Hong Kong Computer Society - enterpriseinnovation.net

COVERSTORY
HKCS: 40 years
Elevating IT’s professional status
The Computer Society makes official recognition and certification of industry
professionals a reality after a fight for almost 20 years
The information and communications
technology (ICT) industry
is relatively young compared to
the legal, accounting and medical industries,
but IT professionals are by no
means taking their profession lightly.
Thanks to the pioneering work of the
Hong Kong Computer Society (HKCS),
the ICT industry is now on track to gradually
gain recognition as a “certified”
profession in Hong Kong.
With funding support from the Office
of the Government Chief Information
Officer (OGCIO) of the HKSAR Government,
HKCS undertook a project
in 2005 to establish an IT Professional
Certification System for Hong Kong IT
professionals. Led by Edith Mok, the
project involved over 100 ICT veterans
spending their precious spare time
in various taskforces and expert groups
in over 200 meetings plus numerous industry-wide
consultations with approximately
50 IT or IT-related professional
and trade organizations. The result is a
Hong Kong-based certification scheme
for IT professionals in Hong Kong,
namely the Certified Professional of IT
(CPIT) Scheme, which is governed by
an industry-led governance structure including
a Board of Governance (BoG)
and a Certification Board (CB).
Therefore, in mid-2007, IT professionals
in Hong Kong were for the first
time accredited with homegrown IT
professional titles with the launch of
three senior level credentials—CPIT
(Project Director), CPIT (Systems Ar-
By Carol Ko
CLP’s Locandro: The certifications enable
us to recruit professional IT personnel more
readily, while allowing us to develop and
retain outstanding talents.
chitect), and CPIT (Quality Assurance
Manager). Endorsed by 30 major international
or local corporations in Hong
Kong, over 50 senior IT professionals
have been accredited with these senior
IT credentials.
With the success of the project, OG-
CIO injected more funding to HKCS in
2007 with an aim to continue the development
of the certification scheme.
This “second-phase” has led to the establishment
of a new entity, the Hong
Kong Institute for IT Professional Certification
(HKITPC), which was set up
as a non-profit Institute to oversee and
manage the development and operation
of the CPIT scheme. In 2009, three
more CPIT titles are launched, including
CPIT (Associate Project Manager,
APM), CPIT (Information Security Officer,
InfoSec), and CPIT (Business An-
alyst, BA). These three new titles target
IT professionals who have entered the
profession for a couple of years and are
beginning to choose a specialization for
their IT career. Like the three senior
CPIT titles, these three new ones are
also managed by the HKITPC.
Link with the Qualifications
Framework
To sustain Hong Kong as a knowledge-based
economy, the Education
Bureau (EDB) has established a 7-level
cross-sectoral Qualifications Framework
(QF) to develop and sustain quality
workforce. Established in 2004 with
the aim of clearly defining the standards
of different qualifications, ensuring
their quality and indicating the steps to
advance to the next qualification levels,
QF provides a framework for the definition
of various skills and competency
levels required for the performance of
different activities in a given industry
sector. These skills are documented in
the form of Unit of Competency (UoC).
They are collected into the Specification
of Competency Standard (SCS)
document that is published by the EDB.
The Information and Communications
Technology Industry Training Advisory
committee (ICT ITAC) chaired by Agnes
Mak was established in 2005. Supported
by close to 30 devoted committee
members and 100 co-op members
and with three Industry Consultation
sessions and three Focus Group workshops,
over 300 UoCs for the Software
32 Computerworld Hong Kong Nov 2009 www.cw.com.hk