Addressing College Member needs

College Board chairs were reminded at a recent meeting that the member survey conducted in 2010 by Beaton indicated that membership should receive, among other things:

• support for the development of knowledge and skills
• provision of access to information
• the sense of belonging to a community
• the standing of the member being enhanced
• regularly being kept up to date

I expect that ITEE College members have similar needs and hopefully they are being met at least in part.  The College Board meets in mid November and if you have any comments or suggestions about what can be done better please let your representative know or provide feedback to the blog link below. In any case the ITEE College Board will be working to improve performance in all these areas in the interests of College members.  The larger we can build our community the greater our ability to address these needs.  Unfortunately our College membership currently represents only a small portion of the ITEE community.  It is a matter of some disappointment for instance that we seem to offer nothing for the Broadcasting Engineer who were so well served by our predecessor organisation, IREE. The pervasiveness of ICT means that ICT practitioners do not always associate themselves with ITEE because their work is directed within another discipline.  This may also reduce the apparent significance of ICT practice in the economy as a whole.  This challenge impacts the funding of ICT course in Universities where the classification of ICT work under other disciplines may be leading to a reduction in overall funding for ICT courses.    

With the increasing importance of the “digital economy” (including health, education and security sectors with the convergence of art, entertainment and culture through digital media) engineering skills development in the ITEE practice area is becoming increasingly important whereas it seems that skills supply is set to diminish.  As a community we should be working to reverse this trend and promote careers and skills development increasingly in ITEE practice and with the necessary levels of competency.  The ITEE College Board has a responsibility to provide leadership in this area and is doing so but needs support across the ITEE community.  There are opportunities to serve your profession through your local ITEE community which will be strengthened as more participate and we can then better meet College member needs.

Peter Hitchiner FIEAust, CPEng

Chair ITEE College Board

Comments

[Al]

I totally agree with the sentiments in this article. I have been a member of Engineers Australia for over a decade (since I was at Uni) and have on a regular basis questioned the value of my membership when ITEE is grossly under represented. With the IT and Communications industry encompassing every industry, you would think there would be more focus on what is happening in this Engineering Sector. You just have to look at the NBN to see how many Engineers in the IT and Comms industry are not being represented. We would be lucky if half of those Engineers are members and less still would know that Engineers Australia even exists. EA are in significant danger of becoming irrelevant for a whole sector of Engineers.

In an industry where Industry Certifications (i.e. Cisco CCIE or Juniper JNCIE) are considered more valuable than an Engineering degree, it says to me that Engineers Australia is failing those members who work and operate in this industry. I maintain my membership only because I hope that Engineers Australia will one day realise that Engineering extends beyond the traditional Electrical, Mechanical and Civil engineering. You just have to open up the EA Magazine each month to verify that point.

[Peter Hitchiner]

Al, thanks for that feedback and the College Board will be made aware of your comments. I plan to submit an article addressing the issue with Software Engineering as a particular case very shortly. The ITEE College Board needs you and the rest of the ITEE College community to support efforts to raise the recognition of engineering in the ITEE practice area. Thanks for this support. Peter Hitchiner

[Doug]

Peter, I concur with Al's comments above. I would really appreciate it if you could get in touch with me off line so I can share my recent experience with EA with you, as it has lead me to question my continuing membership.