Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
The long-range report noted that of the 320,000 software personnel
then working in the United States, 85 percent dealt with business data
processing. It admitted that while the ACM had a reputation for profes-
sionalism, “BDP [business data processing] people tend to be turned off
by ACM's academically oriented leadership. . . . BDP professionals feel
that academics don't understand what BDP needs, and they're right.”
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It concluded that any new ACM members were likely to come from
business data processing, and recommended the development of a new
publication aimed at that audience. The report signaled to many in the
ACM that the organization needed to broaden its membership and
become more accommodating. The next few years witnessed a bitterly
contested presidential election (the cornerstone of which was a debate
over business data processing), yet another attempt to change the name
of the ACM to something more broadly relevant, and efforts to reconcile
with its business-oriented competitor, the DPMA.
The Data Processing Management Association
The DPMA originated in 1949 as the NMAA. The NMAA was founded
as an association of accountants and tabulating machine managers. It
held its fi rst convention in 1952, and grew rapidly over the next decade.
By 1957 it represented more than ten thousand data processing workers
in the United States and Canada, and by 1962 more than sixteen
thousand.
In 1962 the NMAA changed its name to the DPMA. This was in part
an attempt to expand its membership beyond fi nance and accounting
professionals, and in part a refl ection of the changing status of its disci-
pline within the corporate hierarchy. As Thomas Haigh has suggested,
punch card divisions at many large corporations had, by the beginning
of the 1950s, acquired new status as the providers of strategic business
information and other forms of valuable corporate data. The replace-
ment of tabulating machine technology with electronic computers created
a new role for data processors within the corporation; in fact, it was as
part of a shift toward electronic data processing that most corporations
invested in their fi rst electronic computing equipment. From its incep-
tion, therefore, the DPMA represented the largest professional associa-
tion of computing personnel.
The establishment of the CDP program later that year was part of a
larger strategy of professional development. It was announced in con-
junction with the DPMA's “Six Measures of Professionalism” program,
