ePortfolios

To create a trustworthy Internet respectful of privacy, shouldn’t we simply make our personal data public?

In the developments relative to trust and privacy technologies, one of the goals was to provide people with the means to protect their personal data: personal data is mine! This has naturally led to the idea of personal lockers and personal data stores: if all of my data is in my personal locker, then I can decide who has access to it and under which conditions (for how long, to do what, etc.). Personal Data Stores rapidly became the Holy Grail for the most advanced actors in the field of personal data management, from ePortfolios to personal health records. Personal lockers and personal data stores helped us to understand that an Internet based on a clear separation between storage of personal data and services creating/exploiting them would revolutionise the Internet. Empowered users would be at the centre of an ecosystem they control. “The Semantic Web & THE POWER OF PULL”, by David Siegel admirably describes the transformations one should expect from the systematic use of personal lockers.
However radical and transformative, personal lockers and personal data stores have their limits. One is to be found in the initial statement: personal data is mine! Data, the product of social interaction and processes, is generally shared with other people and organisations: I share the name of my parents, the review of a paper submitted with reviewers and conference organisers, the diagnosis of my illness with a doctor, a laboratory and a drugstore. Even my intimate thoughts can be shared when I commit a freudian slip… If most data is shared with others then we might want to rewrite the initial statement with: personal data is ours! Translation into technology of this statement might lead to something radically different from personal data stores as personal information silos.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we were able to exploit the natural property of data as a connection to people (places, ideas etc.) while preserving the need for privacy, anonymity and enabling trust? Could Shared Data Stores or Shared Lockers be a solution?
Another problem with personal data lockers is in the name itself. If they are personal, that means that they contain information that renders their owners identifiable. If they are lockers it means that there will always be someone ready to break in to steal data —who would be stupid enough to break into a safe if money grew on trees in public parks? And is there not a contradiction between aiming at the creation of a trust environment while basing it on highly protected safes and lockers? In an environment I trust, I’m not afraid to leave my wallet on the table… So, if personal lockers are not that safe, does it mean that the alternative is between abandoning the idea of privacy altogether and developing technologies that would create higher and thicker walls around our personal lockers? Is there an escape from an alternative that can only lead to an escalation in the development of distrust technologies?
Starting from the premises above, can we design an architecture that is at the same time natively social (data is ours!) and natively anonymous (I share my data but you can’t connect this data with the real me)? Anonymity is extremely hard to implement, it is why it should be a native feature and not an add-on, like anonymisation or encryption are.
Imagine that, instead of storing our data in personal lockers, we store them in Public Anonymous Data Stores (PADS). When I store a piece of data in a PADS, anonymously, I receive in exchange a key that allows me to edit it. Associated to this data is a kind of mailbox, so if someone wants to contact me, it is possible to leave a message in the box. My data can be distributed over a number of PADS and I’m the only one to know that it is my data. For the rest of the world, my data is just a drop in an ocean of anonymous data.
Putting personal data in PADS allows fine search granularity while respecting anonymity. Let’s say that someone is looking for a professional in the region of Chablis (not far from where I live) who has some expertise in ePortfolios. The enquirer leaves a message in the PADS mailboxes of all the people who have declared living in Chablis and in all those who have declared an ePortfolio expertise. When people collect their mailboxes from their PADS, only those that match both criteria are notified*. The person who has made the query doesn’t know whether there is someone matching the query until the target(s) decides to notify him/her that there is a match; and even then the target(s) remains fully anonymous.
Of course, when we make a query we expect to have timely, if not instant, feedback. As it is very unlikely that people will collect their mail at the same time and even less likely that they will want to spend any time validating more of less relevant queries. We need something more, something able to take decisions on our behalf. A software agent or proxy could do the trick, so that when someone queries the Internet, it is the agents that act on our behalf that validate, or not, visibility of the match. PADS + agents/proxies give us the power to control our visibility on the Internet.
Going back a few years, we advocated that every citizen should have an ePortfolio, then that every citizen should have a personal data store, we now would like to explore how to provide every citizen with a personal agent or proxy operating, on our behalf, in a space where our personal data is stored in PADS to explore the question:
To create a trustworthy Internet respectful of privacy, shouldn’t we simply make our personal data public?
It is one of the discussions that will be in the background of the 9th international ePortfolio and Identity Conference. You are welcome to contribute to it.

