Licensing and Certification of IT Professionals Abstract: Recent movements have attempted to certify or license IT workers in order to promote professionalism. Certification of IT professionals is a more informal approach that would not be required by law and would promote professionalism while maintaining the flexibility needed for a maturing discipline. Licensing, on the other hand, would imply a series of legal requirements for all IT professionals. In this article I will show that there are two main problems with licensing. First, the exact definitions of specific subfields are not yet clear because the field continues to change rapidly. This makes it difficult for a licensing body to provide assurance to the public. Second, innovation is important to computing, and the licensing process may actually slow progress. For these reasons, I believe certification is a more practical approach. Webster's Dictionary defines the word "profession" as "a calling requiring specialized knowledge and often long and intensive academic preparation." The fields of computer science, computer programming, and software engineering have evolved tremendously in recent years. Students in these fields are exposed to an ever-growing body of specialized academic knowledge, and because of this, there is a strong argument for calling these people professionals. Like members of other professions, a certain level of expertise is typically expected of IT workers, and there have recently been movements to begin licensing them, like other professionals, or to expand the use of more informal certification programs . However, there are several licensing issues that are unique to the IT industry. For this reason I find professional licensing less practical than traditional sectors and, for the moment, I consider certification programs to be a much more practical alternative. First you need to note the difference between "certification" and "licensing". ." Certification is an acknowledgment made by some form of private government agency, typically a professional society such as IEEE or ACM, or a private company such as Microsoft, that a computer professional has met a certain set of standards. Certification demonstrates competence within the community or within the company, however it is not a legal requirement for anyone wishing to work in the industry to be certified, on the other hand, it requires an assessment and verification by a government organization in order to a worker can be legally authorized to practice in his field.