The Australian Government is scoping the potential to introduce a National Skills Passport, seeking to make it “easier for employees to demonstrate their skills, change jobs and upskill, while making it simpler for employers to hire new staff with the skills and qualifications they need”.
Announced in its “Working Future – White Paper on Jobs and Opportunities”, the proposed Passport is an acceleration of an initiative in the Australian Universities Accord Interim Report (pp.64).
Stakeholder support has been widespread and positive e.g.: “a game changer in improving our skills system” (Business Council); “welcome” (Universities Australia); and “TAFE key to the success of…” (reported as Union view).
What is the central thesis of a ‘skills passport’?
It boils down to purported benefits of a more dynamic labour market generally, and ‘easier and simpler’ processes for faster, more reliable and trustful information exchange between employers and employees/learners concerning hiring decisions – transactional ‘win-win’ benefits.
Such benefits are founded in creating a secure national digital platform holding/accessing a dynamic, authentic record of an individuals’ credentials, skills and capability. Governments might also have another way of tracking skills accumulation against publicly-funded skilling investment.
To justify the build and maintenance cost of any such national platform, it is rational that the benefits (quantitative and qualitative)should be measurably above and beyondlong-standing labour market systems and hiring practices. Put crudely – how broken or inefficient is the present system, what novel and valuable betterments are possible, and will the suggested solution work and be widely adopted?
These questions have no clear answers, and the Government is commended in seeking a detailed business case before committing to the Passport idea. The purpose here is to scratch deeper than national press, academic and VET industry commentary.
Hard evidence of need
The White paper is comprehensively referenced, but not on skills passports. It notes “Stakeholders have long called for the creation of a tool to help Australians demonstrate their qualifications to prospective employers” (pp.217), as an assertion citing no evidence. The rationale is stated as: “to help people more easily demonstrate their skills to employers….(pp.183).
The rationale in the Accord Interim Report is stated as: “for graduates/employees to impress their qualifications on employers, become more employable and achieve career progression” (pp.64) and “enabling Australians to have their full range of qualifications, microcredentials, prior learning, workplace experience and general capabilities recognised across the education and training system and in the employment market” (pp.15).
Such reasoning is logical, but there should be credible evidence of need, e.g. surveys, indicating whether or not, Australian job seekers as a whole are ineffectively compiling and not credibly presenting, by their own doing, a record of personal attainment (advice on CVs/resumes is an active industry). Also that a key challenge for employers is poorly presented, incoherent and un-trustable (or even potentially fraudulent) representations by candidates.
That said, allegations/examples of qualifications fraud, including by public officers, ex-politicians, and in overseas skills recognition services do surface from time to time. The tertiary system needs strong responses like the Government’s VET regulatory integrity unit to root out unscrupulous RTOs. But the evidence that a skills passport is needed, because it “may help overcome trust gaps between employers and employees…..and verify qualifications” might best be dealt with by employers knowing what to ask and where to currently go to faster verify what’s presented to them.
One advantage of the current system is that people get to customise their pitch and employers assess how credentials/portfolios are presented. What then is the uplift benefit of (huge) public funding of some extra e-template ‘skills passport’, compared with what mostly works well under private effort and expense.
One specific White paper argument is that it may also help “reduce barriers to lifelong learning” (pp. 183). This is an important line in Government thinking, if the proposal centres around ‘just-as-needed, just-in-time’ workplace micro skilling with workers getting a life-long training account, fully or part funded by government with training activity recorded in skills passports i.e. a funded skills-specific passport.
This takes the initiative to the potential of a cloud-based marketplace accessed by employers and workers providing skilling solutions and tools for credentialing, verification, and job-skills linkages at national levels. This is then way more than a ‘passport’ that is just a new platform for a CV-like dump of credentials.
So what’s already ‘out there’?
A skills passport is not a new idea, it was mooted 25 years back, and flirted with by the last Government. The following describes examples of like, or component like, initiatives.
International/Cloud examples
- MYPASS Global TM skills passport “addresses …. workforce skills & compliance tracking, by connecting workers, employers, and training providers in one central, web-based portal”…that gives “partners access to…match workers to available jobs, track ongoing skills development & collaborate…across the entire supply chain”. Its adoption is in the large resources and energy sector, undertaking mega projects.
- SkyHive Skills Passport EcosystemTM aims to “create a thriving marketplace for skill development and career success” and “help connect job-seekers to opportunities that align with their unique skills and talents” and “accelerate transition from jobs-based to skills-based” approaches.
- Skills Passport focusses on project-based workforces, tracking “transferable skills and portable credentials” and “enables employers to implement identity…control through verifiable occupation-relevant training records, qualifications” supporting “occupational safety and compliance requirements”.
- Europass is a free personal tool for learning and working in Europe, being a CV format “familiar to employers and education institutions” and displays “information on your education, training, work experience and skills”. This suits employers in the EU with a large, mobile multilingual labour market.
- MySKILLSfuture is the initiative of the Singapore Government that offers a discreet list of government approved short and longer courses in multiple well defined industry sectors. New job entrants and career transitioning/upskilling applicants access ongoing SkillsFuture credits/accounts to support training costs in deeper technical, ‘employability’ skills and career/training advice. They self-access completion certificates.
Domestic examples
- The NSW Government is supporting the Western Parkland City to develop a New Education and Training Model (NETM). It has a NETM Skills Passport being “an online platform that allows you to store and showcase your completed NETM micro-credentials”, where “on completion of a NETM micro-credential course learners will be issued a digital credential via the Skills Passport website”.
- The Disability Skills Passport is reported as led by National Disability Services (NDS) as a “simple way for Support Workers to show proof of their training and qualifications” and “means Service Providers and Participants know they are hiring and being supported by qualified (disability) workers”.
