Last March, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants' and the National Association of State Boards of Accounting's joint Computerization Implementation Committee (CIC) issued its paper on computerizing the national Unified CPA Examination. Comments were requested on the paper, and those comments have now been made public.

Comments were received from 227 interested parties; 56 of the 227 were from members and executive directors of state accountancy boards.

Key responses include:

• 88% of respondents support the value proposition for revising the CPA exam. However, several respondents questioned the possibility that a computerized exam could adequately measure judgment skills, and some suggested that testing such skills could add a substantial cost to the examination.
• 63% of all respondents agreed that all four sections of the exam should be taken within a 30-day time period.
• 69% feel a digital photo of the exam participant should be collected at the test site; 62% feel a thumbprint should be collected for identification purposes.

You can read the complete summary of responses on the AICPA Web site.