Home > GIS@development > 2005 > January - February

GIS education for a changed world


Should GIS practitioners and users be professionally accredited?
From the public's point of view, there is an attraction in having properly certified or accredited learning or training - especially where safety-critical activities are involved e.g. in engineering. Globalization is leading to globally acceptable certification in some fields. At present - and despite early moves (often by land surveyors) - there is no known professional certification of GIS/GI courses in a way analogous to those in other professions. But there are areas of GIS where professional skills are being exercised (see above) and where the results may impact strongly on people's lives. In such circumstances, the whole question of judgment, quality of work and legal liability comes into play. Two approaches exist - to do it through existing professional or statutory bodies (as for accountants, surveyors or those in the insurance community) or to set up a scheme administered centrally by individuals or bodies experienced in GIS and GI. Within the USA, the URISA launched a certification program in 2004 whose purpose is provide a formal system to evaluate the competency of GIS professionals. This is a noble aspiration.
Table 2: U.S. critical infrastructure sectors and accessibility to information about individual instances. About 85% of the US' critical infrastructure is owned by the private sector.

Sector	Example Assets	Degree of Public Accessibility
Agriculture	Grain storage elevators	Medium to substantial
Food	Meat processing plants	Medium to substantial
Water	Drinking water facilities Dams	Substantial Limited to substantial
Public health	Hospitals National pharmaceutical stockpiles and supplies	Substantial Limited
Emergency services	Emergency operations centres	Medium to substantial
Government	Government agency headquarters Regional offices	Limited to medium Medium to substantial
Defence industrial base	Military equipment manufacturing plants	Medium to substantial
Information and telecommunications	Transmission sites Internet backbone facilities	Medium Medium to substantial
Energy	Nuclear power plants Oil refineries	Limited to medium Limited to medium
Transportation	Bridges Tunnels Pipelines	Substantial Substantial Substantial
Banking and finance	Major financial exchanges Financial utilities	Substantial Medium
Chemical industry and hazardous materials	Chemical processing plants Hazmat material transportation	Limited to medium Medium to substantial
Postal and shipping	Mail processing centres	Medium to substantial

Source: Table D.1 Baker J, Lachman B, Frelinger D, O'Connell K, Hou A, Tseng M, Orletsky D and Yost C (2004) Mapping the Risks: Assessing the Homeland Security Implications of Publicly Available Geospatial Information. Rand Corporation Monograph (see http://www.rand.org/publications/MG/MG142)
We found that there are many ways of learning about GIS. We concluded however that such a greater contribution by GIS in future depends most on having users and beneficiaries with a range of skills, not just technical ones: they must understand the likely ramifications of GIS, how to cope with uncertainty, the legal aspects of GIS use

It is implemented through the GIS Certification Institute. In practice, it was felt essential to: be voluntary and open to all; be flexible; use existing GIS educational bodies; be collaborative; and include a code of ethics. Such a process can easily be scorned: it is based largely on self-certification, measures inputs (e.g. hours in classes) not outcomes, and the process for coping with unprofessional behaviour is not yet clear. Moreover, it implies the acceptability of some 'authorised' course contents rather than other material; this has led in other professional certification programs to ossification of what is acceptable and much-reduced innovation. All that said, this is the first major, national attempt to put GIS certification in place. Given the huge and growing range of GIS users or beneficiaries, professional certification can only be for a limited number of people but it may help us to avoid using apparently expert but actually unskilled services in the future.

Conclusions
Education in and for GIS now needs to be much wider than has hitherto been normal if we are to gain the full potential available. Good technology - and the skills to use it - form a necessary condition for success but not a sufficient condition.