CIPS (Canadian Information Processing Society) is a national federation of CIPS Provincial Societies who certify IT professionals in Canada and abroad. Since 1958 CIPS has helped advance Canada’s IT profession by fostering standards, best practices, and integrity for the benefit of IT professionals and the public interest. As “Canada’s Association of Information Technology Professionals” we represent thousands of members nationwide. In this article we will discuss the CIPS license for SINP application process in 2023. 

  For the following NOC codes license are required when you apply for SINP immigration.

• 21231 – Software designers*
• 21211 – Data scientists
• 21230 – Computer systems developers and programmers
• 21232 – software developers and programmers
• 21234 – Web developers and programmers
• 21233 – Web designers
• 21234 – Web developers and programmers

When one applies for SINP as a developer etc the confusion is too much as there is no detail of how to apply for this license and when to apply for it.  so I will detail the steps you will need to make this work for you.

 The Initial question is that do you need a license from CIPS or APEGS.  The major difference is that one organization is related to pure engineering license while the other is related to computer software or Information Technology.  If you are applying as a software engineer and the NOC code is software engineer 21231 then you will need to apply for APEGS license. That is an altogether another topic which will be covered later in this block post we will discuss the CIPS procedure.

CIPS :

First step is to go and visit the following website of CIPS

https://sk.cips.ca/

Click on join us and then become a member.

Multiple options will be provided and I will suggest To apply on the link saying that become a member. Gatherings are mostly related to Canadian students or Canadian professionals and since we are discussing immigration this article will focus on CIPS from out of Canada (outland application). 

CIPS will provide you the following email address to which you need to send an email mentioning that you want to become a new member 

membership@cips.ca

 

Payment Confirmation for CIPS membership : 

The first step is to do the payment fee for CIPS membership which in 2022 is $225 CAD.  Once done you will get a confirmation like this 

Dear XYZ,

 We have received your CIPS membership application for:

 CIPS Saskatchewan Member

 Sub Total: $225.00

Grand Total: $225.00

Does your intended occupation or job offer require Professional Certification or Licensure?

Once you receive the payment confirmation please take a PDF print of it and then upload it as shown in the picture as a license document. This will save you a couple of months so that by the time SINP evaluates your application you will be able to get the license from CIPS.

How long does the Certification take?

The certification takes a lot of time which is mostly around 3 to 5 months. My case took almost 5 months to become a certified ISP member. 

Steps for CIPS certificate 

Evaluation Update

The first step is reach out to your ECA body and request for course-by-course evaluation. In my case, it was WES so I logged into my existing WES account and requested a course-by-course upgrade. They send me this confirmation: 

Date

Received: Date Reference Number: XYZZ Dear XYZ, We are pleased to confirm that your evaluation report was completed on Date, 2020. Your report will be shipped* to the recipient(s) below: 1. CIPS – Canada’s Association of IT Professionals To order additional copies of your report, please go to My Account. If you have questions about your report, please visit our Help Center. If you selected a courier delivery option for your evaluation report (such as domestic overnight or international express), your tracking number will be updated and reflected in My Account as soon as we are able to prepare and print your report. *Due to the coronavirus pandemic, it is taking longer than usual to mail physical copies of credential evaluation reports. If your recipient currently accepts electronic documents from WES, then your report has already been sent. Thank you for choosing WES for your credential evaluation.

 

Which Certification to Choose from CIPS? ISP or ITCP?

I had the same question so I asked the CIPS body via email and this is the response I received. 

Our application process is such that you do not need to determine which designation you are applying for.

We will determine which designation you qualify for based on the detailed information you provide on your experience.

We do require 1000 hours of professional work experience in the 12 months preceding application to qualify for the I.S.P. and ITCP.  Presumably, as a freelancer you are still obtaining work experience and you can obtain reference letters from your clients.

 When applying please note that we require your course-by-course assessment to be provided to us by WES.

And please be sure to provide information on all your work experience throughout your IT career.

CIPS Certification Fee

This fee is separate from the CIPS membership fee and is required to be paid in case you want to apply for certification. For SINP it is required to get certification from CIPS and therefore you will be required to pay this fee.

Pay the fee after which the processing starts for your certification: Following is the detail for my payment 

 

Thank you for your CIPS Certification Review Payment.

I.S.P./ITCP Certification Application Review (CIPS Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, PEI, Newfoundland, or Québec)

Quantity: 1 

Total Items: 1 

Sub Total: $250.00 

 Grand Total: $250.00 

 

CIPS Ethics Exam : 

The first part of the certification is to complete the ethics exam. In this exam you will be provided an account where a PDF document will be provided to study and give exam. You will get following email for this purpose 

Hi XYZZ,

A new account has been requested at ‘CIPS (Canada’s Association of I.T. Professionals) Ethics Exam’
using your email address.

