative youth of the IT industry compared with other professions would make it hard to set up a professional body with "clout" similar to the GMC, Fishenden added.
He said: "It's quite a hard challenge for what's a pretty junior industry really. We're still learning as we go."
Tom Espiner writes for ZDNet UK
Comments
There are 15 comments. Join the discussion
1. Prahlad Patidar
How rubbish suggestion!!!
The comparisons between these profession is just not possible. when doctor. lawyers and teacher are more individualistic, IT profession is only team work. In IT it's team that fails never the individual. And if an individual fails he/she is sacked if needed. All these project failures which these big guys are talking about are team failures where even all individual members might have done superb job but as team they might have failed. So the comparison and the idea suggested is simply impossible here.
2. anonymous
I presume MS would be looking internally at their delayed *ahem: failed* projects ? Blackcomb, Longhorn, ....
I wonder how many scalps would be first to go
or is throwing more money at a project and increasing the lead-time = success.
A project is a group of people working at something, so what you going to start making sacrifical lambs of junior staff to protect the more experienced people - in the game of office politics its the junior staff that will get axed regardless.
Blame with doctors, teachers, laywers is a lot easier as it is generally a 1-1 relationship (I inject you mistakingly with X and you Die - oops) with a IT project 100+++ people for a client ? to complete something - or should the Director of the company take the can ?
Seems like another ill thought out irrational proposal.
Would love to see how a project that *fails* due to client additional features (scope creep) or the requirements changed significantly resulting in missing original target dates. Can we strike off the client ?
3. S Todd
What a great idea! That will certainly encourage more companies to offshore to places where there are no restrictions and where the pay rate isn't hiked by the need for being a member of a professional body.
If the threat of being struck off makes a gram of difference to a project coming in on time and under budget I would eat my own code.
Whoever thought of this should go back to thier old job in the civil service.
4. James Heriot
Actually old chap if we have an IT Professional go lame on us up here we tend to put them down. It's the kindest thing to do as we would not want them to suffer unnecessarily.
5. John Wales
In my experience in robbing, sorry working, in a bank, the majority of failures were caused by an unholy combination of arrogance and incompetence on the part of senior management, both within IT and especially within the "client" side.
Many managers had risen to their exalted positions through the mechanism of Buggins Turn - i.e. they had hung around long enough - or they were marked for fast track promotion - i.e. they were good bull-shitters.
In my experience, very few senior decision makers had the background to understand the complexities of software development and were not prepared to listen to advice from more experienced staff who were lower down the greasy pole.
6. Nick Cole
And the first people to go should be the designers, marketeers, product specifiers in Microsoft. It is the incompatibilities, bugs, faults and support disinterest from them that creates the problems for the rest of the world.
Before Microsoft lectures everybody else they need to look at their own navels and make sure they are squeky clean, and better still get an external auditor to do it. I'm sure there are upwards of 400 million people across the world who would love to do that! (After having to restart Outlook 3 times this morning because it stopped while reading the server Inbox).
What a pompous and arrogant statement from the producer of the software that causes the industry so much aggravation.
In any event, general professional competence is already measured through the Engineering Institutions. Product specific ones are dependant on the manufacturers who prefer to ignore general competences and incapable of reognising transferable or common skills even it hits them in the face.
7. Nick Cole
Actually another thought occurs to me.
It is on reflection a very good idea. In the process the materials the IT Pros work with would need to be examined in detail to establish what part they played in the perceived failure.
It may force Microsoft (and others) to get their act together as they would come out of such a process far worse.
8. Anthony Hunt
I quit contracting because I was constantly undercut (on price) by ex-traders who'd put themselves through a dozen MSCE courses and knew nothing about IT, but had the ability to lie convincingly for 6 months and then run.
Most of the jobs I got were "sweep up the mess" projects where the guy before me was an incompetent developer.
Most IT qualifications are, in my eyes, no better than MSCE, because they can just be bought. I’ve got close to twenty years in the industry on a wide range of projects but unless I made a six page C.V. (which nobody ever wants) there’s no way of having my skills or achievements formally recognised. There’s nothing to distinguish me from the dozens of cowboys out there, who frequently look at lot better than me on paper.
I agree that something needs to be done and the BCS would be the best place to start, but I think they need a grading system to rate the quality and ability of IT professionals as well as a blacklist for those self-proclaimed “experts” whose idea of “digital plumbing” leaves leaking pipes everywhere.
9. Charles Smith
In the 1970's I was trained by the Civil Service to become a full BCS member. If the Government(s) had persisted in this drive for its IT personnel there would be a strong IT cadre in the Civil Service. As a consequence there might have been a lot less of the IT Project disasters delivered by the government. As it was they fell for the siren calls of the large consultancies.
NB: I left the Civil Service when I realised that the establishment gave no recognition to professional qualifications.
10. Haydn Rees
Hmmm. A Guild System.
Did Mr. Fishenden suggest who would run this scheme? No, let me guess; Microsoft. Am I right? How did I know?
Lucky guess.
Microsoft Certification? They would want to run it in the public interest, because they have such a strong track record of corporate altruism.
Do you think the tests they set would be generic or vendor specific IT knowledge abilities and skills?
Should the scheme be extended to Lame Software Vendors? Anyone selling software which was not fit for purpose? If they stopped supporting their systems after four years, for example.
This is contemptible.
Those pesky independent minded IT professionals who keep building system that uncle Bill can't make any money out of, and the heretical use of open source software and OSs.
Lets see if we can put the frighteners on the general public, and make them tow the MS line.
Is this a flashback to the 14th Century?
If you really think this, put Gates back on Newsnight, and argue it out against Paxman again.
Bite me.
11. John Elsen
I think it is ironic that a Microsoft representative advocates the 'striking off' of negligent IT professionals.
Microsoft Operating Sytsems have to be considered most unreliable and closed in comparison to Linux. I am a Computer Scientist with over 20 years experience in the industry and I have to say that Microsoft have exhibited less than perfect perfomance with their Operating Systems. I would always advocate the use of Linux over any Windows OS. I think a comparison of the number of Windows viruses against Linux viruses will give you an idea of how professional Microsoft are.
When in glass houses springs to mind.
12. Ian Paterson
If that was the case, no one would touch government IT projects with a barge pole!
13. Harry Davidson
This, like most MS pronouncements, should not be taken at face value. Note the timing. MS have taken millions from HMG under Tony Blair. Their marketing to him has been spectacularly succesesful. He really believed that they could 'make it all happen' at reasonable cost. After years of persistent failure and low performance they are now confronted by Gordon, who has been extremely friendly to them up to now, but they need to explain why all that cash got wasted (Gordon does love cash). Answer: Its the professionals fault, not us, definitely not us.
Sad thing is he will probably buy it.
14. Nick Cole
Is it a lack of professional expertise or merely difficulties with product specifics, that keep changing with each new release? The lack of suitable and professional documentation meaning that techies have to work out for themselves how something is supposed to work and interact across a system has a major part to play, never mind the software faults and other bugs and poor software standards (buffer overflows etc).
Or is it MS trying to blame everybody else, coupled with users perceptions of poor service even though they don't understand what is involved?
15. Alessandro Spadoni
What an excellent idea. This industry is proliferated by poor practitioners and is just far too accessible. Our track-record of delivery is frankly shocking.