Should we destroy the Australian Computer Society?

Matt Barrie, CEO of Freelancer.com, caused waves recently when he called for ICT industry association the Australian Computer Society (ACS) to be abandoned, calling the association “f*cking morons” and accusing it of running a “protection racket”.

In a scathing article posted on LinkedIn, Barrie said the ACS should be stripped of its ability to accredit university courses and disbanded.

Barrie’s incendiary attack was provoked by his experiences at a NICTA forum on technology education in Australia. He pointed to brochures from the ACS Foundation - an offshoot of the ACS - distributed to event goers, featuring simplistic and inaccurate descriptions of careers in IT.

According to the Barrie, the leaflets said electrical and electronic engineers “install, repair and service technology equipment”; software engineers “design and document software structures and operations”; and network and communications personnel “provide technical support to help people use software and hardware”.

“Sorry, but who are these f*cking morons? They are doing more damage to the industry than help,” he said.

Barrie said the ACS runs a “fairly lucrative protection racket”, referring to the fees - rising into the hundreds of dollars - that the association charges immigrants looking to get their overseas qualifications recognised as meeting the requirements for an Australia skilled visa application.

In particular, he quoted the $425 the ACS charges to “Recent Graduate[s] of an Australian University”.

“Why would you ever need to pay a third party to get an Australian University degree recognised? We don’t recognise our own degrees by default?!?” he wrote.

Barrie’s tirade continued in the comments of the article, where he exchanged internet fisticuffs with representatives of the ACS and the ACS Foundation.

ACS response

The ACS responded promptly with a media release, clearing up some ambiguity in the discussion. Specifically, the ACS pointed out that the event that so incensed Barrie was hosted by NICTA, not ACS; and that the brochures Barrie mentioned came from the ACS Foundation, an organisation that spun off from the ACS in 2001 that has its own board, governance structure, CEO and management team.

However, some - including software engineer Tony Healy, in a bylined piece for the SMH - say that the ACS Foundation is not as far removed from the ACS as the ACS has indicated.

“The chief executive of the foundation and one of the board members are former presidents of the ACS, and another board member is a former chief executive of the ACS. The two organisations are close to each other,” Healy said.

Healy also decried the ACS’s immigration accreditation charges, saying, “I estimate that those and other fees the ACS charges immigrants constitute about half the organisation’s income, which raises serious conflict-of-interest questions regarding its promotion of IT immigration. I haven’t seen a response to Barrie’s complaints about the immigration fees.”

Healy went further than Barrie, saying that the ACS has provided “dismal” advice to government and industry and harmed the image and reputation of the software engineering profession.

He also criticised of the association’s promotion of the concept of the ‘ICT professional’ - a term that Healy says is just “camouflage for people lacking technology credentials”.

Like Barrie, he called for the destruction of the ACS.

So what?

Technology Decisions is not suggesting that an industry body dismantle itself based on the opinion of one prominent Australian tech personality. If the world listened to every angry person on the internet, there would not be much of a world left standing. But Barrie’s sentiments are shared by many IT workers in Australia, who view the ACS with a great deal of cynicism.

This scepticism has four main threads:

1. Value. The ACS charges a yearly fee for membership, and while it claims to offer certain services in exchange for this fee, many members, ex-members and non-members don’t believe they get sufficient value for what they pay.
2. Purview. The ACS purports to represent ICT professionals in Australia. This is a broad umbrella indeed, covering many disparate professions, many of which have little in common with one another. With such a broad domain, many are sceptical of how well the ACS represents any one of these professions.
3. Racketeering. Like Barrie and Healy, there’s a common belief among Australian IT workers that the fees the ACS charges to accredit ICT qualifications are unnecessary.
4. Relevance. The ACS was established in 1966, by five societies that existed previously; IT and computing have changed significantly since then. Many believe that the society is built up of individuals who are out of touch with the current state of IT, or non-technical people who have never been in touch with IT. The ACS has been referred to, on more than one occasion, as an old boys’ club.

Now, we’re not saying that these four beliefs are true: we’re simply pointing out that they are commonly held by the very people the ACS is attempting to woo.

If the ACS wants to be relevant, and wants to attract the interest and respect of the people it purports to represent, it must address these perceptions. If it fails to do so, it risks alienating its sceptics even further.

Image credit ©iStockphoto.com/Ivan Bliznetsov