To confirm your new account, please go to this web address:

https://exam.cipsresources.ca/login/confirm.php?data=XYZZ

In most mail programs, this should appear as a blue link
which you can just click on. If that doesn’t work,
then cut and paste the address into the address
line at the top of your web browser window.

If you need help, please contact the site administrator,

Admin User

 

SFIA Skills assessment:

This step is performed to assess the skill level in very deep manner. It will take hours to complete this assessment and requires you to input your professional detail :

Dear XYZ

As part of the SFIA Skills assessment for CIPS, we need to capture some detailed information relating to your current experience and skills. With this in mind, you now have a number of surveys allocated to you.

Please note the following

1. 1. You will be presented with all 121 SFIA skills across the various surveys so you are able to select those that are most relevant to you.
   2. Whilst there is NO limit on the number of skills you choose, we recommend you consider carefully when choosing, to help ensure a practical and concise skills profile.
   3. You can complete the surveys in any order based on the time you have available. However, always take a look at the Are You Ready survey FIRST and you may find it useful to complete the two Personal Profile Surveys before the others.
   4. For convenience you can PAUSE and restart surveys at any time without the loss of recorded answers and even network failures will not cause a loss of data.
   5. You can re-answer questions by clicking the BACK button, but be advised you cannot see previous answers as we NEVER transmit recorded data back to the browser for security reasons.
   6. When you have completed ALL the surveys you should expect to receive your report within 10 minutes.

NOTE: We highly recommend watching this short self-assessment tutorial before commencing.

Additional information will be available when you access your surveys by clicking using the following links:

CIPS Members Access: https://my-cips.skillstx.com/sso

Guest Access: Survey Portal

On behalf of CIPS, I would like to thank you in advance for your time and consideration. If you are unable to complete these surveys for any reason or have any queries, please do not hesitate to contact me using the address below.

 

CIPS license for SINP Submit the Certification Application:

The final step is to complete all the application forms and email the CIPS team to evaluate your application. Below is the email that I sent them :

Please see my application for new CIPS certification attached to this email in the file named XYZ .zip, in which I have added all the required documents. The list of the required documents and corresponding file name is detailed below:

1 – CIPS MEMBERSHIP – XYZ CIPS memebership 2022.pdf

2 – CERTIFICATION APPLICATION REVIEW FEE PAYMENT – CIPS Certificati Review Payment -XYZ .pdf

3 – PASS THE CIPS ETHICS EXAM – CIPS Ethics Exam v.2019_CIPS XYZ.pdf

4 – REFERENCES FOR LAST 2 YEARS (I.S.P / ITCP) or 2 SPONSORS (AITP) –

• • XYZ first job Reference Letter.pdf
  • XYZ first job Reference Letter.pdf

5 – CERTIFICATION APPLICATION – CIPS-CERTIFICATION-APPLICATION-2022 – XYZ.docx

5.1  – IT EDUCATION – OFFICIAL TRANSCRIPTS / EDUCATION EQUIVALENCY ASSESSMENTS

• • WES course by course CIPS- XYZ .pdf
  • XYZ BS degree.pdf

5.2 – EXPERIENCE

• • XYZ  CIPS Resume .docx
  • XYZ_SkillsTx_Individual_Skills_Profile.docx

 

Please review my application for CIPS certification and let me know in case of any queries.

 

—————————————————————————

Once you send this email you will receive an acknowledgment email like below :

Hi:

 This to confirm receipt of your application for certified member status. 

 We will contact you directly if we require any additional information to process your application or to seek clarification on any of the information you have provided.

 

You can track where in the queue your application is from the following link : https://cips.ca/certificationstatus/

 Your tracking number is XXUYY.

 Note that you will not find your tracking number at the above link until after the list is updated next. 

 Our current processing time is approximately 3 – 4 months.

 All the best,

 

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CIPS license for SINP ICPS Certification Confirmation:

When the CIPS completes the certification process they will email you to confirm your certification. The email will look like this:

Congratulations! Here is your digital credential for I.S.P. (Information Systems Professional) Certification.

Congratulations on receiving your I.S.P. (Information Systems Professional) Certification credential from CIPS – Canada’s Association of I.T. Professionals! You can now share or download your credential.

To get the most out of your digital credential, take these next steps:

• View your credential
• Share it on your LinkedIn feed
• Update your LinkedIn profile

Your credential is available in an online format so that you can retrieve it anywhere at any time, and easily share the details of your achievement.

————————

Link to the find the official list of license requirements from SINP 

https://publications.saskatchewan.ca/#/products/119705

 

If you need any help please write down in the comment section and I will reply to your questions.