Actionable Ideas for the CIP

Per the request in AIIM's CIP Town Hall registration confirmation, here is my starting list of "actionable ideas" to restore and improve the CIP. These are not new; I submitted almost all of these to AIIM in July 2021 as part of a broader "AIIM Learning Vision", and many of them I had submitted as early as 2014. 

I have sanitized them to remove any non-public information I'd included in that internal document. They are not necessarily in a particular order, other than the last one, and some of them, such as creating a model job description, likely meet more than one goal. 

Update 3/13: There's a logical question here - if I'd already submitted these, why didn't they happen? Some did, for a time. Some required marketing - the same marketing that, more than a month after the "announcement" (still not on the blog, still don't think it got sent out to everyone), STILL has yet to do a single thing in support of the "new" CIP program. Some just required more manpower than AIIM had - when I left, AIIM was down to 14 staffers and nobody owned CIP. Not sure who owns it at present and wouldn't be surprised if the answer is, "Nobody." 

Also 3/13: Did some other light editing as well, mostly adding links and a mention of the U.S. G.I. Bill certification. 

Part 1: Ideas to Improve the CIP Exam and Program

• Change the exam back to being a proctored exam. This in turn requires....
• Start the CIP exam update process. It's a minimum of 6 months to go from a standing start to a live exam, but none of these other ideas matter until the CIP exam is restored to a formal, proctored exam. As I wrote in another post, the day it was delivered as an unproctored exam, the CIP exam was compromised and it has to be assumed that all of those questions are going to be available on cheating cheater brain dump sites. Include solution providers in the exam update process. 
• Revert the renewal changes to allow CIPs to renew through retaking the then-current exam or through continuing education at their option. Focus on communicating the need for CEUs and how AIIM (and other) events can help CIPs meet those needs. Automate the reporting of AIIM-sponsored CEUs and continue to allow CIPs to report non-AIIM CEUs.

I think AIIM should also consider further formalization of the program: 

• Get the CIP accredited under ISO 17024 or NCCA guidelines. This will not be a game changer in terms of acceptance and uptake, but it will influence some decisions at the margins, and it will make it much harder for a future AIIM management team to make such arbitrary changes to the program in the future. 
• Consider adding a Code of Ethics to the CIP program. This will acknowledge the importance of ethics in information management, which in turn reaches privacy, security, and many other individual areas of practice. 
• Consider adding a formal experiential requirement. While CIP currently recommends 5+ years of experience, tightening the requirements up to require at least some documentation and within a certain time frame prior to taking the exam would further underscore that CIP's not just a money grab, but reflects real value to the CIPs and their organizations. 
• I don't think that AIIM should require formal education - I think for many jobs in our industry, including some quite senior ones, a college degree is a waste of time, energy, and money.

Part 2: Ideas to Raise the Visibility of the CIP Program 

The intent is to get people talking about CIP, to have answers to common questions available, and to make the case for the value of CIP as a certification to the AIIM community - and beyond that community to people who work with information but who have never heard of AIIM. 

• Learn how to market CIP. I have said literally dozens of times including to Peggy Winton, Georgina Clelland, and Tony Paille, individually and at staff meetings, that if AIIM marketed the relaunched AIIM annual conference like it did CIP, there never would have been a second one. I'm not a marketer, so I don't know the specifics of what this should entail, but it's clear that whatever AIIM has, or, rather, has not, been doing since 2011 is not working and has never worked. 
• Develop a syllabus for information management that can be incorporated into library science, IM, RM degree programs. 
• Work with those types of institutions to facilitate students' access to the CIP exam, either through vouchers or even by administering the proctored exam. Many project management programs do this with the PMI PMP. 
• Renew the U.S. G.I. Bill certification and make sure those types of institutions know about it. 
• Develop a physical study guide that can be marked up and highlighted, that doesn't require internet or batteries, etc. Get an ISBN number. Get it listed on Amazon. People will buy it. 
• Develop a body of knowledge, including a physical one, for the same reasons. 
• Put the CIP registry back on the website, or in the community, or somewhere that it is visible and available. (While AIIM is at it, put the Fellows and Award of Merit awardees back on the website or community as well.)
• Develop a press release template CIPs can use to announce their certification. 
• Develop a graphic template that AIIM can use to announce new CIPs and that CIPs in turn could use for their own social media marketing. Cf. ACEDS, CIGOA. 

