Towards Meaningful, Cross-domain

Employability Data Exchange

a Nextgen Standards perspective

Synergetics

Luk Vervenne

OOA workshop – October 11 2006

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 itsunderlying processes and artefacts: personal development,learning, performance management, ...etc

Synergetics nvSynergetics 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 dataMeaningful exchange of competence related HC data

Wage admin

CareerPlanning

JobRecruitment & Selection

PerformanceManagement

Training& Develop.

Succession Planning

BalancedScorecard

PersonalScorecard

CompetencyFramework

Third generation of ERP : Competence-based Employability Services?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/HRTowards a

COMPETENCYREFERENCE Framework

Cross-sectorial CompetenciesCross-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 ManagementPerformance Management

Matching onCompetencies

Matching onCompetencies

The CompetenceObservatory

‘Employability’

‘Employability’ ‘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“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 (www.eife-l.org): support for industry from the

worlds largest ontology Research Network

• 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 RLO’s (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 25-26 Barcelona

• 3 New IEEE studygroups

• CEN/ISSS WS ?? FP7 project??

• ??? Suggestions ???