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This paper seeks to assess the level of impact of COVID-19 pandemic on professional practice for members of professional organisations and the general public in the conduct of business. Investigations into practice using events, attendance records and registered views are carried out. The aim is to identify the challenges and actions being taken to mitigate against them in moving from physical (face-to-face) to virtual (online) mode of operations.

The past two years have seen a complete change in the way we live from life at home, at work and in education. This has impacted the way professional organisations now conduct business including the need to revise ways of upskilling and sustaining practice. Core to all of this is the role of computing and communication for all persons in all works of life. The current study focusses on professional activities and support provided to members of British Computer Society (BCS), The Chartered Institute for IT. The authors examine the events provided, the conduct support provided to members and the general public. The method includes use of surveys of all stakeholders and analysis of data obtained.

The onset of COVID-19 pandemic was perceived as a real shock for everyone everywhere. Contrary to expectations, faced with the reality of having to do everyone online, the current study found that there were observed increased in the number of activities of professional organisations worldwide. Most interesting is that fact that the number of people participating in these events was found to be increasing using e-learning and other associated online tools and resources. Participants of these events were no longer restricted to local members but widespread globally. There was the appetite for more events to be put up and willingness for more individual and groups to volunteer and/or participate.

The limitations of current study are that only a few of the many activities have been investigated in this one professional body, BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT. The fact that more events are now being carried out for the many groups and branches implies a lot more digital data would be available for further study to inform developments of members and the general public.

The impact of COVID-19 pandemic is a huge and evolving. It remains and presents a complicated case for the world to deal with. Amongst the many realities is that living life online has become a new normal and one everybody must learn to adjust to. Professional organisations such as the BCS would need to think of not only their members but also the general public and how well society and business can be sustained going forward. This involves considering developments of educational resources and appropriate platforms to meet the needs of the public, private and the voluntary sectors in society.

Due to restricted physical (face-to-face) interactions, previously developed processes would require reviewing. New informed policies would need to be developed and implemented by professional organisations on revised practices resulting from impact of the pandemic. The emanating global participation from local activities presents challenges involving time, space (geographical location) and cultural differences. The digital divide that exists in society and access to the fast and reliable Internet services are also worth considering.

The impact of COVID-19 on professional practice applied to education and business is important in the face of the many and varied challenges everyone is facing everywhere in the world. This has been intense at home and at work globally. Although the true cause is yet to be established, it is important that ways to address challenges and continue with life are found and implemented. This paper establishes some of the impacts and present recommendations that are useful in forging ahead for people in the information technology profession.

Suggests that, in order to detect and correct software defects as early as possible, identifying and generating more defect‐sensitive test cases for software unit and subsystem testing is one solution. Proposes an orthogonal software testing approach based on the quality optimization techniques, Taguchi methods. This orthogonal approach treats the input parameters of a software unit or subsystem as design factors in an orthogonal arrays, and stratifies input parameter domains into equivalent classes to form levels of factors. Describes how test cases are generated statistically for each trial of factorial orthogonal experiments. The adequacy of the generated test cases can be validated by examining testing coverage metrics. The results of test case executions can be analysed in order to find the sensibility of test cases for detecting defects, to generate more effective test cases in further testing, and to help locate and correct defects in the early stage of testing.

The history of Catholic Teacher Education is linked to the growth and development of Catholic schools that began in the early nineteenth century. The Catholic Church struggled to recruit enough certificated teachers and relied heavily on pupil teachers. This began to be resolved with the opening of Notre Dame College, Glasgow, in 1895 and St Margaret's College, Craiglockhart, in 1920. The two Colleges would merge into the national St Andrew's College in 1981. This national college would undertake a further merger with the University of Glasgow in 1999 to become part of the newly formed Faculty of Education, later School of Education. The School of Education continues to discharge the mission to prepare teachers for Catholic schools.

In June 1996, Stafford Beer and Heinz von Foerster were invited to Colombia to contribute to a number of events, among others to a symposium about second‐order auditing organized by the National Controller's Office of Colombia in Cartagena de Indias. As part of the occasion, they visited Mompox, a colonial town in the delta of the Magdalena river. During that trip, the author met Stafford and from there on she developed a special relationship with him, similar to that she already had with Heinz. The sad death of both great men of cybernetics within a short period of time was the origin of this tribute.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the under‐representation of women in computing, information technology (IT) and information systems in most Western countries. This under‐representation can only be detrimental to society.

The authors discuss recently published studies on the under‐representation of women in this field, and the lack of career progression for women, particularly in positions of senior responsibility. The results of a survey conducted in the UK, Greece, Malaysia and China are presented, and similarities as well as differences are identified. Malaysia and China are included as the under‐representation is much less in the Asian countries.

The authors identify the main reasons for the under‐representation and lack of career progression, and study the effect of national culture on the formation of strategy and of practice in the four countries.

The survey respondents are mainly female students studying computing/IT at degree level. In the next phase of the research, the survey will include both male and female students, lecturers and employees within the IT sector. The research will be extended into a longitudinal study, in order to monitor trends.

The UK Government is currently undertaking a number of initiatives to improve the representation of women in information and communication technologies. For those initiatives to be successful, the cultural issues identified in the paper need to be considered.

As a follow up to the bespectacled and jolly photo of myself (NLW, June 86) along with accompanying cheery sentences about how easy it is to be a book reviewer. I thought I would pen a few timely phrases on how to go about reviewing for NLW.

TWO Government reports in one week—one at first unobtainable because of a union dispute, the other a vast opus of three volumes, with three separate volumes of maps—this was the fate of librarians in Britain during the second week of June 1969. So long to wait for these reports of Dainton and Maud, then so much to read.