The Royal Air Force is borrowing techniques developed
for civilian businesses to improve the way it trains, manages and
deploys computer specialists.
The organisation is one of the early adopters of the Skills
Framework for the Information Age, a tool created to provide
organisations with a map of the IT skills and competencies of their
staff.
The RAF plans to use the framework to help it to create a new
Command Control Communication Information (CIS) trade that will
bring RAF staff with IT and radio frequency skills together for the
first time.
"The problem we have is that there is no CIS trade. There is no
group of people responsible for IT. We have cooks and air traffic
control experts dabbling in technology," said wing commander Colin
Winwood, who is overseeing the project.
The RAF plans to use the framework to gain an accurate picture of
the IT skills of its personnel, pinpoint staff with the right
skills for particular projects and identify any gaps in
training.
"It will produce a higher level quality of support. It will help us
define career structures more clearly. It will help us identify
career and development needs, and will help staff identify what
they want to do in the future," said Winwood.
The reorganisation should allow the RAF to respond more rapidly to
IT needs in the field. If key staff are absent or ill, the
framework will help commanders identify personnel with similar
skills who can stand in.
For example, if an expert in Oracle databases fell sick, said
Winwood, officers could use the framework to find an expert in SQL
databases to cover the work.
Once deployed, the framework will allow the RAF to map the IT
skills of its staff with recognised skills in the private sector,
providing them with qualifications they can use in later civilian
life - a powerful recruitment incentive.
The RAF has developed its own version of the framework, which
includes extra detail on skills specific to the RAF. Winwood said
he hoped that the RAF's version would be taken up as a new industry
standard.
The RAF will start recruiting for staff under the new CIS trade
from April 2005.
The British Council is also using the framework to create new
career paths and job roles for 450 IT staff in offices across 110
countries.
The framework has allowed the council, which champions UK culture
overseas, to recognise the technical competencies of its
employees.
Data standards manager Barbara Robinson said the framework would
allow the council to plan career development and identify gaps in
training, which should encourage staff retention.
"One colleague has been in our organisation for 35 years," she
said. "He has always had an IT role, beginning with mainframes in
the 1970s. He has come up the organisation with a huge range of
experience, but had no recognition. The skills framework gave him
that recognition."
The council introduced the framework following an outsourcing deal
with Logica, which took over the management of the organisation's
London IT infrastructure in January.
"We had a very tight deadline and pretty well a blank sheet of
paper to write the new job description," said Robinson. "Given the
tight deadline, we took what we wanted. We drew mercilessly on the
fact that the framework is well established in the academic, public
and private sector, and our colleagues were happy to accept that
without much question."
Under the new framework, rather than being responsible for
maintaining infrastructure, staff have taken on broader roles.
Telecoms managers, for example have become project managers, and
applications development managers become strategy managers.
"It produces a higher-level quality of support. It helps us define
career structures, identify needs and help staff decide what they
want to do," said Christine Latimer, organisational development
manager.
In a nutshell
The Skills Framework for the Information Age was developed by
businesses and universities to provide a common training and career
structure for the IT profession.
The framework helps organisations identify the core competencies
needed for each role in the IT department, and helps them to assess
the skill levels of its staff in each competence.
In effect, it provides companies with a snapshot of the skills they
have in their IT departments, helping them to identify gaps in
training, and to match the skills of individuals more closely to
skills needs of each IT project.
"You have a much better chance of making sure you have the right
skills available at the right time if you know what the skills of
your staff are," said Ron McLaren, operations manager at the SFIA
Foundation.
According to McLaren, more than 40 organisations have rolled out
the framework across their organisations since its launch last
year, 100 are using it for specific applications, and a further 100
plan to introduce it over the next 12 months.
www.sfia.org.uk
