Improving professional standards across IT

One of the areas BCS regularly evaluates – and is undertaking new projects on – is professionalism. What does it mean? How can we pursue it? In keeping with this, we asked a free text question: ‘What do you think is needed in order to increase professional standards across our industry?’

A high-level look at the answers gave clear areas for further discussion. The most used phrase was ‘education and training’ with 55 mentions. Next on the list was ‘standards’ and this was followed by ‘code of conduct’.

One commenter outlined the problem well: ‘technical jobs such as IT and engineering are not considered as professions in the same way as, for example, accountancy. This is partly driven by practitioners who are able to leverage knowledge of the latest technology into high salaries and therefore don't care about professional standards; society in general, which finds it hard to understand technology and its importance; senior leaders in business, who jump on the latest technology bandwagons as a solution to a more complex problem; a political class who have no knowledge of the business or industry and last encountered STEM in any meaningful way at O-level; and a rapidly declining cohort of people like me who have seen enough projects fail to understand the importance of professional standards.’

We have grouped the comments into general headings for ease of reference, although we need to acknowledge that there is crossover between a number of these issues.

Standards and education

Standards and education have obvious roles when we discuss the concept of professionalism. These ideas are also in keeping with BCS’ purpose and role. It’s the reason we provide recognised qualifications, get involved with schools and, for our members, require adherence to a code of conduct.

As one commenter said, professionals need to adhere to a ‘code of conduct [with] professional but accessible standards – there must be a balance between standards and gate-keeping’.

A number of commenters drew comparison with more traditional professions: ‘either model ourselves fully on real professions (medicine, law etc),’ said one commenter, ‘or stop calling ourselves a profession and openly acknowledge that industry roles and standards are open to debate and different perspectives’.

There were also a number of views expressed on our perspective of professional standards. Said one: ‘professional standards need to be celebrated and more visible. Make them a core of the business, part of the company or team values and something desirable. Show the effectiveness of standards rather than allowing them to be seen as obstacles (as I have seen them portrayed).’

A BCS-centric view would include post-nominals. ‘Experience and professionalism could be demonstrated by MBCS/CITP/CEng status,’ wrote one member, ‘but, sadly, I have never been asked about it in any job I've taken in IT in financial services, and it has never been a job requirement to have such a designation.’

In the same vein, another wrote: ‘I think that BCS membership and Chartered status needs to have more weight and meaning in the industry, as it does in other professional industries such as civil and structural engineering. The perception of professionalism in the IT industry could be increased by, for example, mandating the use of Chartered Professionals on certain projects. Coupled with this would be the need for mandatory CPD for Chartered Professionals as required by some other professional institutions, to demonstrate a continuing commitment to professionalism.’

Another suggestion was the need for ‘unified standards that are business domain agnostic to assess knowledge and improve training across the industry, with a low barrier to entry to allow individuals without sponsorship access to certification and training. Additional smaller qualifications to provide background information in the application of domain agnostic techniques to specific domains.’

The education versus experience conundrum is also hinted at several times, for example in this comment: ‘[we need] better link up between education – university courses etc. – and industry, as many graduates know very little truly practical knowledge when they leave university, and are often far behind those people that have instead gone through bootcamps or other learning routes.’

Let’s finish with a few other snappy standards-oriented comments:

• Recognised certifications – a single globally recognised path for each career path.
• Regular assessment of professional competency.
• Getting more people to become chartered engineers, chartered IT professionals and registered IT technicians.
• Compulsory charter status/qualified practitioners like accountants/doctors – even gas fitters! A move away from accepting sub-standard/faulty software – we wouldn't accept a car that needed to be ‘rebooted’ every 3 miles!
• BCS needs to focus on core skills and competencies of software development lifecycle, rather than generic stuff like project management and HR which have their own professional societies.

Risk

With the aforementioned background in increasing concerns on cybersecurity, the overall theme of risk came up in this professionalism thread.

One member wrote that we need, ‘a greater appreciation that some interventions in computing and communications even if "well intentioned" are more dangerous to a business and society collectively than the problems they are apparently trying to solve and in practice cannot’.

The member cites the issues inherent in automation being taken out of managers’ hands and handed to algorithms – both to solve decision making inadequacies and legislative and regulatory overreach. They write: ‘this is artificially changing the "risks" IT prioritises. The problem here is that legislating IT is being done on the assumption that the problem is the internet, and that society's problems can be solved by legislating IT. This is a problem that degrades the IT profession’s ability to act with creativity to invent and deploy next generation stable scalable information service infrastructures. Very little professional attention is being spent on applying these first principle priorities in day to day responsibilities of the IT profession.’

