Core Competency-based Model Frequently Asked Questions

FAQ List:

1. What is the foundation for the current certification program?

The GIS Certification Institute’s GIS Professional (GISP) certification program was founded on the principle that real-world work experience combined with education and professional association activities could serve as a proxy for a comprehensive exam on the basics of geographic information science and technology (GIS&T).  The general concept is that a person is tested regularly in performing a GIS-related job, taking college courses, and interacting with his or her peers in a professional setting.  Four years of applicable experience supplemented by education coursework and professional activities was judged to provide a sufficient period of time for an applicant to have learned and utilized the required knowledge, skills, and abilities of a GIS professional.

2. If education and contributions to the profession are measures of a certifiable GIS professional, then why was a grandfather option offered?

Although GISCI feels strongly that all three aspects of a professional’s career development are vitally important, the fact is that most long-time GIS professionals simply did not have the educational opportunities we have today.  They may also not have been in a position to participate in professional activities.  As a short-term option, GISCI offers a “grandfather” path for initial certification.  This option allows an applicant to substitute many more years of work experience—and the learning it offers—as a replacement for the learning and testing provided by a formal education and professional contributions background.  Qualifying under the grandfather option will require 8-20 years of full-time work experience, the number of years needed being based on the nature of the work.  Such grandfathering options are common among initial certification and licensing programs, as they provide a transition from the old career model to the new one.  Recertification for all persons qualifying under the grandfather provision will be the same as those for other GISPs, and will require points in each of the three categories.

3. Why not just develop a test instead?

When the GISCI program was created, there was no established guide for the content of such a test.  Absent a strong science standard, many people saw testing as having to include a demonstration of technical skills, which requires the use of software and/or mechanical drafting tools.  However, GISCI cannot mandate any particular software platform or tool set, and user-supplied tools would not provide a level field for applicants to demonstrate their skills.  Even if these obstacles could be overcome, there would be the matter of selecting the subject and task to be performed, which is very difficult for a group as diverse as GIS practitioners.  The conclusion was that the foundation for a test had not yet been built.

4. How has the real-world testing proxy worked?

For most applicants, their education and work experience has conformed to the expected pattern and produced well-rounded career professionals who are competent in a broad area of GIS&T practice.  However, there have been a number of applicants who are more limited in their experience and who may not be fully qualified to undertake the wide range of tasks typically associated with the professional practice of GIS.  To keep a GISP’s limited skill set from being a problem, a strong code of ethics and implementing rules of conduct have been put into place.  Both documents include references to restricting a GISP’s work projects to those for which the GISP is qualified.  GISCI is concerned about the possibility of a GISP being implicitly perceived as fully qualified in all areas of traditional practice.  As the adage goes, it’s what you don’t know you don’t know that can hurt the most.

The current certification process will continue to use a proxy for testing even if the proposed changes for a competency-based approach are implemented.  The long-term need, though, is for a real test.  We talk about that direction in the answer to Question 14.

5. Why should GISCI be concerned about potential problems with a few GISPs?

One of the recognized shortcomings of the current Experience portion of the GISP applicant-review process is its lack of comprehensiveness.  An applicant may possess knowledge in one very narrowly defined area and still be awarded the GISP credential.  Although unlikely, an applicant can qualify for certification even if his or her work experience consists of merely using GIS or CAD software to make basic maps.  GISCI runs the very real risk of undermining the professional nature of its own credential by ignoring the need for applicants to have more broadly founded backgrounds that provide them with the basic set of knowledge, skills, and abilities to do the work typically done by all GIS professionals.

6. So, what does GISCI plan to do to ensure that only broadly qualified persons will be certified?

GISCI proposes to adopt the core competency areas listed in the recently completed Geographic Information Science and Technology Body of Knowledge, 2006, developed by the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS), as defining the scope of knowledge, skills, and abilities representing the basic qualifications of a GISP.  You can view the summary document here.  The full document is available for purchase here. The Body of Knowledge includes 10 knowledge areas embracing 114 competency units that should be covered by a comprehensive college education program for GIS&T.  The Body of Knowledge lists 24 of the competency unitsas representing the minimal content for any qualifying program.  GISCI plans to modify its standard GISP application to include a requirement for the applicant to certify that he or she has the range of knowledge, skills, and abilities listed in those 24 core competency units.  USGIC considered the Body of Knowledge’s potential use as a guide to the certification activities of GISCI when the document was developed.

7. How would an applicant certify competency in these core units?

The current GISP application includes forms for listing applicable GIS&T courses and work experience.  Although there is some implicit correlation between such course titles as “Basic Analytical Methods with GIS” and core competency units, most connections will be less obvious.  Therefore, GISCI plans to add a new form to the application package that will allow the applicant to list the number of the college course or work experience.  The form lists each of the 24 core competency units and provides space for the applicant to write the identifying number(s) of the course and/or work experience where that competency was acquired.