10 ePortfolio challenges

For the 7th ePortfolio conference, and in order to give directions to our work towards our 2010 goal (ePortfolio for all), EIfEL decided to address a number of challenges to the ePortfolio community and beyond —many of the problems the ePortfolio community faces today will not be resolved if they are not addressed beyond the ePortfolio silo. The goal of these challenges is to move beyond the current state of ePortfolio development, in particular in the field of interoperability as interoperability is not just a technical issue, but a means to enable new practices and the emergence of truly lifelong and life wide ePortfolios.

The ten challenges are:
  1. Universal ePortfolio Repository —a unified view of all my assets
  2. Universal Competency Identifiers —share competency definitions across systems
  3. ePortfolio social —share assets, knowledge and processes across communities
  4. ePortfolio semantic editors —make sense of what I write, connect, etc.
  5. ePortfolio Readers —read any ePortfolio through consistent and multiple views
  6. Open & Trusted Service Architecture
  7. ePortfolio based performance support system —make the ePortfolio part of my work
  8. ePortfolio discovery mechanism —find people, competencies, resources
  9. URIs as tags —make tags meaningful
  10. Universal Metadata —create a world brain

Our main objective is to create the conditions for the emergence of MultiPortfolio organisations (one organisation can interact with many different ePortfolio platforms) and MultiOrganisation ePortfolios (have one ePortfolio to interact with many different institutions with their own platform).

Challenges’ link

Other documents related to the challenges are:

EIfEL becomes a MultiplePortfolio (MeP) organisation

Until now, the issue of ePortfolio interoperability was mainly considered within the framework of documents export/import, hence the focus on data structures and the lack of appetite, except for EIfEL and very few others, to fully embrace identity and access management (IAM) as the central locus for ePortfolio interoperability.

In order to contribute actively to the design of state of the art interoperability solutions, EIfEL has decided to become a MultiplePortfolio (MeP) organisation, i.e. an organisation where each of our member will be able to choose their own ePortfolio platform while still being able to fully interact with the organisation and their peers to support their continuing professional development and recognition as professional members of the learning community. In doing so, EIfEL aims at being a life testbed, a benchmark for interoperability.

As an organisation wishing to represent all the actors of the ePortfolio community, unlike other organisations, it was not possible for EIfEL, even if we have our personal likes and dislikes, to select a particular platform to support the continuing professional development of our members. Moreover, many of our members already have their own ePortfolio system that they use within their organisation or institution and several already have to deal with multiple ePortfolio systems — e.g. a member of the Institute for Learning (IfL) who uses REFLECT, based on PebblePad, for his/her CPD might work at a college using eXact Portfolio to support teaching and Multi-Port to support the delivery of NVQs (just to name the 3 Gold sponsors of the 2009 Learning Forum London conference!).

Committed to become a fully functional MultiplePortfolio organisation, EIfEL will work with all the ePortfolio and learning technology publishers and providers to demonstrate the feasibility and benefits of an interoperability framework where individuals are free to choose the components of their own ePortfolio system while being capable of interacting with a number of different institutions across time (diachronic interoperability) and space (synchronic interoperability). A MultiplePortfolio approach is a necessity to territorial approaches, i.e. to the implementation of systems working across multiple institutions within a city, a district, a region or a state.

EIfEL’s MultiplePortfolio environment will be dedicated to supporting the continuing professional development (CPD) of our members validated through peer review of their CPD ePortfolio. Reviewing other members CPD portfolio is part of members’ own professional development to demonstrate assessment skills and gain an opportunity to explore a range of different professional practices.

