This document discusses the importance of professionalism for IT service providers and consumers. It argues that a lack of understanding about the IT profession creates uncertainty that erodes trust. To advance a positive digital strategy, practitioners and consumers need to agree on a framework for working together based on professionalism. Professionalism provides qualifications, codes of ethics, and associations to mediate conflicts and promote the value of the profession. While Canada has had IT professional organization CIPS since 1958 to support professionalism, greater emphasis is still needed.

1. Kind of a big deal
Why IT professionalism is critical for IT service providers
and consumers

2. This summit is about creating
and advancing a digital
strategy for Saskatchewan…

3. …this session is about how
those individuals, upon whom
the “digital strategy” will rely,
figuring out a means to work
together

4. I am
• Sr. Programmer Analyst
• Graduate Student
• CIPS Board Member
• ISP
• IT Professional
outside of IT…

5. What my friends think I do

6. What my mom thinks I do

7. What I think I do

8. What I actually do

9. IT as a profession is poorly
understood…

10. …even by IT practitioners

11. IT Defined (formal) : [1]
Information technology (IT) is concerned with
technology to treat information.
The acquisition, processing, storage and
dissemination of vocal, pictorial, textual
and numerical information by a
microelectronics-based combination of
computing and telecommunications

12. IT Defined (simplified) :
Working with computers and /or networks

13. IT encompasses an amazingly broad set of
activities and disciplines
And
is still viewed by many as being a particularly
uninteresting variation of Voodoo

14. Ambiguity about what IT is creates
uncertainty about what practitioners must/
should/can do
Uncertainty erodes the trust of consumers of
IT services and introduces risk into
operating environments

16. In order to advance a positive, digitally based,
agenda for our province (…country …world)
we need to agree on a framework for IT
practitioners and IT consumers to use to
work together

17. ! This is not an IT-specific
problem

18. ! This is a SOLVED problem

19. Professionalism provides a
framework for interactions
between practitioners and
non-practitioners

20. Let’s define these terms…

21. A Profession Requires:
the development of formal qualifications
based upon education, apprenticeship, and
examinations, the emergence of regulatory
bodies with powers to admit and discipline
members, and some degree of monopoly
rights[2]

22. A Professional is one who:
• Possesses specialized knowledge from
which they derive their living
• Is bound by a code of ethics
• Is accepted by their peers as being part of
the profession

23. A Professional Association Exists:
• To affirm a practitioners qualifications to
belong
• To mediate conflicts between practitioners
and the public
• To promote the value of the profession
• To facilitate ongoing professional
development

25. Fantastic!
But…

26. Why isn’t there a greater emphasis put on
professionalism?
Why don’t we demand professionalism of
ourselves and our peers?
Why isn’t it demanded of us?

27. The Prescription
Value professionalism
– Seek out professionals to work with
– Commit to professionalism
If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the
men to gather wood, divide the work and
give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn
for the vast and endless sea [Antoine de saint
Exupery (sort of)].

28. CIPS:
Canada has had a formal infrastructure to
support IT professionalism since 1958[3]…
…that’s only 12 years[4] after the advent of
ENIAC!

29. Why CIPS is (part of) the answer
• The only Canadian IT Professional
Association with standing in law
• Canadian solution
– Sask. solution
• Long history / broad knowledge base

30. So…
What did I get wrong?
What did I miss?
What else would you like to know?

31. References
• Longley, Dennis; Shain, Michael (2012), Dictionary of Information Technology (2 ed.), Macmillan Press, p. 164
• Alan Bullock & Stephen Trombley, The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought, London: Harper-Collins, 1999,
p.689.
• http://www.cips.ca/about
• Shurkin, Joel, Engines of the Mind: The Evolution of the Computer from Mainframes to Microprocessors, 1996,ISBN
0-393-31471-5