8. How precise must the correlation be?

GISCI has chosen only to endorse the 24 competency units and list their basic content as a set of keywords.  GISCI has not endorsed the Body of Knowledge’s detailed set of course content, as this portion of the document has not been fully evaluated by the GIS&T community.  This leaves it to applicants to determine for themselves whether they are comfortable with their level of knowledge.  The intent of adopting the core competency units is to provide a rubric for the applicant to be aware of the scope of expected knowledge, skills, and abilities to ethically practice as a GISP.  Application reviewers will look for a reasonable correspondence between a competency unit and the listed course(s) and/or work experience(s).  Applicants should make certain that course and work experience descriptions provide clarification of any unusual correlations on the course and work experience description forms.

9. What else is GISCI doing with the Body of Knowledge?

Adopting the Body of Knowledge as a guide for core competency leading to GISP certification allows the application process to be founded on a consistent basis.  For example, the education and work experience portions of the application are being modified to use the competency units contained in the Body of Knowledge to serve as a guide for qualifying courses and work experience.  Simply put, if it is in a Body of Knowledge competency unit, then it qualifies for an appropriate award of certification points.  The Body of Knowledge will also help applicants calculate experience points by using a classification of position activities that is tied to levels of competency and scope of responsibility.  The competency units listed in the Body of Knowledge are more directly applicable to the mix of applicant experience than are the model job descriptions currently used for this purpose.

10. How will Experience points be awarded in the future?

The Body of Knowledge is the latest in a series of efforts to look at GIS&T competency.  Notable earlier efforts were conducted by Dr. Duane Marble, Ph.D (page 1) (page 2) and the University of Southern Mississippi.  These efforts pointed to a hierarchy of competency as one develops more detailed and extensive knowledge about a given subject area.  Collectively, three levels of professional competency are suggested by these efforts:

1. Mastery.  Someone at this competency level can handle the breadth and depth of complete temporal-geospatial solutions.  Mastery is Experience Tier 1 earning 25 points per year.

2. Advanced Competency.  This level of competency provides the knowledge required to specify the requirements and design of GIS software for solving a particular problem.  It also includes the ability to handle more complex and difficult problems through the application of analytical tools.  Some professionals at this level of competency may have the role of creating software for an entire enterprise or to serve more advanced applications at the workgroup level.  Advanced Competency is Experience Tier 2 earning 15 points per year.

3. Basic Competency.  People with this degree of competency have the ability to routinely and consistently apply knowledge of the topic to perform typical tasks without close supervision.  Such tasks may include developing workgroup software to automated basic processes.  Basic Competence is the GISCI Experience Tier 3 (10 points per year).

11. Why three levels of Experience points?

The various research and academic investigations into GIS&T competency have produced varying numbers of competency levels in the areas of technical, analytical, business, and interpersonal performance.  The GIS&T BoK is the core component of the ongoing Model Curricula initiative. Another component is the proposed “curricular pathways” project, which will result in development of the industry-specific competency models discussed above, as well as a specification of the curricular pathways that lead through the GIS&T BoK (as well as the bodies of knowledge of supporting fields) to the end goal of competency in several particular GIS&T fields.

The Model Curriculum, offered the following summary of these various classification schema:

1. Awareness.  The person at this level of competence knows the basics about something, but lacks detailed knowledge and the ability to apply the knowledge to solve a useful problem.

2. Literacy.  This level of competency represents knowledge of topic area details and limited application experience.

3. Use.  People with this degree of competency have the ability to routinely and consistently apply knowledge of the topic to solve typical problems without close supervision.

4. Application Development.  This level of competency does not imply the ability to create computer software, per se, but the knowledge required to specify the requirements and design of such software for solving a particular problem.  It also includes the ability to handle more complex and difficult problems through the application of analytical tools.

5. Mastery.  Someone at this competency level can handle the breadth and depth of complete temporal-geospatial solutions. 

Using the assumption that the lowest level of competency acceptable for professional practice in this classification hierarchy is “Use,” GISCI proposes that only the third through fifth levels of competency in this hierarchy apply to GISP certification.  The resulting three levels of competency are can be made consistent with the present three levels of task difficulty used on the existing Experience points system by reversing their numerical order and placing Mastery at the top as Tier 1, which receives the highest point award.  The titles of the other two competency levels (Application Development and Use) were modified to be more specific to the application.

12. Does it matter that different positions have varying scopes of responsibility for the same technical tasks?

Yes.  GISCI feels that the scope of duties within an organization is an important criterion for awarding Experience points.  In order to recognize the organizational elements of an applicant’s work experience, GISCI proposes to use the scope of a position’s duties to affect Experience point awards.  The basic recommendation is to recognize technician work as indicative of the Basic Competence level, analyst and developer work as representing the Advanced Competency level of competency, and Mastery being reflected in supervisory responsibilities.  (In this context, supervision is equivalent to responsible charge and does not require a subordinate staff.) 