EIfEL will provide its members with an environment to publish their ePortfolio(s), select the reviewers for their CPD portfolio and publish the outcomes of the review process —a choice of ePortfolio platforms will be offered to those needing one. EIfEL staff will mainly support the quality improvement of the review process, and interoperability.

As MultiplePortfolio organisation EIfEL will go through the following stages:

  1. At the initial stage, each ePortfolio platform will be independent from each other, so the reviewers of peers’ ePortfolios will have to register on different systems. The focus on interoperability will be on the ability to publish ePortfolios using RSS/Atom/RDF feeds, based on multiple formats (LEAP2A, HR-XML, Europass, microformats, FOAF, etc.) and packaging ePortfolios (ZIP, IMeP, etc.) for archive and verification —quality assurance. We will also be working on the systematic exploitation of unique resource identifiers (URI) to competency definitions hosted in shared repositories of occupational standards, so definitions will be independent from ePortfolio platforms and could be used for many other purposes, e.g. to post a job, set a 360° assessment, etc.
  2. The second stage will be the implementation of single sign on mechanisms (SSO), so a member already identified by EIfEL platform will be able to use the same identifier to review a colleague’s CPD ePortfolio. This will require ePortfolio providers to support IAM standard frameworks.
  3. The third stage will be the implementation of circle of trusts and attribute sharing. At stage 2, the granularity of access is the whole ePortfolio, while at stage 3, elements of ePortfolios can be shared with other members of the EIfEL community —and others. This is very convenient when members work together on a project and want to share evidence from their respective ePortfolios. Sharing evidence is one of the means to increase the trustworthiness of individual ePortfolios.
  4. The fourth stage of interoperability will be the provision of ePortfolio readers independent from the idiosyncrasies of the different platforms, so a reviewer will be able to browse multiple ePortfolios created on multiple systems, while having the same navigational and informational interface. This will be particularly relevant in specific processes such as the accreditation of prior learning (APL) when an assessor needs to review evidence against a number of occupational standards of competence.
  5. The fifth stage of interoperability will be the ability to create a seamless space between the different components of one’s digital identity in an Internet where individuals exist as autonomous and empowered entities, lifelong and lifewide.

Of course, EIfEL will be working on these different stages in parallel, in cooperation with ePortfolio publishers, clients and users, exploiting the outcomes of existing and future projects (like TAS3). We will be looking at establishing a quality mark for the ePortfolio and ePortfolio-related solutions that have demonstrated their interoperability within EIfEL’s MultiplePortfolio environment.

The MultiplePortfolio initiative will be launched during Learning Forum London, the international ePortfolio conference, 22-24 June 2009. Demonstrations will be made during ePortfolio plugfest and participants will be invited to contribute their reflections to this ambitious and challenging project.

Tagging with URI

Cross-referencing is one of the key activities when building a portfolio used for accreditation of prior learning or to gain a competency-based qualification. How does it work:

