Joe McKendrick, Forbes: My One Big Fat Digital Technology Prediction for 2019 (hint: AI)

H/T: Dion Hinchcliffe

The CIP in 2019 - An Introduction

It's now been just over seven years since we introduced the Certified Information Professional (CIP) to the world. What a long, strange, great trip it's been! As always, in the interests of full disclosure, I run the program for AIIM, helped develop the original CIP in 2011, and led the development of the 2016 update. 

CIP v1 was released September 23, 2011 and included 32 major topic areas grouped into 6 high-level domains:

• Access and Use
• Capture and Manage
• Collaborate and Deliver
• Secure and Preserve
• Architecture and Systems
• Plan and Implement

It was available through Prometric test centers until February 2016. 

CIP v2 was officially released on July 1, 2016 and was significantly streamlined into 6 domains that made more sense and better aligned to how we see the information management journey:

• Creating and Capturing Information
• Organizing and Categorizing Information
• Governing Information
• Automating Information-Intensive Processes
• Managing Information Throughout the Information Lifecycle
• Implementing an Information Management Solution

It's been available through Kryterion test centers as well as an online proctored option. 

Between the two, more than 2,000 people have taken a CIP exam and more than 1,500 have passed. 

Now it's time to start developing CIP v3, which will launch in Summer 2019. 

As I noted in December 2015 in talking about v2, 

A certification requires a lot more than simply writing a bunch of questions and setting up a web page. In order to launch an update to the CIP, here's what needs to happen, in fairly short order. 1. Update the outline and coverage. The original CIP was very...lumpy. Records management and BPM were provided the same weight on the exam as webconferencing and instant messaging. We're also going to align the CIP much more closely to the broad, if somewhat informal, body of knowledge we've already developed at AIIM in the form of our Master Classes and certificate courses.  Once the draft outline is done, we will share it with the broader CIP community for feedback.   

2. Develop new exam questions. We will look to reuse good questions from the existing CIP exam bank where appropriate, but we will also need to revise some of them and will need new questions as well. We're investigating different mechanisms for doing this, but there will be an opportunity for CIPs to participate in item writing and review.   

3. Score the exam. A critical part of the development of a certification is to ensure it is psychometrically valid. This basically means that the exam questions themselves are correct, accurate, not misleading, and comport to industry standards and best practices. This process also leads to the development of the passing score, rather than setting an arbitrary score. There is an art to this; many certifications use the modified Angoff method to set the scoring standards.

And as I failed to note in that post, 

4. Update the program. Eligibility requirements, renewal and reinstatement requirements, everything that is involved with the CIP program beyond the exam will be reviewed and potentially updated. Example: I can share that we will be increasing the CEU requirement to 60 over 3 years, which will bring us into alignment with most other industry certifications. 

All of these steps will require commitment and active participation from the CIP community. Very soon we'll be sending you a couple of emails. One of them will ask whether you are willing and able to participate as a subject matter expert for any of these three steps. Another will reflect the draft exam outline and ask for your feedback on it. 

Importantly, all subject matter experts who participate will need to be active CIPs in good standing. So if you want to be involved, but you've lapsed...you should reach out to me pretty quickly at jwilkins@aiim.org. 

In short, I'm really, really excited about this update. It's going to take a lot of work, from me and my colleagues at AIIM and from the CIP community. But we have an incredible opportunity to make CIP even better and ensure that it becomes even more relevant and sought-after.