Slashdot Mirror
British Computer Society Is Officially At Civil War
An anonymous reader writes "A vote of no confidence against the current board of directors has erupted in what is possibly the first nerd war, raging throughout the British Computer Society. More financial- and spreadsheet-related fixations and less computer science have made a few members cross; plus they don't like the new name 'The Chartered Institute of IT.' Here are more specific details on the extraordinary emergency general meeting on July 1, where members will vote to decide the fate of the board of directors."
I had to meet with a bunch of BCS reps when my course was re-accredited, and the experience matches up with what the summary says. They were obsessing over whether the mathematics of CS were too difficult and all kinds of bogus concerns
I think their problem is that higher level courses are (inherently) not an "everyone's invited" thing. Because not everyone will succeed. And that's how it should be. They're difficult if they're done right, because they include a lot hard-line theory behind the soft 'Let's do Java' exterior. The BCS just can't seem to accept this though. They want to pervert the courses to make them easier, basically
More people on courses = more power to them? Or maybe they get extra money for getting a certain % of the population onto courses? I have no idea of their motives but whatever they are, they're going about them the wrong way
Under the "old way", the benefits were lots of lectures that you got to go to on various subjects, plus the chance to network with other professionals. Useful stuff really; some of those lectures were great.
Under the 'new way', they've altered the way the "chartered" membership works; as it was in the old days, you could become a chartered IT professional without having to prove anything other than you'd stayed in the IT sector for 5 years. Now there are a series of exams to pass and frequent re-evaluation to maintain it (more in line with chartered engineer status from the engineering professions).
Really, I think a lot of the new changes are to make the BCS more relevant to what commerce wants to know, rather than being a comp sci enclave. The thrust has changed direction, though this isn't necessarily a bad thing.
It wants to be an important professional organization, but I hardly know anyone who actually is a member or employers who ask for accredited training courses from them.
These comments are my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other voices in my head.
It represents bragging rights when applying for new jobs –a CV with "I have BCS level 9 qualifications" on it helps at some companies.
Pirate Party UK
FORS could be Fellow of the Operational Research Society
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I agree with that, but I would point out that they probably try to represent this to folks outside their organization as being one scale instead of separate programmer and manager scale. Which would tend to show a manager at level 7 as more experienced than a programmer at level 6.
That's rather shortsighted. You leave yourself wide-open to a McMurdoch attack, without an escape route, and at the wrong end of the High Barnet branch.
I call Hoxton -- and I don't think I've seen this move before, the Livingstone Orbital (Phase II) rules only came into play last month.
Posted anonymously as a simple google of my Slashdot username would turn up my webpage which would tell you who I am, and what I do for the society (and I'd rather speak cowardly but frankly here).
I'm a chartered member of the BCS (MBCS CITP - I will admit to having been grandfathered into the CITP as an "old" non-chartered but full MBCS when they changed the rules) and undertake some voluntary work for them (arguably I can be seen as "part of the problem" as it is for one of their "products"), trying to make things better from the inside. This post should be taken as my own personal views and not those of the Society etc. etc. yadda, yadda. I also abstained on all the motions, as - whilst I don't agree with the key motions raised by the petitioners - I do see some things happening within the Society that I am not keen on.
Yesterday I received the paperwork from the society putting both sides of the argument across. I don't understand quite why I should be written to twice on the matter (once of these was with a glossy cardboard leaflet despite the paperwork being about 4 pages of A4 or so - why was is in the interest of the Society?).
Whilst I'm not too happy with the upper echelons of the Society deciding the scope of their rebranding and the new focuses without decent consultation from the membership (and I was insulted to discover that the Society was calling itself the Chartered Institute for IT via a third party rather than having been informed by the society itself), I'm still of the opinion that the Society urgently needs to modernise itself.
There's too many fossils in the membership opposed to change of any kind (this isn't purely an aspect of age, it's one of outlook), and it is (perhaps rightly) perceived by non-members as being irrelevant in the modern world (and that's to those who even know what it is - typically there's more of the education sector involved in the Society than people from the Real World(tm)). Granted, some in the society view the Society as becoming too commercial, or putting the money-making areas of the Society ahead of other aspects - and they might have a point. I'm also not quite sure why the Society caters so much for middle management when it could easily cater for a much broader range of people in the Industry.
I do find it a bit bizarre that a vote of no confidence has been called by a petition of 52 members out of a professional membership of around 50,000, though.
Finally, with regards to course accreditation - what a strange beast that is! I have a bachelor's degree in what is now called Computer Science (but wasn't back in the day) from an institution listed in the top 4 in the Times Higher Education's 2008 world listings (for what that was worth), and was informed when I applied that - because it was non-BCS-accredited - it was worth the same as any other degree (that has a fair bit of IT in the curriculum) from any old institution; i.e. the equivalent of 3 years experience towards the 10 years that was required at the time to qualify. Getting a third class honours on an accreditated course (e.g. BSc Computing from London South Bank University) would count for the equivalent of two additional year's experience.