“As part of our effort to ensure that our certification program
is grounded on solid statistical data about the actual tasks that
people are doing as they administer Linux systems, we have
undertaken a job analysis survey. A couple of our volunteers,
including Scott Murray (the chair of our exam development
committee), have degrees in psychometrics and have worked to
develop a method of validating both our program and the questions
themselves. Scott and Tom Peters (chair of our program committee)
put together a pre-survey where we collected lists of tasks
performed by Linux system administrators. This pre-survey ran for a
week, after which Tom and Scott cleaned the information up and now
have the actual survey available on the web.”
“We invite anyone with an interest in Unix and Linux system
administration to visit the website we put up to collect data for
the job analysis. You will be asked to answer a few questions about
a random selection from the many tasks a system administrator might
need to perform; this will take 15 to 30 minutes of your time. We
also need to collect some data of a personal nature, for reasons
that are explained in the on-line instructions; these may be
entered anonymously if you wish…”
“To ensure that our program meets both the needs of the
Linux community as well as the organizations that will employ those
people who successfully complete our certification program, we have
been building an Advisory Council of individuals and organizations
who can provide us with the feedback we require. Members of
our Advisory Council will be part of a private mailing list to
which questions will occasionally be posted and feedback
solicited…”