APMG

I remember seeing an Aussie comedy TV show once (The Games as I recall?) where it suggested that a public statement by the Prime Minister that "So-and-so has our full support" meant they would be out within days. This memory came to me as I wondered why it was necessary for Keith Aldis, CEO itSMF, to come out with a press release to tell the world that “Real progress is being made in the development and implementation of ITIL V3 qualifications". A year and a half after go-live one would bloody hope so.

[This post has been rewritten. I got it wrong and it contained errors of fact. So one or two of the comments don't quite follow on from the revised text]

Call of a crow!!* What is going on in Castle ITIL? Is there a battle royal between vendor factions? The whole V3 Certification thing is lurching around like a pantomime donkey where the front guy has flatulence. e-learning is now in the syllabus (I am told but cannot confirm that it was not explicitly specified previously). This leads to a dire prediction for ATOs if Castle ITIL decides to cut out the middleman...

APMG have just run an anonymous public survey for "your valuable feedback" on the ITIL V3 Foundation Syllabus. Who knew? Oh, come on! You had a whole five days to hear about it and respond.

The IT Skeptic has confirmed pretty reliably that ITIL V3 Intermediate and Expert exams will NOT be available online without an associated training course. [updated: no it isn't. things changed between the start and end of August. Online training is back on!]

The ITIL V3 examinations are seriously flawed. "Subjective" and "multi-choice" don't go together.

Just how does itSMF involve the members? What does itSMF International do for international communications? How did the ITIL Qualifications Board survey the ITIL "community"?

Talk about timing. The IT Skeptic hears that, within a day or so of this blog, APMG got its accreditation back (look under "t" for "The APM Group"). Congratulations. Even the most strident of APMG critics must be sympathetic about having to wend the byzantine pathways of bureaucracy.

The EXIN-and-ASEB (British Computer Society) stranglehold on ITIL certification slips even further away with the accreditation of a sixth Examination Institute (EI) by APMG, the OGC's outsourced official accreditation body. This despite the fact that APMG remains embarassingly without its own accreditation withdrawn by the British Government for six months now.

The IT Skeptic broke the news that APMG had been suspended by the United Kingdom Accreditation Service.

Three months later, APMG accreditation still suspended. This is obviously not a brief tiff to be resolved overnight.

Further to the spot of bother APMG find themselves in with their "accreditation auditors" the UKAS, investigation reveals the suspension is a fact.

This blog is (currently) ITIL-centric, so most readers will be interested that I believe ITIL is not covered by the suspension.