The re-launch of Ontario’ s premiere municipal management and leadership designation
By Garth Johns
THE NEW CMO
AMCTO recently announced its plan to re-launch the Certified Municipal Officer( CMO) accreditation in June 2015 as a management-and-leadership-focused designation for municipal professionals. The new CMO will be Ontario’ s only municipal management designation that maps onto and accredits the specific professional skills and knowledge required to be a successful local government manager, regardless of operational area.
Why should we care about the new CMO? There has been a great deal of confusion over the past few years regarding the many municipal professional designations available in Ontario. What is the perceived value of each in the sector? Which one will best help to advance my career?
One of the professional designations in question is the CMO. AMCTO’ s current CMO program has been in place since 1998, and of AMCTO’ s roughly 2,200 members, 300 have attained the CMO. That’ s a reasonably healthy percentage for a designation that’ s not a mandatory requirement for membership. But you would expect more uptake for an accreditation that has been with us since 1998, especially one that is consistently recognized as the most highly regarded municipal professional designation in Ontario. In addition, consider that there are approximately 300,000 municipal professionals working in Ontario, and, using a factor of 10 per cent, approximately 30,000 are tasked with management responsibility. That is the total potential market for the CMO.
Why aren’ t more municipal managers clambering to become certified? At the 2014 AMCTO Conference, President Michelle Smibert, CMO,
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