About My CIP "Renewal"

As they typically do, AIIM posted a list to the AIIM Community today recognizing new and renewing CIPs for the month of May. (I'd link to the post, but the AIIM Community is members-only). My name was on the list, and I've since had a couple of people reach out to me to ask why, given my overwhelming opposition to the changes to the CIP program AIIM announced in February. My opposition to those changes has not changed; recent announcements that seem to walk most if not all of them back sound good, but I'll believe them when I see them. 

No, the reason for my "renewal" is pretty simple. I *did* pay the $150 (non-member rate) required to renew, so I could take the compromised, unproctored exam and gauge how it worked. I did take the exam - 5x so far in fact, and passed it 3 of those times - the other two intentionally failing to see what that behavior looked like. Before I left AIIM I'd also submitted 92 CEUs, and AIIM retained a record of that. So the administrative requirements had been met, and my status was renewed as of the date I passed the exam again. 

But until it goes back to being a proctored exam - and, since as noted above, the current exam is compromised, that means the exam is updated as well, and the right way - I continue to view it as just a certificate program. Then again, certificate programs don't require or offer renewal requirements, so even that doesn't really apply. 

That means that I will not use the designation, I will not bring it into certification discussions, I won't be fighting to include it in my panel discussion on certifications at ARMA InfoCon 2022 in October, etc. This is a defensible position, one that I'm pretty qualified to make based on my background with CIP and several other certifications - and a certification in certification development too. 

I do not trust AIIM senior management to do the right thing, or to even understand what the right thing is, despite my many blog posts on the matter, so I'd need a whole lot more visibility into how they are updating the CIP exam and program before I'm prepared to trust it and refer to it as a certification. If you search "CIP" on this blog, you'll see a plethora of posts from each of the three development phases - 2011, 2016, and 2019 - with the type of information that would make me trust the process. Until they do those things, meaningfully and the right way, CIP is just a certificate program.