The IAIDQ is working to develop an industry standard certification/accreditation programme for Information/Data Quality Professionals (similar to the PMI for Project Managers). This is a valuable and significant initiative that will (hopefully) lead to a reduction in the types of issues we see over at IQTrainwrecks.com.
The IAIDQ has set up a blog over at idqcert.iaidq.org to share news and feedback from the Certification development project. Currently there are some good posts there about the first international workshop that was held in October in North Carolina to thrash out the ‘knowledge areas’ that needed to be addressed. That workshop was a key input into the next stage of the project – a detailed Job Analysis study.
Of course, industry defining initiatives like this need to be funded and the IAIDQ is eager that this be a Community lead project “by IQ Professionals for IQ Professionals”, rather than being driven by the objectives of vendors (although vendors are good and the IAIDQ is looking for vendor sponsorship to help this initiative as well). To make this a ‘community’ initiative it was felt that individuals might like to ChipIn a few quid. If you are in the US it is tax-deductible due to the legal status of the IAIDQ (a 501(3) not for profit). The rest of us might just need to be less generous.
I personally think this is a great initiative that will raise standards and objectivity in the field of Information Quality. Please give generously.