  • On the one hand, candidates have a list of competencies and performance criteria
  • On the other hand, candidates collect a number of evidence demonstrating their competencies
Then
  •  for every piece of evidence the candidate indicates which competencies / units / elements / performance criteria it covers
  • for each unit / element / performance criteria the candidate indicates which pieces of evidence support the claim
With a computer, there is a very simple way of doing this: using competency definitions as tags. Once all the pieces of evidences are tagged with the various competency definitions it is easy to retrieve all those linked to a particular competency and the all the competencies linked to a single piece of evidence. The simple process of tagging creates all the cross references needed to have the portfolio reviewed by an assessor who can then (in)validate the links.
There are two ways of creating this kind of tag with existing systems:
  1. strings: the title of the competency/performance criteria —pros: relatively user friendly (probably not if the user has to key in long definitions); cons: ambiguity as the same string of characters can refer to different definitions; and risks of typos (that can be reduced by providing drop-down boxes)
  2. URL/URI: the address of the competency definition —pro: uniqueness; cons: not user friendly
There is a third way, that would require very little effort from ePortfolio publishers: using URL/URIs as tags while making it user-friendly: users would select a definition from a competency repository, drag it in the ‘tag’ section of the piece of evidence. The tag would appear as a string to the user, but the URI would point to the competency definition. The level of granularity of a URI could be down to a single performance criterion.
Ta make it backward compatible and allow users to create tags without URIs, the URI field could be set to null. This could also encourage groups of people and communities to create and share their own meaningful URIs/definitions.
Of course, this method of URI tagging is not restricted to ePortfolios and could be generalised to any kind of tagging, like linking a blog entry to Learning Forum London or ePortfolio 2009 could use the same URI http://www.epforum.eu —today it is ep2009, hoping that nobody else with use it or won’t use ePortfolio2009 or ePortfolio 09…
And of course, to make this work seamlessly, instead of having each ePortfolio system create its own internal representation of competency frameworks, these frameworks could be made public through a series of distributed repositories providing the desired URIs that could be shared within a community of professionals an organisation or a sector.
The solution to unique resource identifiers for competency definition has already been discussed by Simon Grant (Representing frameworks of skill and competence for interoperability and more recently in Representing defining and using ability competency and similar concepts). It is clear that we have all the technology required and the solutions are not exactly rocket science. What is missing is the political impetus and committment.
One could imagine that each URI is translated into a URL where the competency map could be represented by a hierarchy of directories:
  • language / sector / domain / area / unit / element / performance criteria
  • language / sector / domain / area / unit ? data = “knowledge”, “evidence examples”, etc.
This is one possible representation, and there are alternative equivalents.
One of the goals of EIfEL for the Learning Forum London conference is to create a consensus within the ePortfolio community, and possibly beyond, on:
  • “URI tagging” as a general mechanism for tagging
  • Establish a number of initial competency repositories providing URIs using existing occupational competency standards and a simple mechanism for growing internally and externally those repositories
  • Draw a roadmap for future developments

What have we learned from ePortfolio and Personal Health Records?

We have learned from ePortfolios and personal health records that:

  1. Being digital transforms the nature of documents and associated practices.
  2. By making people the managers of their personal data, the fragmentation of personal information is dramatically reduced, leading to an improved quality of communication across people, departments and institutions, as well as a better performance of the system as a whole.
  3. Giving people a sense of ownership of their personal data improves their understanding, self-esteem and ability to achieve their goals, as learner or patient.
  4. The separation of personal data records based on institutional boundaries (e.g. learning records and health records) are not relevant to the individual and is eventually counter-productive for the institutions.
  5. The nature of learners and patients is social, so is the contents of their personal records: patients records are evidence of performance of medical staff as individual ePortfolios evidence of performance of education staff, e.g. for quality assurance purpose. And profile data can be used to create communities of interests, lobbies and communities of practice.
  6. Experience shows that we cannot trust private or public organisations to host securely personal data. Despite all security measures, if one organisation is allowed to have massive amount of personal data, there always the risk that someone will loose a DVD in a train or sell the data on eBay.

The use digital technologies with portfolios or health records, has lead to a much greater transformation than the mere dematerialisation of documents. ePortfolios are not just paperless portfolios, nor are digital personal health records, paperless health records. Both are transforming the practice of their owners as well as that of the professionals working with them. When empowered with the management of their personal data, learners like patients tend to take more responsibility with their own learning or healing. Relationships with and among teachers / doctors are also transformed, as well as that with fellow learners / patients.

Moreover, personal health records can be viewed as some kind of learning records as patients need to learn new facts, procedures and reflect on their behaviour —and before being a patient, proactively maintain one’s own health and contribute to that of others. And for athletes, healthcare data are also evidence of their learning and material for reflecting.

