1. e-Skills and ICT Professionalism Spanish experience EU Workshop 9 December 2008 Fernando Piera Gómez

2. e-Skills and ICT Professionalism Spanish experience Computer Science is more or less equivalent to IT Information Science is not exactly IT Informatics is not exactly IT Informatics includes IT and Information Science The are some problems with the concept of ICT in front of Informatics and IT

3. e-Skills and ICT Professionalism Spanish experience Spain situation A university degree is enough for a given profession No special professional certification is needed to practice a given profession Practically only for the Medical. the Legal and the Architecture professions, at present, and for a formal and legal exercise, a registration with the professional official association is needed

4. e-Skills and ICT Professionalism Spanish experience The goverment, at present, is for free competition in any given profession The goverment, at present, is against obligatory membership in any given professional association in order to practice a given profession

5. e-Skills and ICT Professionalism Spanish experience It is recognised that information and communication technologies (ICT) now impact almost every facet of personal and business life. This does not justify to give to the ICT profession a different treatment of the one given to the rest of the professions.

6. e-Skills and ICT Professionalism Spanish experience The ubiquitous role of ICT is not unique necessarily and the wide range of individuals and organisations that have a stake in the ICT profession is very similar to many other professions.

7. e-Skills and ICT Professionalism Spanish experience The reform of the University level academic degrees following the ideas behind the Bologna Plan is causing big problems in Spain, in general, in all the technical engineering professions, and in particular in the Informatics area. The main problem is that the Informatics engineers, in Spain, have not professional “attributions” and other engineers do have.

8. e-Skills and ICT Professionalism Spanish experience The present goverment is not planning to give to the Informatics engineers “attributions” as the Informatics profession is considered to be multidisciplinary and should not be a sort of monopoly of a given academic degree. There are some 100.000 Informatics university students and they are in upheaval trying to press the goverment to change its present attitude.

9. e-Skills and ICT Professionalism Spanish experience The debate in Spain, is if for exercising the Informatics profession an specific academic degree is necessary as many other professionals coming with other academic degrees are working, and performing very well in Informatics.