Kevin Casey, The Enterprisers Project: How to explain Robotic Process Automation (RPA) in plain English

H/T: Dianne Jolly

Get CIP CEUs from reading industry content

I noted in an earlier post that we've upped the renewal requirement for CEUs from 45 to 60. This aligns us to most other industry certifications, and 20 CEUs a year still represents less than 1% of your work hours spent keeping up with changes to the industry, technology, etc. The renewal price remains unchanged, and represents a significant discount to the exam price itself (the other option for renewal).

We've made one other addition to the CEU process. Effective immediately, you can read publications and receive CEU credits for those as well. As with other CEU submissions, AIIM publications certainly count, but you can also submit other publications, white papers, etc. from other associations, vendors, book authors, or any other source.

To qualify for CEUs, a publication needs to meet these requirements:

• It has to be on an information management topic and informational. Vendor-written and -sponsored white papers certainly count for the portion that is educational (even if product-specific); a conference brochure would not. 
• It has to be at least 8 solid pages of content - not counting the title, the sponsor writeups, ads, etc. So no typical short-form blog posts, infographics, etc. By way of example, AIIM's own Industry Watches are all good for 1.0 CEU each; our tip sheets and infographics are too short to receive CEUs. 

CEUs will be awarded at the rate of 1.0 CEU per ten pages, rounded to the nearest ten pages. So if you read the entire 2019 CIP study guide cover to cover you'd get 25 CEUs - 264-page PDF minus 13 pages at the start and 1 at the end = 250 pages or 25 CEUs. 

To submit a publication for CEUs, simply note the information in the CEU submission form. You do not have to attach the publication, though you certainly can. You should retain the publication in the event that your record is selected for random audit.

As always, feel free to ping me with any questions at jwilkins@aiim.org.  

Dr. Mansur Hasib, in SecureWorld: A Political Science Major in a Cybersecurity Classroom... Being Taught by a Political Science Major?

 Long article but well worth the read. As I noted in retweeting this post, this is exactly how we position the CIP, as the broad or horizontal stroke that complements the narrow, deep-dive knowledge and expertise.

CIP Exam Approved for GI Bill Reimbursement for U.S. Veterans

I wrote a blog post about this on the AIIM blog but wanted to point readers of this blog to it as well.

In a nutshell, if you're a U.S. military veteran with education benefits remaining, you can take the CIP exam and get the exam cost reimbursed. The GI Bill doesn't cover training courses, just the exam - but it does cover retakes if required. For all the details, visit https://info.aiim.org/aiim-blog/cip-exam-approved-for-reimbursement-under-the-gi-bill.

The Updated CIP Exam is Now Live!

I've been a bit remiss in posting this here because I've been busy posting it to the official AIIM blog. But I want to make it official here as well:

The 2019 update to the Certified Information Professional (CIP) exam is now live! 

Major changes to the exam include:

• Significant refocus on business issues and outcomes, rather than getting so far into the weeds of different processes and technologies
• Slight reduction in the coverage of taxonomies, information governance, and records management, for the same reason
• Slight increase in the coverage of case management and analytics & AI
• Significant increase in the coverage of privacy and data protection
• Added robotic process automation

Major changes to the program itself weren't many, but there were a couple: 

• We increased the number of CEUs required from 45 to 60 over 3 years, bringing us into alignment with every other major industry certification. 
• We increased the price of the exam to $349 for AIIM Professional members and $385 for non-members. The renewal fee, however, remained $135 / $150 respectively. 
• Reinstatement no longer has a 1-year time limit. If you ever passed the CIP exam, you can reinstate. However, you still need to submit CEUs and pay the reinstatement fee. 

As part of the exam update, we also completely rewrote the CIP study guide, which remains FREE for AIIM Professional members and $60 for non-members. And we updated the CIP Prep course and rebranded it "Foundations of Intelligent Information Management." I'll explain what that means in a separate blog post. 

We also upped the free sample exam from 25 questions to 100, so candidates should have a more accurate picture of where they are in relation to the official exam. 

What does this mean to existing CIPs?

In the short term, nothing. If you're a CIP in good standing, 

• You do not have to retake the updated exam (though you're welcome to!). As long as you maintain your CIP status, you're good. 
• Your current renewal cycle will still require 45 CEUs; you don't need to satisfy the 60 CEU requirement until your next renewal cycle. 

But it does demonstrate AIIM's continued commitment to ensuring the CIP remains relevant and valuable to the industry and the community of information professionals. 

For more information about the updates or the program, visit https://www.aiim.org/cip or send me an email at jwilkins@aiim.org.