As an IT professional, you might be a Microsoft Certified System Engineer, or you might have completed a rigorous course in security and privacy. But it's rare to find an IT professional who holds one document that pronounces him or her a "certified CIO" -- and even rarer to find a statement on an education certificate indicating a specialty in government IT.

In the future, however, "certified public CIO" could become a more common designation. The Center for Public Technology (CPT) at the University of North Carolina (UNC), Chapel Hill, recently entered the third year of its CIO Certification Program for local governments, and it has just launched a second version of the course for IT professionals in state government.

Another emerging school is the Florida Institute of Government (IOG) at Florida State University, Tallahassee, which started a certification program for local CIOs in 2006. IOG officials also hope to add a version for state IT employees.

Each school is working with a national organization to create a certification program for current and aspiring government CIOs across the country.

"The demand is just incredible," said Lee Mandell, director of IT and research and CIO of the North Carolina League of Municipalities, and a guest instructor in the UNC program. That, he said, is because there are so few formal programs that teach the management skills one needs to succeed as a CIO -- "communication skills, budgeting skills -- you name it -- the kinds of things that are not taught when you're in a computer science class."

But the North Carolina and Florida programs aren't the first to offer specialty courses for CIO professional development. CIO University, developed by the federal government's CIO Council and run by the General Services Administration (GSA), was launched in 2000. Offered in partnership with the universities of Syracuse, George Mason, George Washington, Carnegie Mellon, LaSalle, and the University of Maryland University College, the CIO University certificate program provides training in areas the federal CIO Council considers essential competencies for a CIO working in the federal government.

"We want to make sure the federal government has a cadre of highly capable professionals with mission-critical competencies to meet agency goals," said Monica Fitzgerald, director of CIO University and program manager for IT Workforce, Office of Technology Strategy in the Office of Governmentwide Policy at the GSA.


CIOs in the Classroom
CIO University is open to IT professionals in all levels of government and in the private sector. Students enroll in programs designed by individual universities, such as Carnegie Mellon's Chief Information Officer Certificate Program or George Mason's Master of Science in Technology Management. Upon completing the program, along with credits or a degree from the university, the student gets a certificate from the government.

Since 2000, 770 people have received the certificate, which Fitzgerald cautions is not the same as a professional certification. "When we talk about certification, it's almost like you have a license of some sort," she said, noting CIO University isn't the one that bestows the certificates. CIO University participation has grown since 2000, when the program only handed out 18 certificates. In 2006, it awarded 171.

About 40 percent of the students who enroll in the program are government employees. Probably the most prominent graduate from CIO University is Barry West, who previously served as CIO of the National Weather Service and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and who was appointed CIO of the U.S. Department of Commerce in June 2006.


Local CIOs Like UNC
At UNC, the CIO certification program for local government has graduated two classes and started teaching a third in January 2006. Originally designed for IT professionals employed by communities in North Carolina, the one-year program has accepted several out-of-state students, including four in this year's cohort. That's prompted Shannon