From the point of view of the individual, there is no clear separation between a learning record and a healthcare record. They both are an aggregation of attributes, some of the attributes are common to both aggregations: for example, work patterns are of interest to doctors and dietary requirements useful to other than doctors —e.g. conference organisers…

In terms of privacy, publicity and security, both share the same constraints. There is a need to manage the level of privacy from totally private data, to data restricted to certain groups of people and professionals, up to publicly available records —e.g. qualifications / blood type. But we cannot allow that organisations, private or public, host massive amount of personal data on a server without being under a strict control of individuals and making the massive export of data impossible to achieve or exploit —e.g. by making each individual record jammed with individual real-time encryption keys provided with the informed consent of individuals (with a ‘break the glass’ policy, if the principal is unconscious, something addressed by TAS3).

Just like patients have to deal with different professionals at different points in time, learners and workers have to deal with a number of different institutions. One can be working as an IT professional in a company, be a member of an IT professional body like the British Computer Society, teach at a university and provide support to local businesses, all this contributing to his/her identity as ‘IT professional’. The way systems are set today, this IT professional will have a number of accounts, at best federated, dealing with the idiosyncrasies of various information systems to keep-up with his/her personal data. His/her identity will be fragmented.

While current implementations of federation of identities and services allow one person to unify a number of fragmented accounts, an Internet architecture “subject centred” should allow one person to have a unified account (a kind of ‘digital safe’) that would be used in a number of different transactions. For example, I would have one ePortfolio repository and each of the different institutions I am interacting with would pull/push data from/to this repository (probably distributed, for security reason) encrypted by one or more public key.

A subject centred Internet should allow us to regain control on how our personal data are being stored, accessed and managed.

About ePortfolio definitions

It is true that there are many different ePortfolio definitions and that their range can be disturbing, not only to the newcomer. It is also true that many ePortfolio practitioners feel the urge to create their own version, and I’m not an exception to that. In fact I like to use different definitions, depending on the context and my goal. For example, I like the definition of the ePortfolio as a personal and community knowledge management tool… as well as digital identity construction tool…

So, why so many definitions? What does this diversity say about the ePortfolio and the practitioners who are using/describing it? Is it a problem and should we all agree on one and only definition?

Why so many definitions?

While the ePortfolio is an emerging technology, many of the practices and concepts used to describe it were born in the era of the paper-based portfolio. It is natural that new practices and concepts emerge from a new technology, and that conversely technology is being transformed by emerging practices! One of the most radical changes is probably the use of social computing, making the ePortfolio, not only a ‘paperless portfolio’ but a social object. Another change is the emergence of user generated contents and contexts, the learner being the producer of learning resources and environment used by other learners. With such practices, the ePortfolio is not the mere repository of good students work and reflection, but the repository of knowledge used by others. The ePortfolio is not just a demonstration of one’s learning but the resource used by others to learn, the use by others being the evidence of learning. The ‘learning to learn’ mantra should probably be replaced by ‘learning to share’ or ‘learning to teach’.
What do a paperless portfolio and socially connected portfolio have in common, beyond being both digital and containing some reflections? Probably very little. So, why should definitions be identical?

Should we all agree on one and only definition?

Epistemology tells us that when concepts become fuzzy or contradictory, when the reality can’t be properly described by a concept anymore, then this concept should be abandoned and replaced by a better one. Trying to twist the definition of a portfolio to that of an ePortfolio has probably become counter-productive at this stage.
Using the same name to refer to many different realities is certainly not helpful, and it would be nice to agree on one definition. And this definition should be precise enough to avoid the kind of comments I’ve heard so many times: “so, everything is an ePortfolio.” And the solution might be to say that an ePortfolio is a “portfolio constructed with the help of digital technology”, keeping the current definition of a portfolio. This would suppress the contradictory definitions that were mentioned before. But then, to what concept should we attach those definitions?

I suggest that the range of contradictory/complementary definitions, from paperless portfolios to personal knowledge management tools, should be sublated into another concept. For the lack of better term, I suggest “digital identity” or “eSelf”, i.e. the use of technology as the support of one’s identity construction.

Learning is not about creating portfolios, it is about constructing one’s social identity. The ePortfolio should be a mean, not an end. And just like paper-based portfolios could be an obstacle to the recognition of learning (building a portfolio involve a set of skills that are different from those of “Speaking French”, so obliging a person to construct a portfolio to have their linguistic competencies recognised could be counter-productive), ePortfolios can become an obstacle to learning — ePortfolio of learning are still more common that portfolio for learning…

Why should the ePortfolio be subsumed by eSelf?

