The Great Certification Debate

Interview with Barb Dijker

This interview with Barb Dijker was conducted by Rob Kolstad just prior to LISA and its Great Certification Debate. Barb has been active in getting the certification effort off the ground.



Rob: How did you become involved in the certification effort?

Barb: The same way I became a system administrator. It's something that appears to need doing, someone needs to do it, and it wasn't getting done. I didn't start this, nor did I push it through the SAGE Executive. This is a significant undertaking with broad implications. I'm one of four on the SAGE certification subcommittee. Another 48 SAGE members are on an advisory council -- which will hopefully keep us from screwing up.

Rob: Are you personally for or against certification?

Barb: Personally I don't have strong inclinations one way or the other. The reason is that I don't think we really have enough data yet to substantiate arguments on either side of the issue. That's why this effort is important. The initial goal is to get the data so we can make a decision.

Rob: And what is the final goal of SAGE certification?

Barb: Once a certification program is developed, its purpose would be to provide an objective means of skill assessment. It would be a guide for new system administrators to develop their skills and a means for hiring managers to wade through resumes.

Rob: Does anyone really want that?

Barb: Employers eat it up. Those looking to get into the high-salary world of system administration would have a road map to do it. I'm serious. To a PC repair person, system administration is "high-salary" even if certification does water down salaries as doomsayers claim it will. Anyone with good problem-solving skills can learn to be a system administrator. We need more system administrators. How else are we going to grow them?

Rob: Shouldn't we be helping universities build curricula instead?

Barb: In addition to, but not instead. Getting a degree in computer science, even if there were a minor in system administration, isn't going to necessarily teach you everything you need to know about doing it on the job. Nor does it tell a potential employer how much of that curriculum soaked into your brain and contributed to your actual skill level. If higher education were the only answer, there would be no certification programs anywhere.

Rob: How do you implement it?

Barb: SAGE has never done anything this big. So implementation is as much of the problem as determining the required skill sets and developing methods to assess them. However, there are many professional certification-program development and execution companies that can help us. SAGE isn't the first professional or trade association to want to provide a certification program for its members. Think of teachers, nurses, cops, etc. All of them get "professional" outside help to develop their programs. As system administrators, we want our users to recognize when they should call in a "professional" rather than taking the do-it-yourself approach. By the same token, we need to recognize that developing a certification program is completely outside of our skill set.

Rob: This sounds really expensive. How can it be worked out so it's affordable to those being certified?

Barb: It may turn out that it is cost-prohibitive. We don't have all the data. At this point, we aren't developing a certification program yet. We are only doing a feasibility study to justify a recommendation of whether to develop and implement a certification program or not. Part of the criteria for the recommendation is that the program must be affordable. If it isn't affordable to the participants, then it doesn't have enough value.

On the other hand, SAGE isn't doing this to make a profit like a company. So the program only needs to cover the cost of implementation and maintenance.

Rob: Is everyone in favor of this?

Barb: That's impossible to say. Everyone on the SAGE Executive was in favor of this effort -- or at least not opposed to it. When SAGE conducted a survey last year, there was 2:1 support. However, we know that the survey results do not statistically represent the SAGE membership or the greater system-administrator community. It's just an interesting datapoint -- a conversation starter. And boy did it stir up conversation. When the SAGE Executive first announced the plan to start down this road back in February, the <sage-members> mailing list was flooded with a heated debate. A certification program isn't any good unless it is accepted by a reasonable majority of the membership. That's why a major aspect of this effort is to open constructive dialogue about certification. A Web site, <http://www.usenix.org/sage/cert/>, is online for information and feedback and debates, and BOFs are being conducted.

Initially the feedback was negative. This was mostly based on fear that SAGE would re-create MSCE -- which is generally viewed by SAGE members as an expensive waste of time -- or that SAGE would mandate certification for membership or try to certify senior sysadmins. Since those fears have been dispelled, most of the feedback has been a very positive and "it's about time" sort of thing.

Rob: Do I need to keep getting recertified every year or two or keep getting add-on credits or something?

Barb: That has not yet been determined. The initial focus is on "core competency." That basically means certification for a solid entry-level system administrator. However, another goal is to design the program so that it is extensible. So in the future there might be a "postmaster" certification, for example. A moving target like that would need recertification, or at the very least a date stamp, to be meaningful.

Rob: Thanks!