Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
understanding”—common across the entire professional community.
Second, it would help elevate the public reputation of computer person-
nel from its current stature of “cautious bewilderment and misinterpreta-
tion,” to “at least, confused respect.” Finally, and perhaps most
signifi cantly, it would enable computer professionals to erect entry bar-
riers to their increasingly contested occupational territory: the fl ood of
amateur programmers—“the industry's widely publicized upcoming
incompetents”as the
Datamation
editorial dismissively referred to
them—“would fi nd their accession to fi nancial stardom impeded by the
need for specifi c qualifi cation such as the passing of a reasonable test of
competency.”
2
In fact, in 1963 the DPMA's executive director Calvin
Elliott named stamping out “bogus” data-processing schools as one of
his organization's primary objectives.
3
The
Datamation
call for the professionalization of programming coin-
cided neatly with the announcement by the National Machine Accountants
Association (NMAA) of its new CDP examination. The NMAA, which
would later that year rename itself the Data Processing Management
Association (DPMA), represented almost sixteen thousand data process-
ing workers in the United States and Canada.
4
The NMAA had been
working since 1960 to develop the CDP exam, which represented the
fi rst attempt by a professional association to establish rigorous standards
of professional accomplishment in the data processing fi eld. According
to the NMAA's 1962 press release, the exam was intended to “emphasize
a broad educational background as well as knowledge of the fi eld of data
processing,” and represent “a standard of knowledge for organizing,
analyzing and solving problems for which data processing equipment is
especially suitable.” It was open to anyone, NMAA member or not, who
had completed a prescribed course of academic study, had at least three
years of direct work experience in punched card and/or computer instal-
lations, and had “high character qualifi cations.” The fi rst year that the
exam was offered, 1,048 applications took it—687 successfully.
5
Despite being widely criticized for being superfi cial and irrelevant to
real-world software development, the CDP clearly met a perceived need
within the computing community. In 1965, 6,951 individuals took the
CDP examination, and another 4,000 completed CDP refresher courses
conducted by local DPMA chapters.
6
A number of large employers,
including State Farm Insurance, the Prudential Insurance Company of
America, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, extended offi cial rec-
ognition to the CDP program, and the city of Milwaukee used the CDP
as a means to assign pay grades to data processing personnel.
7
By the