One member suggested an area for consideration: ‘Both RED team (Editor’s note: offensive security experts) and BLUE team (defensive security experts) are necessary to understand threat/risk exposure and mitigate such threats at optimum cost.’

And another drew attention to professional bodies: ‘Just like within the general IT industry, security professionals should be encouraged to join professional organisations (such as the BCS as well as others) in order to validate their skills and experience through membership. And security professionals need to be given the time, within their respective companies (where employed) to undertake relevant courses and pass exams in order to raise their standards and standing within the security profession.’

Diversity and inclusion

BCS has spent some time over the past few years promoting the principles of diversity and inclusion. Several members picked up on this theme in the professionalisation context. One wrote,’[we need] admission of how terrible the industry is about basic inclusion – from disability to class, from sexism to racism, especially lack of access to basic tech education and resources for most people and businesses outside of cities’.

Another valid point also has its roots in the experience/qualifications conundrum: ‘Some recognition of experience in older workers would be good,’ wrote a commenter. ‘Older workers in IT are considered to be less valuable due to the possibility that they are not as fluent in the newer technologies as their younger colleagues and probably earn more; however, experience is applicable to all projects, irrespective of technologies used, and many mistakes could be avoided by using older and more experienced staff across the project.’

Innovation

Whilst the ‘move fast and break things’ mantra seems to have been mercifully consigned to history, there is still a balance to be struck between innovation and ethical considerations – and the following comment also includes the role of government:

[We need] ‘better / larger / faster investment in innovation for homegrown companies that attract experienced people and provide for structured on the job learning and mentoring for juniors. The talk of a Silicon Valley in the UK is currently nonsense as the available funds for investment, the timeframes and bureaucracy are stifling and level /ability to take and absorb risk is laughable.’

‘Better support for homegrown companies to access world markets,’ was also mentioned.

Other practical considerations in this context mentioned were ‘more support for R&D and better understanding that STEM is not adequate. We desperately need STEAM people. We need creative thinkers and doers, so we need to support arts and humanities as part of any technology training. Including better training and access to soft skills and communication skills.’

Consequences

The BCS code of conduct requires IT practitioners to adhere to it – membership can be lost if not. And in the context of professionalism as an idea, consequences for unprofessional conduct are required to make the idea meaningful. We had several comments along these lines:

‘As has become the norm in almost every other professional organisation, external regulation and penalties for poor performance on the professionals. When you can get away with murder you will do it again.’

‘Contracts that tie developers (and outsourcing companies) down to costs and time and liability costs for damage or failure to fulfil contacts – esp. gov contracts – if not fit for task in time – then no money!’

‘[We need] vendor liability for defective software.’

‘[We need] security accreditors who have teeth!’

Societal benefit

On the broad theme of providing and ensuring societal benefit – as per BCS’ mantra – we had a wide range of what needs to be done:
Criminalise the business model of almost all major tech companies – Google, Facebook, Amazon. Professional standards will never develop in IT until we stop considering the surveillance capitalists the perfect example of progress and innovation.

• We need to get the BCS engrained into (especially) government organisations as a way of establishing and mapping professional progression.
• We need more people in IT! At the moment it's very much a seller's market for many IT skills. Employers have to relax their standards (or inflate their hiring budgets) and recruitment companies/staffing agencies face market pressure to "oversell" candidates' skills and experience. I'm not advocating the idea of thousands of IT staff out of work because the market is flooded, but the balance is too far the other way right now.
• The Institute of Civil Engineers has a training department which goes into schools to promote Civil Engineering, engaging with pupils to build structures out of straw tubes and spaghetti, explaining construction principles and processes. I, myself after one such school visit at the age of 14, knew all I wanted to do was Civil Engineering. IT needs that similar drive and push. The Institute needs to engage and inspire the pupils in school if we are to fill the IT vacancies.
• We need more opportunities for people from different backgrounds to obtain professional degree[s] in IT based on their interpersonal skills and inspirations, tailored to their personal circumstances.
• The government needs to set better standards, for example the NHS still uses paper-based Hospital Passports for people with learning difficulties and they get lost!

Collaboration and professional bodies

The final few remarks draw attention to collaboration and professional bodies:

We need more effective working across the professional institutions and other certification bodies – BCS, IET, APM etc.

How about something similar to checkatrade for contractors?

We need a professional qualifications body for AI add [sic] ML work.

And finally, the commenter who considers this to be about: ‘good leadership. I think that the BCS is doing a great job to try and push us in the right direction. Perhaps if more of my colleagues were members then it would be a smoother process.’