History
- At the IFIP World Computer Congress 2006 in Santiago de Chile a decision was made to “initiate a vigorous program of activity to promote professionalism worldwide”.
- A group which included representatives of ACS, BCS, CIPS, IFIP and CSSA met in Cape Town, South Africa, in January of 2007. It was agreed to set up a Taskforce to work on achieving the aforementioned goal.
- Financial contributions were made by ACS, BCS, CIPS, IFIP, and IEEE-CS who joined the TaskForce. This group became known as the Founding Members.
- IFIP Council in 2007 supported this vision and the IFIP General Assembly (GA) reviewed the Taskforce’s report at its 2007 meeting which agreed to:
- Confirm the intention for IFIP to create and launch a global IT Professional Practice Program;
- Invite the existing Taskforce members to continue its work;
- Delegate to the IFIP Executive Board the responsibility of oversight of Task Force activities until such time that an official governing body had been approved (IFIP IP3 Board approved in 2009 and terms of reference as amended in 2010).
- Encourage IFIP Member Societies to take an active role in helping to develop and promote the program.
Since then IFIP IP3 has:
- Published a global professional IT standard based on the Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA)
- Written and published related accreditation policies and procedures for the assessment of member associations professionalism schemes
- Conducted the first successful accreditation of ACS for its Computer Professional (CP) scheme in 2008
- Accredited the CIPS professionalism scheme later in 2008
- Established the Professional Standards Committee and the Accreditation Committee in 2010
WCC2008 in Milan also saw IFIP reaffirm its position on IT professionalism by adopting the “WCC 2008 Declaration on ICT Professionalism and Competences”. You can view the declaration here