Part 3: Ideas to Improve the CIP Program's Value to the Industry

These are ideas to identify and communicate the benefits of having CIPs on staff. 

• Develop a job description or list of knowledge, skills, abilities, and tasks that CIPs bring to their organizations to be successful. This is an almost direct outcome of the job task analysis. This would also help to address the argument that “there is no such thing as an information professional”. There wasn’t an industry-neutral “project management professional”, either, until PMI created it. 
• Develop a number of value propositions for getting the CIP. I’d previously written some of these for end user organizations, sales organizations, and individual CIPs. Update these, and add more for specific roles: consultants, presales/sales engineers, sales reps, information stewards, LOB professionals in information-centric roles like HR or finance, etc. 

Part 4: Ideas to Improve the CIP Program's Value to Individual CIPs

In other words, reward CIPs for getting and maintaining their CIP status. Ideas here include but are not limited to: 

• Develop a job board that lists jobs that require or prefer CIPs. There are dozens of these open at any given time. 
• Develop CIP-only content - ebooks, infographics, webinars. 
• Work with CIPs to develop high-value educational content for the broader AIIM community
• Develop a CIP-only and/or CIP-developed peer networking event. The annual confab exclusively for CIPs. Small in-person events, probably a single annual event at first. Maybe sponsored; maybe sponsors have to have CIPs on staff, and sponsor sessions have to be led by a CIP.
• Implement physical fulfillment for new CIPs: T-shirts, pins, nice, printed certificates.
• Offer CIP swag. Branded stuff for CIPs to show off. Mugs, lapel pins, T-shirts, polos, backpacks, etc. Land’s End-type stuff. Again, physical fulfillment, but handled by Land's End-type company. 
• Develop a "Letter to Your Boss" template so CIPs can communicate to their organizations the value that CIP will bring to them.

Part 5: Ideas to Have Others Promote, Sell, and Deliver CIP On AIIM's Behalf

As the title suggests, these are ways to have other people doing the heavy lifting of promoting CIP, and, by extension, AIIM. 

• Develop partnerships with adjacent associations. SHRM for HR, ACEDS for eDiscovery, IAPP for privacy, etc., with a focus on “here’s what YOU do, here’s how effective IM supports that, CIPs are the change agents.” Short-term, it’s leveraging their SMEs and resources to make the CIP exam and supporting materials better; maybe CIPs (or AIIM members) also get access to their member-only resources and vice versa. Longer-term maybe there’s a CIP/Privacy certification – or a CIPP/IM one that IAPP offers in partnership with AIIM. 
• Develop an accredited trainers program. Charge for a train-the-trainer session, and then those CIPTs - CIP Trainers - can develop their own materials or license them from AIIM. 
• Develop a reseller program so that other training companies, consulting firms, etc. can make some money, or exam vouchers, or etc. from promoting and selling CIP training and exams. 
• Develop partners that can deliver localized CIP training and can verify the efficacy of a localized exam. You wouldn't necessarily want the partners to localize the actual exam due to security considerations, but it could be considered on a case-by-case basis. 

Part 6: A Crazy Idea - Sell the CIP to Me! 

If AIIM is unable or unwilling to support CIP and make it successful, sell it to me and I'll do it. I think there are a lot of ways to do this, ranging from AIIM simply selling it to me outright, to some sort of revenue share. I'll take the risks, I'll pay for the exam development, I'll market it, and I'll and make it what it could have been and what it should be. 

I have no idea whether AIIM would even entertain such an idea, or what it would look like, but I am a certified credentialing professional with program development experience with CIP (2011, 2016, 2019), two separate vendor training and accreditation programs, CompTIA's legacy CDIA+ program, and the former TAWPI's legacy Information Capture Professional program. The CIP would be in good hands. 

In case it's not clear, the care and feeding of a certification is a full-time job - in fact, as it becomes more successful it's probably more than one person. For CIP to be successful, AIIM needs to have a person full, 100%, completely focused on CIP. They do not have that now and they never had that when I was running the program either. At least if they sell it to me, or do some sort of revenue sharing arrangement with me, they'll get that.