Background

SFIA was originally developed with government backing as a response to the IT skills shortages which occurred ahead of Y2K. The aim was to do something that had never been done before: to define, using a common terminology, all the skills that exist in IT.

The resulting framework was first published as SFIA in March 2000 with a second release, including a number of telecommunications skills, appearing in June 2001. In May 2003, the BCS, e-skills UK, the IEE (now the IET) and IMIS came together to form the SFIA Foundation with a remit to promote SFIA and maintain it as a common reference model in line with best practice in the workplace.

As before, the version 4 update is based on an open consultation process involving IT professionals, their employers and those responsible for their education and training.

Objectives of the Version 4 update

The objective of the SFIA update project is to ensure that SFIA continues to meet the needs of IT practitioners, their employers and those responsible for their education, training and development by providing an up to date common reference model for the identification of the skills required for the effective development and deployment of information systems making use of ICT.

This involves identifying new skills and revising existing skills which have evolved in scope or content since the last update - or may simply have become better known under a different name! The existing policy is not to delete skills unless a clear migration path can be identified for those people who are still using them.

The SFIA update process

As the objective of SFIA is to reflect best practice in the workplace, all the input originates from IT professionals. An experienced consultant is employed to turn this input into draft descriptors and a project steering board, made up of stakeholders from all areas of IT, oversees the process.

In areas where the potential for major change or restructuring has been identified, workshops are held with practitioners from the areas affected.

All the suggestions made using the Feedback link on the SFIA website are considered.

But the main part of the process is this consultation website. Here IT professionals can leave comments about the existing descriptors, suggest new descriptors and make suggestions for the overall improvement of SFIA. Later in the process, drafts of new and changed content will be placed on the site and there will be a further opportunity for review and feedback.

How do I get involved?

If you are not familiar with SFIA, have a look around the site and get to grips with the matrix of skills and levels. See how the skills are organised into Categories and Subcategories. Look at the generic Levels of responsibility descriptions which apply right across the model and provide guidance to those drafting the descriptors. Then look at some skills and move up and down the levels, noticing how the descriptors vary as the level of responsibility changes.

Look at the comments that others have left. What do you think of them?

Are you now ready to post a comment of your own? Perhaps you have spotted something missing or a descriptor that could be improved. Maybe you want to disagree with one of the existing comments or record your support for another. To do this you must first of all register.

Just complete the simple registration form. This will allow you to leave comments about both the SFIA content and the comments that others have posted. We have kept the information required for registration to a minimum: just who you are and what you do. If you want to tell us more about your interest in SFIA, there is also an opportunity to do so. We ask you to give us an email address so that our editors can contact you if you make a particularly interesting or provocative comment that we would like to know more about. It is also useful in case you forget your password! We promise that we will not use your email address for any other purpose.

Don't forget to keep coming back to the site, especially later in the year once drafts of the new content are added. The latest news about what is happening will be always be shown on the home page.

If you want to know more about SFIA, please visit the SFIA web site at: www.sfia.org.uk.