IT teams have been praised for their dedication during the global IT outage in an open letter from the CEO of the professional body for computing.
Rashik Parmar MBE, Chief Executive of BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, said the profession had ‘stood up to be counted’ by working around the clock on critical tasks ranging from ‘advising CEOs to rebooting laptops’.
The outage to 8.5 million Windows devices, caused by CrowdStrike’s update, highlighted the need for senior tech professionals to be included on the boards of every organisation, Parmar said.
IT is ‘as important as roads or rail’
It also meant that far more IT systems should be treated as a critical national infrastructure that is ‘just as important as road or rail’, he stressed.
He added that we should expect IT professionals to be Chartered, and held to the same standards as regulated areas like medicine.
In the letter Parmar told technologists: “Our work isn’t always seen or understood - but it is felt daily in every aspect of life from the NHS, to schools to local government to businesses of all kinds that keep our economy alive.
“The crisis we faced last week tested everyone in our industry. I was proud that so many members of our professional community stepped up to be counted, whether advising CEOs, providing insight and updates across social media, or re-booting laptops.
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Later he added: “We should be proud to have our names on a professional register; we should be held accountable to the Chartered standard if we fall short, as with doctors or accountants.
“The new government should also pay attention to how we maintain and develop the complex web of systems we now depend on for critical services, and report and record failures with transparency.
“None of these things in isolation will ensure software never fails – it is the quality and commitment of software experts and increasing education among non-technical leaders that will move us forwards.”
