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.