The spread of IT has brought a very wide public to face arguments (ranging from the concept of bit to the JPEG format) which were, up to not too many years ago, a prerogative of a few specialists. The growing IT literacy that characterizes advanced societies does not mean however that specialized competences are not needed anymore. On the contrary, the demarcation line between "users" and "professionals" is thicker and thicker, and the differences between distinct professional specializations are such that a network administrator for a large company has very little in common with a Java programmer involved in the integration of information systems at some other company or with a pre-sale consultant working for a company that develops and commercializes CAD systems.
The risk that exists in this context is a great confusion, in which many individuals think they have good IT competences, but they are unable to communicate (due to language issues to begin with) with other groups of theoretically analogous people, who are also specialists in fields that may differ from the IT sector only for some marginal details.
The task of assessing IT competences turns out to be even more difficult (maybe) for those who are alien to the field.
It is therefore important to define a reference outline for helping one to identify some firm points of cross-sectional competences common to all IT professionals, that is those who do not simply use IT for their work, but are instead IT craftsmen themselves. All the technicians who work for companies of the IT industry as well as all the staff dedicated to IT support at companies and organizations operating in other industries fall into this category.
The definition of such a reference outline for IT competences is the objective that has carried in 2000 to the formation of an international working group promoted by CEPIS (the Council of European Professional Informatics Societies). The outcome is the EUCIP (European Certification of Informatics Professionals) program.
The contents of this book correspond, also in the organization of arguments, to the Syllabus that defines the basic competence requirements necessary to get the EUCIP certification. Due to the vastness of the arguments which are dealt with, it has been chosen to subdivide the book in three volumes. Such a subdivision, in addition to corresponding to the EUCIP base level structure (which consists of three distinct examinations in the "Plan", "Build" and "Operate" areas), also reflects a logical distinction between discipline contexts.
This first volume deals with topics relating to the planning, to the use, and to the management of information systems and it therefore exposes a number of elementary concepts on information processing service "clients". An overview is thus given on organizations, on business process management, on project management, on legal and economic implications of IT investments, often from a "consulting" point of view, in the conviction that IT specialists must understand the real requirements and the context to which technology is intended.
The second volume deals with arguments related to the realization of information systems, with particular emphasis on software, meant as a development object.
Finally, the third and last volume of the series deals with problems related to operation and operating support of the information systems, emphasizing hardware components, operating systems, communication networks, and the delivery modalities of a support service oriented to a customer-supplier logic, which is already indicated as necessary in this first volume.