I've been sitting this one out as I chew on the various aspects of both this
thread and the greater competencies vs. education thread. But this
statement:

>Frankly, I believe that we would be very likely to get government to
>confer a monopoly on the ICRM for certification if we were to work to
>that end.

troubles me. One of the other key points regarding certification and
licensure that either I missed or has been missed to date is that frequently
the certifications are created to serve as a mechanism to limit competition
to those who have already gotten it by ensuring that the barriers to entry
are high. You can see this in a number of fields. I think it would be
difficult to do this in RM in part because it is not as well known.

It also serves, in my mind, to restrict the adaptability of the field,
because the vested practititioners are the ones that create the
certification and tend to adhere to what they needed to know "back then". I
don't mean this to specifically target the CRM, nor ARMA or the ICRM, but
simply to point out that certifications and competencies have a tendency to
result in echo chambers. Given the volume and the complexity of electronic
records vs. traditional paper records management, it would seem that many of
our efforts (the CRM exam and many of the university courses available) are
significantly off-kilter in proportionality. This raises a second issue to
my point above, which is that doctors have to keep up with current
developments in medicine, and lawyers, in law; while there is a requirement
to do continuing education for the CRM, there is no requirement, for
example, to test on the newest RIM-related technology every X number of
years, nor do I think the ICRM and ARMA would be particularly interested in
so doing as I suspect the corpus of CRMs might drop by 50% or more through
such a process (although those remaining would command significantly higher
salaries).

NB: Not a CRM, not eligible to sit for the exams yet.

I'm going to quit for now and see what else comes up. I think this is one of
the more critical threads I have seen on the list for a while and I strongly
encourage everyone who has an opinion to voice it.

Respectfully submitted,

Jesse Wilkins
CDIA+, LIT, EDP, ICP
IMERGE Consulting
(303) 574-1455 office
(303) 484-4142 fax
[log in to unmask]
Yahoo!:  jessewilkins8511

List archives at http://lists.ufl.edu/archives/recmgmt-l.html
Contact [log in to unmask] for assistance