Socitm aims to promote IT professionalism

The Society of IT Management is piloting a generic software package aimed at improving IT professionalism across local government.

The move forms part of Socitm's long-term ambition to become the professional society for public-sector IT staff. Although Socitm provides a number of professional development services for its members, it has acknowledged that these could be better focused on members' needs.

A growing emphasis on professionalism has also been fostered by the Cabinet Office's Government IT Profession (GITP) initiative, which seeks to bring together all those working in IT across the UK public sector.

A report commissioned last year by the society, in order to assess how professionalism should be taken forward, recommended a number of short-term to medium-term measures. It suggested that the Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA) should be adopted as the standard on which future services should be based.

The report also proposed that the Aspire software package, which supports the SFIA, should be developed by Socitm and used to help members move up the framework.

Stewart Jackson, Socitm's programme manager for member services, told GC News on 3 January, 2008 that the Cabinet Office was providing £25,000 to help oversee the pilots and develop a generic version of Aspire for use across local government.

He added that the Improvement & Development Agency was matching this with a further £25,000 to help market and roll out the system.

"Aspire is a piece of software that was originally developed in the Northern Ireland Civil Service," explained Jackson. "Leeds City Council have taken it on and developed it for themselves and the idea is to develop a generic system that can be rolled out across the membership.

"Aspire manages people's position within the FIA and links to things like CPD."

The 10 pilots, which include county, district and metropolitan councils, will be used to develop business cases and case studies and see how Aspire can be "marketed or communicated across the membership". They are due to run until March 2008.

Jackson also stressed that the long-term aim to become a professional society was still under consideration by Socitm and was not as yet adopted policy.