3. Body of ICT Knowledge
3.1. Professionalism as it applies in ICT
Professional ICT Ethics
- Fundamental ethics notions (stakeholders, responsibility, harm, benefit, rights, virtues, duty, respect and consequences) and ethics theories
- Methods of ethical reasoning, analysis and reflection, ethics canvas
- Professional ethics issues: general professional issues such as conflict of interest, confidentiality
- ICT specific ethics issues: adverse stakeholder impacts of ICT, surveillance and privacy, data matching, autonomous computing, digital divide, etc.
- Integrity systems: the ACS Code of Professional Conduct, ethics committees and protections whistle blowing
Impacts of ICT
- Impacts of ICT on society (cyber warfare; surveillance, privacy and civil liberties, cybercrime and hacking, digital divide, technology reliance, intellectual property and legal issues)
- Impacts of ICT on organisations, workplaces, jobs and skills
Working Individually and in ICT development teams
- Team organisation, development and management, especially of multi-disciplinary, diverse ICT teams; collaboration, group dynamics, leadership styles, conflict resolution, groupware and virtual teams
- Individual time management, workflow and information management
- Working effectively within an organisational context
Professional Communication
- Communication with different audiences (technical, managerial, users and non-digitally orientated audiences) in different forums (meetings, presentations, networking)
- Forms and styles of documentation - technical reports and specifications, progress reports
The Professional ICT Practitioner
- Domestic and international law as it applies to ICT
- The professional society (the ACS), certification to practise, legal liabilities and indemnity
- Continuing professional development, career upskilling, networking
3.2. Core ICT Knowledge
ICT Fundamentals
- Computational thinking: situation analysis and modelling using a range of methods and patterns to frame it so a computer system could operate effectively within it.
- Design thinking: methods and tools that are used for handling abstraction could vary a great deal with the branch of ICT, from circuit diagrams to data modelling tools to business process modelling
- Information processing in humans and machines, artificial intelligence
- Systems thinking: components and interactions between them, structure and function, emergent properties and functions, systems layers
- History of computing and ICT, drivers of technology evolution and trends for the future
- Social and individual impacts of ICT deployment
ICT Infrastructure
- ICT hardware components and organisation: the creation, communication and processing of digital signals using sensors and activators, processors and storage
- Cyber-physical systems: process control, the internet of things, robotics, biometrics, autonomous vehicles, GPS
- Network and internetwork concepts and protocols, wireless and mobile computing, cloud and distributed systems
- Systems software and operating systems managing the architecture
Information & Data Science and Engineering
- Nature of data, information and knowledge, meta-data, abstraction and representational quality
- Data modelling and semantics, relational data engineering processes
- Database Management Systems and SQL, non-relational systems (blockchain, NoSQL, files)
- Data Science and Engineering, data analytics, mining and visualisation, big data
Computational Science and Engineering
- Nature of computational functions, states and transitions, procedural, declarative and artificial neural net approaches to creating computational functions, abstraction and virtualisation, complex and adaptive computing
- Process and algorithm modelling: methods of algorithm design, software quality
- Programming: programming language constructs, coding methods, scripts and apps, interfaces
- Software Engineering: systematic practices of specification, development and testing to produce reliable, safe, maintainable computing systems, integrated development and configuration management environments
Application Systems
- Analysis of human activity systems, ontological modelling, specifying organisational and external context of computing systems, impact and user experience analysis
- Integration of systems components into coherent socio-technical systems
- Types of application: organisational operations (transaction processing, executive information systems), simulation and decision support, information management (digital document (text, video, sound, image) creation, storage, communication and information retrieval), knowledge management, digital platforms and markets
- User experience: interface design, physical and cognitive ergonomics
- Application context where specifically linked to ICT: Domain attributes (e-health, e-business, transport and logistics, agriculture, e-government, etc), language and cultural factors, users work practices and organisational contexts
Cyber Security
- Nature of Cyber Security: forms of attack, prevention, detection, mitigation and repair
- Information assets to be secured (hardware, networks, software, data) and the different means of securing them, cryptography
- Human security roles and behaviours, rights and obligations (privacy)
- Cyber Security risk assessment, policy, management and testing, forensics
ICT Projects
- Nature and types of projects: exploratory, prototype, agile, maintenance, construction and acquisition, etc
- Project initiation: stakeholders, benefits specification, scope and requirements, quality and acceptance criteria, cost/benefit, risk and time budgets
- Project management: team management, estimation techniques, project scheduling, quality assurance, configuration management, project management tools, progress analysis, reporting and presentation techniques
- Installation and change management, benefits realisation and impact assessment
ICT Management and Governance
- Fundamental governance principles (strategy development, establishment and monitoring systems for management and policy)
- Organisational context, staffing roles and skills (SFIA, e-CF), organisational culture
- Digital transformation and disruption, change management
- Service and product management, the ongoing operation of ICT using frameworks like the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and Control Objectives for Information and Related Technology (COBIT)
Section 2 - RPL Project Reports (In-depth ICT Knowledge)
A project report is a clear written description of a project or engagement that provides you with the opportunity to show your In depth knowledge in an area of ICT. Each report is to relate to a significant completed project or work episode undertaken by you during your professional ICT career. You are required to provide two project reports.
Of the two reports, one must apply to a project undertaken within the last ==three years==, and the other for a project within the last ==five years==.
Exception: Projects longer than two years may be used for both reports under either of the following conditions: • The project has clearly defined work efforts which took place in parallel, each with their own solution development and design activities and their own deliverables. • The project had clearly defined phases that were executed in succession, each with its own solution development and design activities and deliverables. Note that a second project phase that constructs and implements the solution developed by the first phase does not meet this requirement.
Depending on the nature of your role in each project, the Project Report should cover an appropriate selection of factors.
Appropriate factors will be determined based on the type of ICT project selected. Possible factors include: • System Analysis and Design and Software Engineering methodologies used; • Contribution to the processes involved in the design and implementation of enterprise-wide computing systems; • Programming languages, design paradigms and implementation procedures adopted; • Database and/or file design and management techniques employed; • Network topologies, including size, distribution and security facilities installed; • Project Management and quality assurance techniques followed; • Internet application design, including database interactivity and security measures implemented; • Cyber Security • Data Science • ICT managerial activities, demonstrating the nature and extent of responsibilities.
When writing your reports please provide your own thoughts – do not just copy project documentation. Please use the first person in your discussion, so it is clear to the assessor what you did versus what others did – say “I did X” rather than “X was done”. Diagrams from the project documentation may be helpful, but the text should be in your own words. Please ensure that diagrams are relevant, readable, and help the assessor to understand what you did as a member of the project team. If sections of the Project Report template (see below) are not relevant to your participation in the project, then leave the section blank. Focus on quality rather than quantity. Each Project Report should be no more than ==four or five pages== in length.