I received an email today asking me to participate in the IGP Task Analysis survey. More on that in a second. When I went to the main IGP page, I saw the following notice at the top of the page:
NOTICE:
An updated IGP exam is underway!
If you are applying for the exam or purchasing materials for the IGP exam, please note the current version of the IGP exam will only be available until April 2022. All IGP education materials will become null at that time.
No further details were available as of this writing, and since I'm not directly involved, what follows is speculation based on my experience developing and updating the CIP and other industry certifications.
1. It could be that the current IGP will only be available through April 2022, but this does not mean that the new exam will be ready by then. In fact, I'd be shocked given that it usually takes more like 6-9 months from kicking off the job task analysis to the exam going live.
2. Technically the current IGP materials will be outdated insofar as some things will be dropped, some will be added, some will be refocused. If you're heavily relying on the materials to prepare for the exam, you should wait for the new ones (and no timeline was provided for that), but the core elements should be similar if you're just using them as a reference or guideline for good practices for your organization.
3. Whenever a certification is updated, it's also an opportunity to update the program: qualifications, costs, etc. So watch for those to be announced as well.
TL; DR for this section: If you're well down the road to preparing for your IGP, you should take it sooner than later so it's the same exam you've been studying for. If you wait, you'll get the freshest stuff, but you may be waiting a while if you need official study materials to prepare. Also, I expect ARMA will do a beta exam as they did last time and is typical. This usually translates to a reduced exam fee in exchange for a delay in score reporting because they have to use the beta exam results to validate the exam and set the passing score.
About that survey. I wish I'd output it to PDF so I could review as I typed this. I found the original IGP to be pretty easy - if you assumed that a records manager would be leading an organization's IG efforts. I know people whose title is RM-ish but who are doing IG; I didn't get that sense from the questions at the time.
The survey questions seemed to be moving away from that, so that's good. However, there were a ton of questions for which I selected "Not applicable" because IMO IG professionals aren't doing them. Again, some may be, just like some CRMs drive forklifts on occasion; unless I'm sorely mistaken, there are no forklift driving questions on any of the CRM exams. Same thing here. I think ARMA has significantly missed the boat on the role of an IG professional and turned it almost into a slightly more strategic CIP. As the former "Mr. CIP", I can appreciate this, but I view IG as a much more strategic thing than all the tactical implementation things listed on the survey.
I do encourage anyone who gets that email from ARMA to complete the survey. It took me about 20 minutes, so it isn't onerous, but as you do, think about what you expect from IG vs. some amalgamation of CRM and CIP. If it's to be that amalgamation, why have it at all, since those two cover those areas in much more detail?
As always, I welcome your thoughts as a comment here or directly to jwilkins13@gmail.com, and happy to chat or share your thoughts, including anonymously.
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