The purpose of this work is to clearly set out an international standard for professional practice in information technology.

The components of the standards are:

• Ethics of professional practice,
• Established body of knowledge,
• Education and training,
• Professional experience,
• Best practice and proven methodologies and
• Maintenance of competence.

A customer has a right to expect that a practitioner offering information technology services to the public meets these standards.

This document will be offered as a draft standard to the International Standards Organization in anticipation that it will in turn conduct its process of obtaining consensus from its member bodies and hence the standard would be adopted by the standards bodies within each country.

It is expected that the IFIP member societies would prepare any local or regional adaptation of the standard. The administration process, which may include promotion, assessment and certification as well as the distribution of materials, may also be carried out by the IFIP member society.

The standard could also be incorporated in the requirements for a level of qualification of individual members in the member society.

The traditional professions such as accounting, medicine and engineering have long had standards which enable a qualification gained in one country to be recognised in another. The World Trade Organisation in conjunction with the International Standards Organisation has now taken an active role to create such standards under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS).

The benefits of internationally recognised standards are that:

• the public is assured that safety or economically critical work is performed by competent individuals regardless of where in the world those persons gained their qualifications and experience.
• a client is assured that a person who meets such international standards is competent to carry out tasks in documented specific areas regardless of where the work is done or the output of the work is used (subject to recognition of issues of culture and locale).
• professionals are assured that their qualifications if recognised in one country will be accepted in other countries without re-examination (except possibly for being up-to-date).
• Under GATS, trade in products developed by practitioners who meet this standard cannot be restricted on the grounds that the developers were not competent or used inadequate professional practices.

Such standards will contribute to the attainment of a reputation for competence by the profession.

This standard is primarily focused on practitioners involved in the development of software-based systems and related services. The standards are not necessarily intended to apply to other members of IFIP member societies such as:

• academics, who in general will be much more qualified but possibly in a narrow discipline and whose research may be at a more abstract level than practice.
• school teachers, who in general will be qualified to teach rather than to develop IT systems.
• users, who have input into the designs of computer systems but who do not construct them.
• electronic engineers, who design computers but who would normally be qualified as engineers.

The following clarifications are offered in this context.

Harmonization means that the standards of different countries would be brought together to be substantially the same. Any extremes from the commonality of these standards would gradually be pruned away until each country has the same standard by mutual consent.

Professional identifies the peculiar responsibility of a person with high levels of knowledge and related practical skills in a given discipline with respect to members of the public who do not have that knowledge or skill-set. It is particularly relevant to the information technology profession because it has significant impact on society at large. The power of the knowledge must be balanced by a sense of responsibility towards others. This definition is focused on practitioners, persons who actually develop, maintain and operate software systems for commercial or governmental purposes.

Standards are clear statements that reflect the minimum qualifications for mastery and knowledge of processes, skills and practice that a professional should have before undertaking work which may put an employer or client at risk, either physical or financial.

The field of Information Processing has many domains ranging from data management to embedded software systems. Any one individual cannot be expected to be expert in more than one or a few such domains. This needs to be recognized particularly in the body of knowledge required to be known by one person.

A code of ethics acknowledges the professional responsibilities of practitioners to society at large, members of the public, employers, contracting parties and fellow practitioners.

Codes of ethics have been published by many member societies and IFIP itself.

Every implementation of the standard must include a code of ethics.

Such a Code of Ethics must be compatible with the culture of the society in which the practitioner normally works.

Practitioners must operate in a manner compatible with the culture of the locale in which they are currently working and in which the product may be used.

Several IFIP member societies have published bodies of knowledge, some of which have gained wide acceptance. Such recognised bodies of knowledge are divided into many domains determined by the various services carried out by practitioners. The body of knowledge on which any implementation is based should include at least the common components of these but also ensure that each domain is complete in itself for the domains adopted locally.

Mastery of such a body of knowledge forms the basis of preparation for practice. A practitioner must demonstrate mastery of at least one such domain as well as all core components identified in the body of knowledge.

Most practitioners will enter the workforce with prior education and training which will commonly be a baccalaureate degree assessing the mastery of the body of knowledge.

Institutions offering such education and training should be prepared to openly compare themselves to internationally well-known and recognised peer institutions offering similar programmes.

It is recognised that this level of mastery may be achieved by various combinations of education and experience. Nevertheless a practitioner must be able to provide evidence of such mastery to practitioners who have met this standard.

Experience builds on knowledge in many essential ways. Such as:

• It develops and improves practical skills and competencies.
• It provides understanding of task definition in the users' terms.
• It helps develop interpersonal skills that facilitate the communication and human interaction between all participants.
• As many approaches to problem solution are not readily scaleable experience over a wide variety of problem types and sizes is desirable before working in an unsupervised environment. Experience is generally required in assessing task complexity.
• Task management, overall project management and quality management generally require experience.

Other professions have clear requirements for experience before allowing their members to practice without supervision.

Experienced practitioners have identified and documented many practices and methodologies the use of which generally leads to successful project outcomes. Where such best practice and proven methodologies are available the practitioner should use them unless a particular task has exceptional attributes.

Member societies drawing on all available international sources should encourage the documentation and promulgation of best practice and proven methodologies.

To maintain demonstrated competence practitioners must be familiar with new developments in their domains of practice.

Such developments may be reflected in the body of knowledge, best practice and proven methodologies as well as in specific skills.

Familiarity with new developments may be obtained through formal education or peer interaction.

There may be assessment of current competence by formal examination, peer assessment or employer or client acknowledgement of successful work.

A practitioner should participate for at least the equivalent of 10 days per year in activities that contribute to maintaining competence. It is recognised that in different locations the opportunities for such ongoing development may vary.

The standard in each country or region must state how this requirement will be met and the role of the IFIP member society in monitoring this function.