by Jesse Wilkins,
I’m very pleased to announce that we’ve just updated the AIIM Certified Information Professional (CIP) exam! For the last six months, a group of very experienced subject matter experts has been revising the CIP exam, program, and training. On June 1, 2019, the updated exam will officially be live.
With any change comes questions, so I thought I would take some time to answer some of the ones I’m sure you’re asking.
Why did we update the CIP?
Every certification needs to be reviewed and updated every few years as technologies, processes, and best practices are introduced, changed, or retired, and CIP is no exception. We want to make sure that CIP continues to remain relevant and valuable to the individuals that hold it and to their colleagues and organizations that benefit from their knowledge and expertise.
How did you go about updating the CIP?
The overall approach to this update was to reemphasize the importance of business issues and business outcomes. We wanted to ensure that we treat each topic in the overall context of the business, rather than doing a deep dive into a particular process or technology. This means that while the coverage of the CIP topics may be similar in a given domain, the exam questions from that domain will focus on those business issues and outcomes.
Who is the target audience for the updated CIP?
In addition to being more focused on business issues and outcomes, the topics are covered a bit more strategically; for this and other reasons we also believe that the target audience for the updated CIP is slightly more experienced, with 5+ years of experience in at least one domain and some exposure to some or all of the other domains.
What’s changed on the exam?
When we started planning the update, we did so through the prism of our Intelligent Information Management story. We believe, and have been sharing for a while now, that organizations today need more than ECM, or content services, or whatever the latest buzzword is for the technology we use. These are important considerations, but insufficient, because they create the impression that these are just technology issues. The Intelligent Information Management story has a technology chapter, but it’s not the most important chapter. Rather, technology supports the other things that organizations need to do to meet today’s information management challenges.
We also wanted to keep implementation planning on the updated exam. So with a little tweaking from our subject matter experts, here’s what the final updated exam blueprint looks like:
Domain 1 – Creating and Capturing Information
Domain 2 – Extracting Intelligence from Information
Domain 3 – Digitalizing Core Business Processes
Domain 4 – Automating Governance and Compliance
Domain 5 – Implementing an Information Management Solution
More specifically, what we’ve done is:
- Refined our information governance, records management, and taxonomy coverage
- Added robotic process automation
- Increased our coverage of case management, analytics & AI, and privacy and data protection
- Updated the CIP training course and study guide to reflect these changes
What if I’m already a CIP?
If you are a CIP in good standing, you do NOT need to retake the updated exam. As long as you complete your continuing education units and pay your renewal fee, your CIP status will be unchanged. As with all certifications, you do have to maintain it; with the updated exam launch, we’re increasing the CEU requirement for renewal from 45 over 3 years to 60. This brings CIP into alignment with other industry certifications.
We are again affirming our commitment to the CIP as the premier information management certification and one that all information professionals should aspire to attain. If you have attained it, you should continue to be proud of that accomplishment.
If you have any questions about the exam, updates to the CIP program, or anything else CIP-related, please visit us online or contact me directly at jwilkins@aiim.org.
