Towards Meaningful, Cross-domain Employability Data Exchange a Nextgen Standards perspective Synergetics Luk Vervenne OOA workshop – October

Denise Kingsmill, Chair Task Force HCM, LBS...This is the moment when HCM takes its place in the Boardroom. Directors need to transform the airy cliche about people being their greatest asset into a guiding principle of business strategy...

A small semantic sidekick Corporate < Employee : human capital processes Employee < Corporate : employed Corporate >< Employee : employability Competenc(e)(y): a measurable characteristic for employability and its underlying processes and artefacts: personal development, learning, performance management,...etc

Synergetics nv HC Innovation company (Antwerp, Belgium ) 50:50 research - commercial projects Building an SAAS platform around competence-centric employability processes Standards involvement: -HR-XML Europe Competency WG chair -IEEE LTSC Competency framework -ELIG core member (elig.org) -European ePortfolio Consortium board (eife-l.org) -EU projects: TenCompetence, Prolix, Codrive

Competenc(i)es are fast becoming the currency of the European Labor Market. We therefore need a Common Currency (Competency EURO) Education, industry and public & private employment services (P(R)ES) are joining the competency paradigm where vocations, functions, vacancies and personal & learning activities profiles are directly or indirectly granularised into competencies This finergrained constructivist approach improves the management of a variety of competency related or competency driven business processes such as...training, performance management, employability, etc... Meaningful exchange of competence related HC data

Wage admin Career Planning Job Recruitment & Selection Performance Management Training & Develop. Succession Planning Balanced Scorecard Personal Scorecard Competency Framework Third generation of ERP : Competence-based Employability Services?

Syntax & semantics However... Today Competencies are mainly used as part of an internal business process, which is exactly what happened with business systems in general: Conceived to solely run organisation-internal processes, interoperability was merely an afterthought! (see: EDI) We should NOT make the same mistake with competencies, especially if competencies are to play a role in the knowledge economy and/or drive the 3rd generation of ERP (Employability Resource Planning ) The current competency xml / syntax standards such as IMS RDCEO (soon an official IEEE/LTSC standard), the HR-XML Competency specification and several proprietary P(R)ES xml formats are limited to the syntactic and the domain level They lack: Cross-domain interoperability Meaningful (semantic) data exchange capability and therefore only solve half of the equation.

Next generation standards Particularly in Europe, a meaningful exchange of competency data is needed between the three main domains, also being the main social pilars of employability : Education (1) Industry (2) P(R)ES (3)

Multiple Perspectives on Competencies EDUCATION INDUSTRY PES/PRES EC-TEL / IEEE/ OOA/HR Towards a COMPETENCY REFERENCE Framework Cross-sectorial Competencies Cross-sectorial Competencies Towards a Common Competency Language Towards a Common Competency Language < Final terms < Learning activities / Tasks < Competenc(i)es < Final terms < Learning activities / Tasks < Competenc(i)es Performance Management Performance Management Matching on Competencies Matching on Competencies The Competence Observatory Employability

1.SYNTAX STANDARD : FORMAT & STRUCTURE (= XML specifications) ONE Competency-standard XML specification for working & learning ! ! = existing international COMPETENCY XML standards (IEEE, IMS, HR- XML) Challenge: cross-domain applicable standards From domain standard specificaitons to cross-domain speclets 2.SEMANTIC STANDARD : CONTENT & MEANING (= Ontology) With a common meaningful language, using ontology technology, content can be exchanged in an meaningful (= semantic) way. Meaningful Exchange requires a two level approach

Towards nextgen syntax standards SYNTAX Cross-domain needs (thus: beyond domain standards) October 25-26: global HR-XML summit Barcelona New IEEE WG towards a cross-domain competency framework –Process and domain independent –Focus on cross domain data models, NOT their XML binding –Reusable & Universal speclets instead of monolythic standard specifications

Towards nextgen syntax standards SEMANTICS Adding semantics in order to add meaning : FP6 projects (45 million research budget) Prolix Tencompetence AposDle KnowledgeWeb\OOA kick-off October 10, European EPortfolio Conference, Oxford ( support for industry from the worlds largest ontology Research Networkwww.eife-l.org FP7 projects : continuity! Market uptake : the Netherlands

EU Codrive project (codrive.org) Context ontology : separates context information from competency descriptions Competency ontology : storing relations, interpretations, constraints): RCD gets context RefID Collaborative methodology for ontology development (MESS system) Domain (context) model acts as main metadata generator for: –Indexing RLOs (field 9 LOM) –Positioning, assessments, test items –Contextualizing competencies : Competency + Context = Meaning!!

...Any nextgen standardisation effort around competences should be... Cross-Domain applicable (IEEE-HR-XML-IMS-P(R)ES) Meaningful (adding Semantics to syntax) Competency Process-Neutral using a universal framework consisting of Core Components Competency Process-Specific adding elements and/or metadata? What?

How? Competency Observatory : Cooperation EU competency-inclined projects: TenCompetence, AposDle, Prolix, Luisa, Codrive,... OOA/HR Chapter Ontology Outreach Authority : Oxford kick-off Oct. 10 (KnowledgeWeb) HR-XML Consortium : Gobal Summit Barcelona 3 New IEEE studygroups CEN/ISSS WS ?? FP7 project?? ??? Suggestions ???