Certification in any profession is an attempt to define the knowledge and skills a specialist in that field should have, and to check incoming specialists for those skills. In the mid-20th century, people became programmers as mathematicians, physicists, engineers, or employees who worked with a specific device at their company. Computing degrees at universities were only beginning to take shape. The founding of ICCP, the first independent certification organization, was an important milestone in the establishment of programming as a profession — it now had its own body of knowledge and skills, and a way to confirm them.
What ICCP actually did
The idea was fairly modern for its time: separate the confirmation of professional qualification from any particular employer.
A company like IBM could say, “This person knows our systems.” ICCP was meant to answer a different question: “Does this person have the knowledge and skills that the computing industry as a whole considers professional?”
ICCP developed exams, qualification criteria, and professional standards.
Certifications in different tracks appeared almost immediately: the Certificate in Data Processing, the Certified Computing Professional, and the Associate Computing Professional, an entry-level credential in computing.
In spirit, this is a fairly interesting ancestor of today’s professional IT certification culture — Cisco CCNA/CCNP, Microsoft Certified Professional, AWS Certifications, and many others.
Who founded the organization
ICCP was created by professional computing societies. Among its confirmed founders:
- Association for Computing Machinery (ACM);
- Association of Computer Programmers and Analysts;
- Association for Educational Data Systems;
- Data Processing Management Association;
- Society of Certified Data Processors;
- Society of Professional Data Processors;
- Automation 1 Association.
The fact that the organization was founded by several professional societies at once signaled that ICCP was not centralized and had enough independence to define programmers’ competencies.
ICCP still operates today, though more popular and widely recognized certifications are now issued by commercial companies such as Microsoft, Cisco, and Oracle.