The ePortfolio has not escaped from a representation of reality where people are compartmentalised in silos. The fact that to properly describe an ePortfolio, you need to add a modifier such as ‘marketing’, ‘learning’, ‘assessment’ or ‘employment’ means that the concept of ePortfolio on its own is simply a compilation of files with a dash of reflection adapted to a number of pre-defined purposes.

If the objective of the ePortfolio is the demonstration of reflective learning and practice, then does one absolutely need an ePortfolio to perform or even demonstrate reflective learning and practice? Is our objective to perform or demonstrate? Do we need to demonstrate in order to perform effectively, and is the ePortfolio the best way to perform reflective learning and practice? Are their other ways? Shouldn’t we look at naturally occurring opportunities for demonstrating evidence of reflective learning and practice, without the need to spend time in the compilation of a document, that might be useful from the point of view of an institution that delivers a qualification or hire for a job, but not for everyday’s practice? Can discrete compilation of documents be sufficient, or do we need something continuous, more organically linked to our everyday’s life?

The eSelf is a means to break the barriers across silos and information systems, the compartments and roles in which institutions tend to lock us in. I want to exist on the web without the filter of some pre-defined template or procedure, where I communicate with others through my left and right brains — most of ePortfolio are left-brain based, even in the field of media studies…

Should we continue to use the concept of ePortfolio?

It is certain that if we tell those who are starting to support the idea that everyone should have an ePortfolio, that what they should really be supporting is that everyone should have a digital identity, then we might lose some of them. This is not to say that the ePortfolio is a necessary step towards the eSelf but that we need to be advanced, yet acceptable if we want to have our message being heard. This is why I don’t mind about the variety of ePortfolio definitions, so I can continue to use the word while meaning my “digital identity.”

PLE, PRM and ePortfolios

During the VRM (vendor relationship management) session at ePortfolio 2008 chaired by Graham Sadd (PAOGA) 2 presentations by Peter Murton (PAOGA) and Bart Stevens (iChoosr) reminded me the discussion relative to individual and organisational portfolio: is the organisational/community portfolio an aggregation of individual eportfolios or the individual ePortfolios a by-product of the construction of an organisational/community portfolio.

Peter Murton presented MySortingOffice, a VRM application with interesting features such as multiple persona, temporary email and telephone numbers, anonymisation, etc. so multiple identities can be used to manage relationships with vendors.
Bart Stevens presented the example of the use of RFP (request for proposals) by communities to order heating oil and get discounts over 20% in comparison of the prices individual buyers would get.
So, in one case we have a Personal Relationship Management System (PRM) and the other, a Community Relationship Management sytem. 

ePortfolio and Digital Identity….and Google birthday… still a long road for digital identity…

For its tenth birthday, Google has put in place a tool to do research with results such as how they look like in 2001.

Take a look at results of a search on ePortfolio and learning or ePortfolio and resume or how EIfEL looks like in 2001.

More seriously we are seeing here the risk for user personal identity if organisation such as Google is able to conserve/backup indexes for further use (this one as up to 1,326,920,000 web pages indexed) !!! How could I really manage my own digital identity ??

For example you could do backward research on other digital identity, look at Serge Ravet, CEO of EIfEL , fortunately for us the first result link Serge with… NVQ ! 😉
(I’ve tried with my name but I’ve seen that I was not born digitaly in 2001, even in French :))

But others could have less chance if a recruiter or his manager use this…

In our concept of user centric ePortfolio managed by the ePortfolio owner himself we are seeing here the need of concept such as IDentity Governance. Liberty Alliance is digging on this as well as european project such as TAS3 but even if technically we could imagine to put in place in a short future concept such as “Identity Watchdog” as we need also to be present on the web (so be part of Google) we clearly have to help students and future generations to better understand this issue and take care of their own digital identity…

New Liberty Alliance Group Focuses on Identity Management in the Education and Human Resources Sectors chaired by EIfEL

EIfEL is please to announce its participation in this new Liberty special interest group that will help to foster adoption of Europass initiative with support of privacy and digital identity !
The launch meeting will take place in Maastricht on 22nd October afternoon.