- EY Ripples is a Green Skills Passport that “supports the next-gen workforce in gaining sustainability skills….in the green economy through free, self-paced online learning”.
Scope of content and breadth of coverage in any skills passport
It gets more complex with ambition. This might be all of AQF HE and VET accredited qualifications/courses and subjects, plus any proprietary e.g. IT industry specific certificates, plus any non-accredited on and off job skilling/courses etc. An individual’s passport may then incorporate “not only qualifications held, but also evidence of individual’s skills…including microcredentials, digital badges, portfolios, resumes and references” (if all can be clearly defined).
This slides content towards LinkedIn-like skill endorsements.
Given Australia has the great benefit of skilled migrants, at what point (in their visa/residency) are their skills to be included in any passport? Australia has complex processes for scrutiny in recognition of overseas qualifications, both in general and vocational/trades. Integrity rules covering this will be needed.
Domestically, Australia also has strict safety standards for licensed occupations and has progressed slowly towards mutual recognition processes of inter-state licence recognition. Is this also part of skills passports?
And what about an Australian resident who gains overseas online qualifications. Presumably a Harvard or Oxford short course gets a nod for passport entry, but many thousands of other courses might/should not.
Authentication practices and verifying credentials.
With regards to nationally-accredited qualifications/courses and subjects, there are existing means to check an individual’s attainments. This may be valued by employers or used for course credit recognition.
MyeQuals is stated as the official tertiary credentials platform (single source of truth) for ANZ with 76 providers cooperating, 2.4 million learner accounts with 135 countries accepting verified records. Subject to access permissions, it is widely available.
The UK has a like set up, called Hedd whose purpose is verifying academic degrees and authenticating universities to rid its system of fake institutions, bogus degrees and correct inflation of outcomes e.g. excess claims of 1st class degrees.
The so-called National Credentials Platform was proposed as a “tertiary learning repository; a digital platform for students and graduates to access, compile, display and share their HE qualifications, transcripts and learning credentials through a secure online system”. CredNet (limited to HE-level credentials) is now promoted as a “platform (that) delivers an industry-leading credentialing experience that supports lifelong learners and provides assurance…with the challenge of credential verification”. It offers self-service access via Credlink plus CredFolio as a digital wallet for learners. Uptake is uncertain.
In the VET sector, given its reliable AVETMISS data standard and adoption of the USI in 2015, it is possible for students to download VET activity transcripts covering both full qualifications and single subjects from whatever RTO they attended. There were reported ~13 million USIs existing (up to end of 2022) and for 2021/22, about 1.1 million transcript views/downloads. Content is updated each quarter and is the largest authenticated ‘VET-skills-passport-useful’ data source, with ownership and access vested in the USI holder.
Voluntary/mandatory, control of content, currency, access and liability
It is assumed that any skills passport would be voluntary, not mandatory. The expectation is that individuals will have a role in control and maintenance of its content, currency, correctness, and liability for false entries that others may rely on. If all the above content is in scope, it strains any claims that it will be a ‘single source of truth’ given (part) self-management by individuals and as costs of verification escalate.
This might drive a two-part skills passport; one part externally populated/system-verified (by 3rd parties and so held liable) and a second part being self-proclaimed. Lastly, passport-owners would authorise any access. And like any other passport, cyber security of personal information would be paramount.
Utility and operational value – an unrelated example
National My Health records are a non-equivalent but useful case study. On an ‘opt-in’ basis, it is reported some 90% of Australians’ have a My Health record. The critique is that it has huge data sets from specific parts of the health-care vast terrain, e.g. Medicare and Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) but little in other areas e.g. diagnostic imaging reports.
User experience shows that available information is not useful, with only one in four people accessing their record in 2022. Critique headlines read: “My Health Record: after 12 years and more than $2bn, hardly anyone is using digital service”. The agency responsible reports improving uptake and use, best by pharmacists and GPs, but far limited use by specialists, in aged care and allied health. With vast data storage, it’s not a case of build it and everyone enthusiastically comes.
Whilst this may be an unfair comparison, the message is that a skills passport is a more complex issue beyond effusive positive sentiment. Big ambitions to create national (linked) digital repositories of individuals’ attainments/attributes for claimed purposes and benefits versus the eventual real-world value and utility of building such platforms and their ever-ongoing costs need to be carefully assessed. People will have to actively maintain at least part of any content in a skills passport. Will people use it, or bother if say stacked on to the present eclectic list of 75 government-services accessed via myGovID?
What must it do, who is it for, and who most needs help?
Any business case on a skills passport will have to be absolutely clear on its purpose and limits. Is it to be designed and built for students, for employers, for both, for verification of credentials/licences, or as a ‘market’ for linking job seekers and employers? Perhaps the BCA only sees it as a ‘game changer’ if its structure is like the Singapore model, giving extra government-funding for ‘life-long’ skilling and learning.
The thrust of “Working Future” is towards a “dynamic and inclusive labour market”. The ABS Education and Work data (May 2023 incl. Table 22) states that 8% of all people aged 15-24 years were not engaged in any work or study. Some 232,000 people aged 15-74 years were unemployed and have no ‘non-school’ qualification. About 2.77 million 15–74-year-olds are not participating in the labour force. The Government does support employability skills training including programs like Skills for Education and Employment.
But given these numbers, is there a better case for any extra public outlays being targeted at foundational levels; a ‘Readiness for Work or Further Training’ skills passport? Boost and elevate digital literacy/fluency to a national strategic imperative and give such passport holders direct access to Fee-Free TAFE training.
This is a targeted alternate to some generalised ‘skills passport’ – where you may be left to wonder why educated/trained people don’t have smarts enough to track, compile and present their own credentials.
