Industry Group to advise on Critical ICT Skills

by BILL on SEPTEMBER 19, 2012, Whyitnow.org

Leading Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) Professionals gather this week in San Francisco CA, to strategize and develop methodology for a comprehensive study of foundational ICT workforce competencies in California.

Participating industry and professional organizations include:

• IBM Corp
• Cisco Systems
• IEEE
• Cisco Systems
• California Department of Education
• VMWare
• Juniper Networks
• WebProfessionals.org
• Manilla.com
• Mid Pacific ICT Center San Francisco
• California Workforce Development Board
• California Community College (CCC) ICT Collaborative

Participants will explore methodologies to validate and improve ICT Foundational competencies being developed in a collaboration of the U.S. Department of Labor, the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM), the National Science Foundation funded centers, WebProfessionals.org, Mid-Pacific ICT Center (MPICT), the CCC ICT Collaborative, CCC Economic and Workforce Development Centers of Excellence, and California Workforce Investment Boards.

The goal of the survey is to agree on foundational ICT Workforce competencies which can be used to create a “common core” of “Student Learning Objectives (SLOs) for ICT related programs at community colleges throughout California and across the nation.

James Jones, Executive Director Mid Pacific ICT Center said, “We want to be able to answer the question: What is it that employers expect IT workers to know and be able to do, no matter what their specific IT specialization or workforce role is, no matter what industry they are employed in? If we can start by aligning programs and credentials to that, we are adding value to all conforming ICT related academic programs and credentials at community colleges in our region.”

Foundational knowledge and skills are those expected of all workers in Information Technology (IT) departments, regardless of specialized role. The initiative hopes to translate final foundational IT Worker competencies into academic SLOs and use those to adjust and align programs and credentials, improve articulation and transfer, increase the value of CCC programs and credentials, improve Workforce Investment Board services related to ICT, and improve ICT job and career marketplaces.