PARIS, October 15 /PRNewswire/ —
– Public Group Targeting Interoperability Across Education and HumanResources Applications and Services

Liberty Alliance, the global identity community working to build a more trustworthy Internet for businesses, governments and people worldwide, today announced the launch of the public Liberty Alliance Human Resources and Education Special Interest Group (SIG). The goal of the group is to foster interoperability, security and user privacy across online identity-enabled solutions in the global education and human resources sectors. The HumanResources and Education (HR-EDU) SIG will hold its first public face-to-face meeting on October 22 at the ePortfolio & Digital Identity 2008 conference in Maastricht, the Netherlands.
Members of the SIG include representatives from EIfEL, Entr’ouvert, EuroCV, IMS Global, iProfile.org, the French Ethics & Recruiting Association, the French Recruiting Syntec Syndicate, the OpenID European Foundation, Stepstone, Symlabs, Synergetics, 3s Unternehmens-beratung GmbH and the University of Kent. The group is working to advance the adoption of proven interoperable, secure and privacy-respecting Liberty Alliance specifications in education and human resources, and collaborating with other communities and specifications bodies to promote open standards and best practices fordigital identity management in the education and human resources sectors.
According to Marc Van Coillie, CTO with EIfEL and chair of the new Liberty Alliance HR-EDU SIG, “The formation of the new Liberty Alliance group marks an important milestone in bringing the education and human resources industries together to foster interoperability across online applications and services.”

About the Liberty Alliance HR-EDU SIG
Liberty Alliance members form special interest groups to solve regional, national, international and vertical-specific identity management challenges. The Human Resources and Education SIG is Liberty Alliance’s ninth open-to-the-public special interest group. During the October 22 face-to-face meeting members of the HR-EDU SIG will establish priorities for advancing interoperability and data portability among education and human resources applications. All individuals and organizations in the data portability, identity management, education and human resources sectors are encouraged to attend this public event.

More information about the HR-EDU SIG, including how to join the group’s mail list and how to register for the October 22 meeting, is available by visiting the group’s wiki at:
http://wiki.projectliberty.org/index.php/HR-EDU_SIG

CONTACT:
English: Russell DeVeau russd@projectliberty.org
French: secretariat-hr-edu-sig@projectliberty.org
Liberty Alliance

Towards a future that works – the Committee on Labour Market Participation recommends an ePortfolio for all workers

The Dutch Committee on Labour Market Participation has formulated a series of recommendations for getting more people into work in the Netherlands and improving the operation of the labour market. The Committee’s most significant conclusion is that the Dutch labour market is about to undergo drastic change:

  1. over the course of the coming decades, there will be more work to do but fewer people to do it;
  2. globalisation will increase the requirements regarding the level of knowledge and adaptability of the labour force. The Netherlands needs everybody – quickly! – and everybody must be constantly employable.

Among the recommandations, the fifth one is related to the ePortfolio as a mean to improve imployability:

5. Improve employability. In order to increase employability, we make a number of recommendations for employers/employees, the education sector, and the benefits agencies.

  • Digital e-portfolio. Every member of the labour force will be entitled to a digital e-portfolio, i.e. an electronic inventory of their competencies, diplomas, experience, and accreditation of prior learning (APL). This will give people a better understanding of their position on the labour market and their career prospects, and of any need they have for further training.
  • Periodical talent analysis. Talent analysis and APL procedures must be introduced on a large scale, with maximum use being made of the e-portfolio. The right to a periodical analysis of one’s competencies and the right to APL assessment must be included in collective labour agreements, with mandatory arrangements for a “best-effort” obligation on the part of employees to undertake training.

The full document is accessible here.