Free tech framework aims to boost skills development

The British Computer Society (BCS) and the Institute of Information Systems (IMIS) on Wednesday launched a jointly developed framework to help companies identify and develop technology skills in their staff and encourage a meritocratic approach to projects.

The Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA) will be free for companies to use for internal projects, and companies selling software and IT services who want to base their offerings on the framework will be able to licence it.

The SFIA framework is a simple framework provides classifications for jobs that exist in IT and telecoms and the skills that underpin them, resulting in a description of a person's professional identity, not their job title, said the backers.

Terry Watts, chief operations officer at e-skills UK, an organisation dedicated to developing the quality and quantity of professional skills in the IT sector, is pleased about the development, which he believes will help companies develop their skills on a continuous basis: "In the IT sector on-the-job learning is so crucial, employers can use the framework not just to ensure that they find the right people for their projects, but the right projects for their people," he said in a statement.

Ian Rickwood, chief executive, IMIS said: "I expect that many employers will want to adopt SFIA, using it as the basis for role definitions and for the assessment of their own IT staff."

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