Source document: https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/1697631258704.pdf (Australia)
Lee Arnould Submission to the Inquiry into transition from the Australian Defence Force (ADF) Executive Overview A Defence members are highly trained and have many employable skills.

Even straight out of Initial Employment Training the skills they have are in demand throughout the civilian world.. Their is a lack of understanding by both the service personnel and employers in what employable skills have been obtained and how they translate.
Skills are gained through training, education and working everyday by service personnel.

Defence needs a way to globally manage their peoples, courses and educational skills.

Through this defence can provide a better service to their personnel and manage their own skills and needs.

As well by giving access to the civilian world via an API tools.

This tool can be created to show many alternative options available for members leaving the services.
It is proposed a system be built to manage defences courses, training, education and earned skills that is available to the members of defence as well as restricted access to external private companies to help improve members future Careers or Education.

Overview How can defence help members transition to the civilian world or better still offer members considering the move a better option of remaining?

The answer lies in a positive use of a members skills.
By providing a service to members, Defence and civilian organisation to maintain their acquired skills.

A central location for all arms of defence to help their members while in Defence, and also during and after transition from Defence.

Skills Skills are the basic currency of the employment industry.

When searching for a potential employee a skill search is the main method.

All ADF personnel have many skills but there can be a tendency to under sell or not be fully aware of what they can do.
Military Skills Most members think of their skills from a military perspective.

They are a rifleman or submariner.

Defence trains members through specific training and exercise to practice the skills.

e.g.

Military Skill weapons handling F88 Austyer.

Safe handling, Care and Maintenance, Grouping fire and movement These skills do have civilian equivalences of Occupational Health and Safety, handling of dangerous goods, Safety just to mention a few.

Defence does not manage these skills well.


It would not be easy to produce a list of Skills for a member's entire career.

Even course management is haphazard between the different arms and mainly concentrate on the delivery of the course material.

A member should be able to see all the military skills they have accumulated over their career.

Defenc should be able to search for members with required skill sets for new and emerging roles.
e.g Inquiry into transition from the Australian Defence Force (ADF)Submission 4 The creation of a Cyber arm of defence could have been greatly helped if a search could be done on all members who have cyber skills both military and civilian.

Then members could be invited to apply.

This may find people who are about to leave defence and give them a new direction within defence.

Each course, educational result or day to day training can have skills associated to them at different levels of ability.
It should be almost automatic as part of the march-out process of a course a member is marked as achieving the course and hence the skills are transferred to their record of skills.

At any time a soldier can view their skills sets.

At any time defence can look for members who have skills.

An extension of this is to then allow civilian organisation to create links to a skill to a civilian skill, education recognised prior learning (RPL) and other data.
This would then allow a member to not only view their own Military Skills but the equivalent civilian list or RPL.

Civilian Skills Civilian skills will have a relationship to military skills.

This relationship should be maintained either by defence or through an external available mapping function open to subscribers to the Defence Skill API.

e.g.

A promotion course will meet certain military skills but also meet civilian skills like small team management, administrative techniques and so on.
When a request is made for who has a set of skills a list of military equivalent skills can be produced.

Or a member can capture all their civilian skills to help build their resume or search for positions.

If a skill mapping is found that previously didn’t match a submission can be made to link civilian skill to a military skills.

Some approval process can be created to set the link between two skills.

Recognition of Prior Learning.


A skill database can be utilised by an education organisation to offer prior learning.

Through a mapping of Degree, Diploma or Certificate to a set of skills at a set level.

This could be maintained by each educational organisation or a third party application used by education institutions.

A defence member can request their skill record online and also see the list of potential recognition of prior learning they may have.
They could choose to enrol for further education with a reduced requirement on time for achievement.

Proposed Defence Skill API It is proposed that defence maintain a database of member’s skills.

This database links members to their appropriate skills at completion of courses or training.

New skills and linkages can be maintained by defence or third parties.

Members A defence member or ex-member can retrieve their skill set at any time.
It will also show their civilian skills and recognition of prior learning.

A member can choose to release the information to third parties via private link.

The link not providing any other personal information other than their skills.

Inquiry into transition from the Australian Defence Force (ADF)Submission 4 Third Parties Third Party Application can access the Defence Skill API.

An organisation like SEEK could provide current position available to a member based on their current skills.
Ludus Codicis Pty Ltd is already building an app (Uniform Talent www.uniformtalent.com) to do much of this outside of defence but they and other companies would rather work from a truer source than one they have to create.

It doesn’t change the business model just unifies the source data.

Many can build similar apps based on data in the API.

Education organisation are always looking for ways to get enrolments in their courses.
The API will give them a new source of potential students and show defence members an option they may not have even had thought about.

Personal Experience My personal experience has lead me to want to help defence and defence personnel.

I was once a Tank Driver in Puckapunyal and a high school failure.

Making a decision to leave defence meant I believed I had limited options and was looking to just change uniforms, go into security or do some other menial role.
My eyes were opened by my younger brother who said why not go to university.

I thought I was too stupid but applied anyway.

I was accepted, went on to get First Class Honours in Computer Science and even started a PhD in artificial Intelligence.

I am now a successful contractor for various government agencies including Defence as well as running my own Business (www.luduscodicis.com).
It is our goal to train future IT professional regardless of back ground and to help the community hence why we are building Uniform Talent (www.uniformtalent.com) so they can have their eyes opened to the option they have and to assist Defence to find potential people to retain for new and changing roles.

Inquiry into transition from the Australian Defence Force (ADF)Submission 4