6/25/2003 -- Earlier this month I attended the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) Strategies 2003 conference in Las Vegas. While designed for training organizations (both colleges and corporate), it's also well attended by representatives of various certification program vendors and testing vendors. That makes it an excellent place to go to get an idea of the current state of the certification industry.

If you think that the players in this community don't realize this industry as a whole is in trouble, think again. Speakers were surprisingly honest about the not-too-healthy condition of this sector. In fact, the multi-speaker opening keynote session could easily be titled "How Our Industry Got So Screwed Up in the Go-Go '90s and What Can We Do to Fix It (Plus Some Other Stuff)."

After John Venator, president of CompTIA, welcomed the attendees and talked a little about A+'s 10th anniversary this month (congratulations, A+), these speakers offered their perspectives:

• Peter Martin, CFA, an analyst who covers the knowledge services industry as a whole, talked of the need for this industry to become "prescriptive, not reactive" if it wants to survive.
• Kris Madura, Security+ program manager for CompTIA, cautioned in her presentation on CompTIA research that "security" could become the industry's next $70,000 tagline (in reference to those radio ads from a few years back that promised high-paying jobs for newly crowned MCSEs).
• Alison Indrisano, senior vice president of client services and support at Thomson Prometric, stressed that the price of certification exams really is a major factor for candidates, that the certification process can be a lonely experience, as well as other findings from the company's recent Global IT Training and Certification Study. (For our earlier coverage of this survey, go here.)
• New Horizons CEO Martin Bean, after showing a highly amusing Crocodile Hunter parody film, examined the industry's downturn and offered training companies out there suggestions for survival (including focusing on value and avoiding chasing trends).

About the only moment of unrealistic cheerleading came from the keynote's emcee who expressed surprise that only 5 percent of the audience felt that certification was more valuable than a degree (to which the audience collectively muttered "Welcome to the real world.")

The acknowledgement that something's wrong seems to be a major turning point for this industry. Better yet, it appears that the resulting reaction is already happening. One trend over the past few years is that colleges and universities are now providing certification-related training, either al a carte or as part of a larger degree program. While their encroachment at first may have been viewed as competitive, smart training providers are now working in partnership with higher education, said Matt Bowman, North American training manager for Novell Inc. "By establishing relationships colleges, it expands your market because corporate training centers don't focus on the new entrants," he commented. "We leverage the colleges around us... We can then be the professional services provider that expands on the [knowledge gained at] the college level."

Highlighting yet another trend, Bowman said that Novell's training services are "growing quarter over quarter a ton" thanks to the company's custom corporate training options. "What our customers need [are] very targeted, two to three days of on-site training [covering] exactly what the customer wants." According to Bowman, the training companies who survive will be the ones that can be the most flexible with their offerings.

And custom certification may not be that far behind. Don Boucher, vice president of global marketing for Prometric, said that custom testing will play a role in the future of corporate training. "The core issue is integrating assessment into the learning process," he explained. "If you apply that to the corporate market, what you're talking about doing is working with the corporate entity to find out what are the skills their workers need to have to be fully productive. You then give them preassesment testing -- find out who's already mastered the skills, who just doesn't have the requisite foundation...and what the levels are in-between. You can now determine the training they need and then at the end of [it use the custom testing again to] determine how effective that training is."

CompTIA is contributing to the industry by bringing together major players through committees and other forums to address common concerns and suggesting new ideas, such as a new way to simplify cross-state training center licensure. (If you're at a training center and you'd like the information on this, e-mail me directly at and I'll put you in touch with the right person.) CompTIA is also continuing to grow the organization's pilot IT internship program; in fact, it appears that the program will most likely be exiting the pilot stage and entering full-fledged deployment shortly.

However, while all these efforts bode well for the future, none address the core issue confronting IT certification today: credibility. Several vendors I talked with realize reputation is a problem and are working on a variety of ways to redeem it by cracking down on cheaters to push away the "paper" stereotype. And many are looking toward technology to help them achieve this.

Some technology is coming from the vendors; for example, with the next version of NetWare, Novell will most likely upgrade all its exams to the virtual lab technology currently featured in its Certified Directory Engineer practicum exam, Bowman said.

Technology from the test delivery networks is expanding as well. Robert D. Whelan, vice president and general manager of NCS Pearson (Pearson Vue), said various technology advances are continuing to expand the security options offered certification vendors. "The ability to republish tests is a big improvement," he explained. "We can now pull an item and replace it in a couple of [hours] ... I think that's going to be a key to get an exposed exam out of the market and replaced quickly."

Other testing technologies Whelan sees rising to the forefront include video and audio items, virtual items, and the like. "Certainly the capability is there," he commented. "I believe they will be coming down the line in time...Vendors must validate that they are legally defensible, so it takes a little time. Adaptive testing is another way to solve a security problem [by limiting question exposure]...I think this will grow as well."

As for the testing centers themselves, Pearson Vue is focused on extending the biometric technology (such as fingerprint technology and candidate photos) that's already in use at its corporate-owned centers to the rest of its network as well as more broadly. "We need to come together on this as an industry," he said.

Prometric has also placed a major emphasis on security. The company recently appointed Jack C. Killorin, a former Special Agent with 26 years at the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) to a new position as Vice President of Global Security.

Killorin told CertCities.com that he's still learning about the intricacies of the testing industry, but said that principles of good security are common across all sectors. "Security is [a] wide concept ranging from privacy concerns, how to respond to incidents, how to structure those responses, how to execute them, and how to design [them]," he said. "Prometric's view was to find someone who lived in that world full-time.

"There's nothing that we do that doesn't have a significant security impact. What we need to do is implement reasonable security practices across the board. There's a role for security in test development, item development, testing, test delivery and managing the data -- there's a role in security in all of these."

Killorin said he's looking at a number of ways to improve test security, including improving measures for criminally prosecuting those found to be selling or otherwise exposing exam items. "The legal ability to pursue some of these [cases is] evolving. It is not well established in all levels of law enforcement..." he said. "The issue becomes how do we translate our concerns into a body of information that meets the prosecutive and investigative standard of already highly-burdened organizations?"

Killorin said one area he's exploring is the possibility of criminally prosecuting those who sell exam questions under U.S. conspiracy statutes, something that hasn't yet been attempted.

He also said conspiracy statues may apply to braindump customers. "The question becomes, should we be doing that? What do we do with people who are identified as cheating?" he commented. "It's worth considering in the IT certification world that questionable behavior may be worth having negative impacts against it."

Still, the surveys, the flexibility, the cooperation, the security measures, and the new testing technology may not be enough. Pearson VUE Vice President Randy Trask has been involved with test delivery since the late '80s, and he says that to truly fix the industry, everything needs to be reconsidered.

"Everybody is looking for the culprit -- it's security, it's the economy," he commented. "The fact is, it's none of it. You had a number of people who were sustaining something that wasn't real --[and] they were doing it for the wrong reasons."

"[We] have to go back, we have to make sure that our programs are solving problems for businesses," he continued. "We can't be so arrogant that we can't respond to market needs."

All in all, I came away with the impression that the industry does "get it." Now, the real test will be what they decide to do with it.

Editor's Note: For information on CompTIA's next Strategies conference (EMEA in Hamburg, Germany), go here.

More articles by Becky Nagel:

• CertCities.com's Guide To Developer Certs
• Q&A: Hewlett Packard Speaks Out on Post-Merger Cert Program
• 10 Hottest Certifications for 2003