Current accreditation, certification, and licensure activities related to software engineering

The issues associated with the accreditation, certification, and licensure of software engineers are, or at least should be, of great concern to the s oftware engineering community. Perhaps as a result of publicity about safet y-critical software disasters in the news media, some state legislatures ha ve considered regulating the practice of software engineering, and some pro fessionals believe that accreditation, certification, and licensure are ine vitable. Yet there is no agreed-upon body of knowledge for software enginee ring on which to base accreditation, certification, or licensure, which mak es implementing them difficult at best. In addition, it is not clear that t hese processes and possible mechanisms to support them are well understood within the software engineering community. This paper surveys how these thr ee processes are conducted in other professions, summarizes the processes a s they currently exist for computing in general, identifies some issues tha t are involved in implementing the processes for software engineering, and suggests possible actions that can be taken by the software engineering pro fession. The implications of accreditation, certification, and licensure fo r education are also discussed.