The British Computer Society, which is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary this year, said the CMA will become a BCS subsidiary with immediate effect. It said the move, follows the mutual decision by both bodies to underline the convergence of professionally managed IT and telecoms technology to their respective memberships and the public at large.
According to BCS chief executive David Clarke, The merger of our two organizations is a natural fit and reinforces the BCS agenda to represent professional accreditation across the broader information technology and communications profession. The telecoms sector has long been viewed as part of the IT profession, so it seemed only natural for our respective memberships to combine.
CMA chairman Carolyn Kimber said: Our industry is particularly fast moving and ever changing and the needs and roles of our members change with it. At the turn of the century we had the foresight to go through the disruption of changing our name to reflect these changes, a move which has definitely served us well. But it did not fully insulate CMA from the massive technical and organizational revolution in the industry during the past ten years.
The synergies between CMA and BCS will help move BCS from being IT focused towards a more broadly-based ICT professional body, added Kimber. The considerable resources of BCS, in turn, will move CMA forward in its own specific area of communications.
The BCS has over 60,000 members worldwide in over 100 countries. It’s the qualifying body for Chartered IT Professionals (CITP). It is already licensed by the Engineering Council to award Chartered Engineer status (CEng) and Incorporated Engineer status (IEng); and more recently was licensed by the Science Council to award Chartered Scientist status (CSci).
In a recent interview with Computer Business Review, the BCS’ Clarke said the organization is looking at other mergers with industry organizations like the CMA in order to expand its scope and present a more unified front in the certification of IT professionals and in raising professional standards in IT. He said that the BCS intends to do another major push to attract recognition and new members in the New Year, but he said the organization is already attracting around 1,200 new members every month.
Our View
A sensible move by both parties: with the BCS by its own admission seeing recognition of its own brand at only around 37% of IT professionals it has surveyed, anything it can do to gather in more members and raise its profile is worth doing.
