By Paul Lynham FIAP

The Past Twelve Months

In the past twelve months, several events have gained people’s attention. Earlier this year, the ITV drama ‘Mr Bates versus the Post Office’ drew public attention to the plight of sub-postmasters and the disastrous results of the poorly developed Horizon system, including loss of life, freedom, dignity, homes, businesses, money and relationships. This situation has been going on for years and many of the victims are still waiting for justice, even though the government has earmarked £1.8 billion of taxpayers’ money in compensation.

Similarly, Dieselgate has been rumbling on for years, with TV and web adverts continually prompting affected people to join compensation action, as although it has been settled in some territories, in others (including the UK) it is ongoing. Over 11 million vehicles were affected and VW were fined €1 billion by the EU. It settled with German consumers for €830 million, but the final cost to the VW group is likely to exceed several billion euros.

On July 19, a global cyber outage hit tens of thousands of air travellers and continued to bring problems in other sectors over several days. It was due to a software update by global cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, which caused problems for some Microsoft systems.

Trust

Last year in both my Chairman’s Report and in last year’s Christmas message, I wrote about trust – it is hard to earn and yet easy to lose. The public may now be more aware of the consequences and the costs of poor-quality software and how vulnerable many aspects of our modern way of living can be impacted. It is more important than ever that we as the IAP persist in our charitable aim of ‘Improving Software for Society’ through the production of trustworthy software.

In this regard we have continued to help those interested in learning about software development, having presented a series of webinars this year. Among them were ‘From Barter to Blockchain: The Evolution and Security Challenges of FinTech’, ‘Programming Provoking Poetry’ which looked at numerous aspects of programming and design through the use of poems and ‘Next-Gen Software Development: Unleashing Generative AI and Machine Learning’, which looked at how AI can assist software development.

Here to Help

This year we have recruited several volunteers and I would like to thank all those who got in touch with us. We now have a writing pool of authors as well as several who are interested in both presenting and hosting webinars. If you feel you have a suitable subject which you would like to present, please get in touch.

Over 27 years ago, I answered a call to join the IAP council and in June 1997 I attended my first meeting. During the years that followed, I had great satisfaction in helping govern the IAP and became Vice President and then President. During that time the IAP has developed drastically – we transmogrified into a digital organisation, giving up our physical offices, with our staff and volunteers working remotely. In 2018 we became a charity, with some hard work put in by our executive team including our Director General, Alastair Revell, together with our lawyers and was eventually seen over the line with the support of John Ellis. We are continuing to evolve and need to change the way we operate and finance ourselves.

Two years ago, I gave notice to my fellow trustees that I would be stepping down from the Trustee Board, so at the next AGM, I will not seek reappointment. It has been a great honour to be involved with the governance of our organisation, which has considerable influence, especially in the last few years of its 52-year history. I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has given support during my 27-year involvement, especially my fellow trustees and admin staff and I wish the IAP continued success in the future.

The IAP is a great organisation and it is here to help. However, its success is ultimately in your hands. You may be able to help the IAP – in a similar vein to what JFK said, don’t ask how the IAP can help you but how can you help the IAP. We feel our members are the cream of the industry, with much to proffer.

If you would like to assist in our quest to improve software for society, please let us know – you have the insight, experience and knowledge to help achieve our vision, but sometimes we feel you are reticent to bring forward your valuable skills. We will presently be seeking new trustees and for other volunteers and adverts will be placed on our website soon. We would also like to know your thoughts about the IAP, its charitable work and if there is anything you think we should get involved with. As always, we thank you for your continued support.

As your experience is deepened or widened, we would like to remind you to review your professional situation and get to the next level within the IAP and its goals. For example, some of you have been members for many years and may want to reflect if you can now apply for fellowship.

I look forward to still meeting some of you at a future DevCafé Rendezvous or webinar, but until then, on behalf of the IAP, I wish you a merry Christmas and a prosperous and happy new year in 2025.