As any developer knows the platform they develop on has its problems. However when a representative of that platform promotes a narrow minded, badly focused viewpoint it doesn't help matters.
"If you look at what you regard as the traditional professions — doctors, teachers, lawyers — their professional bodies can fire people, can investigate complaints, can impose penalties, and the ultimate sanction is to remove them from the profession, so you can't practice any more," Fishenden said. "It would be good, if we want to be respected as a profession, for there to be some method of ensuring the industry as a whole maintains professional standards, otherwise it just seems to be hollow words." - ZDNet UK interview with Microsoft UK's National Technology Officer Jerry Fishenden.
So would a culture of fear work for IT professionals? I doubt it for a number of reasons;
Firstly people learn by their mistakes. The idea of some oversight committee setting a professional standards is not a bad thing, but standards are rigid. Developer is, at heart, a creative process. By professing the "one true way" it will stifle learning and innovation. Anyone that has hired a graduate will know how badly most universities teach their students, presenting a blinkered view of what is right and graduates often refuse to deviate from their academic learning in real world situations where it just doesn't work. Now translate that into a set of rules UK IT professionals must follow in order to, basically, cover their asses and the problem magnifies.
Secondly there's the standing of professional bodies. People are not hired on the basis of having FBCS CITP FIMIS FIAP after their names, people are hired on the basis of skill and the various associations simply don't, and cannot, judge this. The BCS (of which I am a member, so I can put MBCS after my name) does have a career progression plan, but it's for movement through the various grades, from MBCS to FBCS to CITP and it's all rather fluffy; there is nothing in depth or technical about it. Added to this is the amusement that someone who is a Fellow with Chartered status of the British Computer Society (FBCS CITP), a Fellow of the Institute for the Management of Information Systems (FIMIS) and a Fellow of the Institution of Analysts and Programmers (FIAP) is complaining that there is no central body.
Thirdly, and finally (for now at least) by wanting to blame IT professionals it does not address the major contributors to failure in a project, customers, process managers, project managers, the people that steer a project. If you look at the current crop of UK Government IT failures blame does not tend to be placed on the IT staff, but on management consultants or the Government for failing to know what they want and just throw money to be trendy. I find it rather strange that someone who used to work as a Director of IT in the NHS, notorious for failed IT projects has the gall to complain about IT professionals without calling for the same procedures for everyone involved with a failed project, from programme managers to customer management.
(This rant brought to you by lack of sleep, too much caffeine and anger at the continual scapegoating of IT professionals for software failure.)