For example, a database administrator with enterprise-level responsibilities would earn Mastery points (25 per year per FTE) for competency unit DM2-Database Management Systems, while a GIS analyst in a work unit would earn Advanced Competency points (15 per year per FTE) in the same knowledge area, since the database administrator has a higher level of responsibility (multiple work groups vs. one work unit) and a greater degree of difficulty (maintaining, say, Oracle software vs. using SQL to create a dataset).  The new Experience form can be seen here.

13. What about the supervisory bonus points?

Since the Body of Knowledge includes supervision and management as applicable GIS&T activities, and the scope of responsibilities provision will accommodate the relative level of supervision, there is no need for a separate point award for supervisory duties.  The supervisory bonus will be eliminated.

14. If the Body of Knowledge is so good, why not go ahead and use it to make a test now?

There are two reasons the GISCI is not moving forward with a test-based program now.  First, the Body of Knowledge needs to be applied for a period of time to ensure that it does well represent the scope of professional practice.  Only as applications are submitted under the new criteria will it be possible to determine whether the requirements are reasonable and sufficient.  Second, it takes a long time to develop a set of test questions from which each exam can be constructed.  The Body of Knowledge describes the geospatial science and technology required to do the work.  Even if that document is perfect for its purpose, it does not show how to be a professional.  What are additionally needed to build a complete test are professional practice standards.  GISCI does plan to move to a test-based certification program when one can be developed, but much work remains to be done first to establish a foundation for the test itself.

15. What if I lack the requisite knowledge, skills, and abilities in one or more competency units?

GISCI has elected to require competency in all 24 core units.  Minor deficiencies may be overcome, with the supervisor’s endorsement, through special study and on-the-job application.  The knowledge gained through self-study must be tested in some way, and the test of applying the knowledge to do useful work is compatible with the present applicant evaluation process.  More significant deficiencies will require formal education to overcome them and qualify for certification under the revised rules.  This is clearly a problem, as self-study is a common and valid way to add to one’s knowledge, but there is presently no way to accommodate independent self-study, as it does not offer a way to test one’s competency through a course exam or job-required application. 

GISCI and other professional associations are looking at offering courses that could provide applicants with basic knowledge to help them fill gaps in their background, and with onsite and online tests to evaluate how well they have acquired the knowledge provided through self-study. Some of the ideas being evaluated include developing tests for existing college textbooks, instructor-delivered workshops and other packaged courses, online education opportunities, and new publications that combine educational materials and tests.

16. When will the change to competency-based certification take place?

This question cannot be answered today.  A vote by the Board will not be held until the GISP community has participated in a 30-day review and comment period.  The competency-based program is a project of the GISCI Oversight Committee.  If you want to make your opinions known to the Committee, use the <<GUESTBOOK>> to see all the proposed changes and to provide your comments.  Comments received from existing and potential GISPs will tell us how much more work remains to be done, or if the changes will even be implemented.

17. What other changes are occurring in the GISCI certification program?

GISCI recently modified the recertification requirements in light of experience gained over the last few years.  For example, the GISP community has expressed concern that the Education and Contributions to the Profession point requirements are too high.  Others, who are less involved in day-to-day application of GIS&T, are concerned that they will not meet the Experience requirement for recertification.  In response to these comments, GISCI increased the flexibility to earn points in various ways by lowering the minimum thresholds but preserving the overall point total.  Part of this approach involves establishing an equivalency across the three points-earning categories through the use of a multiplier for each category that preserves the relative importance of each.  GISCI also established an appeal process for recertification applicants who do not meet the point requirements.

In the future, GISCI may recognize specialty practice areas based on competency unit sets constructed from the remaining 90 units contained in the Body of Knowledge.  For example, specialty areas could be constructed for database design and administration, spatial modeling and analysis, cartography, and other areas of practice defined by a set of competency units.  GISPs would be able to list their name under one or more specialty areas through a similar self-declaration of competency through demonstrated education and/or experience.  The purpose of such a set of specialty areas would be merely to allow individual GISPs to more readily identify their areas of additional competency to potential clients and employers.  Comments on this potential addition to the program are also solicited.

18. What remains to be done?

GISCI, UCGIS, and other groups will continue to provide guidance to the academic and professional GIS&T communities and encourage practitioners to participate in developing, teaching, and applying practice standards.  GISCI believes that a formal set of practice standards is a prerequisite to the full establishment of a GIS&T profession.  The active involvement of all GISPs is especially important as we build accredited academic programs and professional practice standards founded on the Body of Knowledge.

Timeline:

1. Determine if there is a need for professional certification in the GIS Community. - Done
2. Utilize the UCGIS Body of Knowledge as the base for the Educational Achievement section. - Done
3. Determine if the Core Competencies of the Body of Knowledge are relevant and accurate to the career trajectory of GISPs and aspiring practitioners. - Current Step
4. If a positive correlation exists, look into the possibility of developing an examination based on the core-competencies. - Next Step