Technology is constantly moving and evolving so identifying skills needed by IT professionals and developing them, as well as trying to formalise tasks and roles into a sensible and understandable framework is often a very challenging task.

SFIA (Skills Framework for the Information Age) sets about providing a common framework to address this task, the SFIA Foundation describes SFIA as “SFIA enables employers of IT professionals to carry out a range of HR activities against a common framework of reference – including skill audit, planning future skill requirements, development programmes, standardisation of job titles and functions, and resource allocation.”. Donald H Taylor describes this competency framework in his Blog post Competencies and capability Part I: a working framework. There are six main areas covered by SFIA which are Strategy, Development, Change, Service Provision, Procurement, Ancillary Skills. IT News have a further breakdown of these areas in their ICT Skills section. In summary I believe the framework aims to address three major areas:

· Recognise and make the best use of skills and talents

· Develop people and support current and future career development

· Provide a more appropriate and understandable framework in which to work

IT Pro recently reported that the SOCITM (Society for IT Managers), a professional association for public sector ICT managers, are rolling out pilot systems of Aspire to support SFIA across 10 sites. This pilot will act as a proving ground for the platform and will help to further improve its functionality as well as provide information and experience for future public sector roll outs. BCS (British Computer Society) members can already benefit from access to the SFIA framework via the BCS website.

Technorati Tags: sfia, it management, skills framework

Related

• Ahem … About that skills shortage
• XP IP Information
• The basics of formal Information Technology Management
• Microsoft Releasing the Source Code for the .NET Framework Libraries
• My thoughts on the software crisis