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SFIA
The Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA) is the UK government backed high-level IT skills standard. It describes the typical roles in IT and the skills needed to fulfil them. SFIA provides a solid foundation for organisations when setting standards of professionalism in IT.
Background
BCS first published their IT training and development standard in July 1986 as the Industry Structure Model (ISM).
Over 150 IT practitioners from across industry, commerce and government contributed to the standard and over 1000 organisations adopted it.
In 1996 BCS worked with other partners on a DTI sponsored project to develop a high level skills framework which was subsequently entitled the Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA).
Following a period of validation by number of large and medium sized organisations, including EDS and Norwich Union, BCS agreed that some material from the ISM could be included in SFIA to make it easier for employers to use.
In May 2003, the SFIA Foundation was established by BCS, e-skills UK, IMIS and the IET to own, promote and maintain SFIA. Subsequently, the detailed model of the ISM was aligned with SFIA and rebranded SFIAplus.
Today, SFIA is the UK Government backed IT skills standard supporting the Government IT profession competency framework. It is widely used beyond the UK with even a Japanese variant existing.
Why is it important?
SFIA (version 4):
- is the UK government backed IT skills standard providing a common reference model of roles that exist in IT and the skills needed to perform them
- has gained industry-wide recognition including acknowledgement from the following bodies: e-skills, BCS, IET, IMIS, Intellect, OGC, itSMF and the DTI.
- allows employers to measure the skills they have against the skills they need and identify skill gaps
- makes possible labour market intelligence quantifying the skills of the IT labour market
- forms the basis of the more detailed SFIAplus model containing additional training and development resources
- is regularly reviewed and updated to reflect current industry needs