{"id":8318,"date":"2016-09-14T12:20:26","date_gmt":"2016-09-14T19:20:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.esri.com\/?p=8318"},"modified":"2016-09-14T12:20:26","modified_gmt":"2016-09-14T19:20:26","slug":"wheres-the-g-in-is","status":"publish","type":"insider","link":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/insider\/wheres-the-g-in-is","title":{"rendered":"Where\u2019s the \u201cG\u201d in IS?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Visitors to Esri often pause for pictures beside an ivy-covered wall emblazoned with the word GEOGRAPHY in raised metal letters. The inscription speaks to an ingrained belief that geography offers a unique framework for organizing the world’s knowledge in a way that fosters better decision-making and a more sustainable future. Consistent with this belief, the education outreach team I lead at Esri does what we can to nurture geographic thinking and methods across the spectrum of academic disciplines.
\nThat’s a big job. Disciplines have proliferated since the advent of the modern university in the 19th and 20th centuries. Consider this concept map of contemporary academic disciplines<\/a>. Few disciplines depicted explicitly recognize geography, let alone GIS, as an integral way of understanding the world. Given the longstanding claim that a science of geographic information undergirds GIS (Goodchild 1992), you might suppose that Information Science is one of the disciplines that\u2019s likely to appreciate the special properties of spatial data. If so, you’d be surprised to find that there\u2019s precious little “G” is IS.
\n
\nOne of my team’s outreach activities this year was an engagement with the Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS). AMCIS is an activity of the Association for Information Systems<\/a> (AIS), a leading professional society of more than 4,000 members engaged in the study of information systems. During the event I was fortunate to participate in a session on the joint ACM\/AIS \u201cMSIS 2016\u201d curriculum framework. In Fall 2014, the Association for Computing Machinery<\/a> and AIS empaneled a working group to develop curriculum guidelines for Masters of Science degree programs in Information Systems. It is the fifth in a series of curriculum guidelines since 1972. This project is a further expression of the initiative begun in the 1960s by ACM to establish a body of knowledge and core curricula specifications for the computing disciplines. The GIS&T Body of Knowledge<\/em><\/a> project initiated in the 1990s by the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science<\/a> emulated those efforts intentionally.
\nNow available as a public discussion draft, MSIS 2016<\/a> represents a significant advance over earlier related efforts. In contrast to content-centered specifications (like the GIS&T BoK<\/em>) that are organized as hierarchical \u201cKnowledge Areas,\u201d \u201cKnowledge Units,\u201d and \u201cTopics,\u201d MSIS 2016 consists of \u201cCompetency Areas\u201d and \u201cCategories,\u201d \u201cIndividual Foundational Competencies,\u201d and \u201cDomain Competencies.\u201d Its greater emphasis on what students are able to do with knowledge, rather than on knowledge for its own sake, likens MSIS 2016 the U.S. Department of Labor\u2019s Geospatial Technology Competency Model<\/a>.
\n\"\"<\/a>
\nThe architecture of MSIS 2016 is illustrated above. The nine Core Competency Areas for Computing and IS Management subsume 88 Competency Categories. For instance, in the version of MSIS 2016 dated 8-18-2016, \u201cCompetencies in the area of Data, Information, and Content Management\u201d includes the following \u201cPre-Masters\u201d and \u201cMasters\u201d level competency categories:
\nPre-masters level<\/strong><\/p>\n