Updating systems specialists

The proposition to update systems specialists begs two questions: who will do it and what they will teach? The area of computer studies is technology driven. Changes in technology echo through systems and methodologies. Hardware and languages come with detailed manuals. It is possible to incorporate them rapidly in our curricula. But a very essential area of Systems Analysis and Design (SAD) relates to application of technology to user functional systems. New areas of usefulness and new techniques are discovered and tested by best-practice installations. Only gradually they spread in industry. It may take years before the practice is universally accepted or rejected. For a long period of time the documentation of these new developments is sketchy. Ultimately textbooks appear. We can start teaching these topics with a delay of five to ten years, probably at the time when already another approach is used in industry. (Figure 1). Creating an Information Systems Research Centre is the step in the right direction. It opens a few direct and shorter communication channels between industry and academia. But an advanced SAD course, offered as a co-operative effort between industry and universities, with a high proportion of lectures given by leading-edge industry lecturers would be the ultimate weapon fighting obsolescence of both systems specialists and MIS teachers.