The “i Competency Dictionary” Framework
for IT Engineering Education
Eiji Hayashiguchi

Osamu EndouJohn Impagliazzo

IT Human Resource Development
Information-technology Promotion
Agency, Japan (IPA)
Tokyo, Japanei-haya@ipa.go.jp

IT Human Resource Development
Information-technology Promotion
Agency, Japan (IPA)
Tokyo, Japan
os-endou@ipa.go.jp

School of Engineering andApplied Science
Hofstra University
Hempstead, New York USA
john.impagliazzo@hofstra.edu

Abstract—Information technology (IT) engineering educationin Japan has a major issue in linking IT education in universities
with IT industry requirements. The IT world is changing very
rapidly now and the academia-industry linkage is becoming
difficult and divergent. In this paper, the authors describe the “iCompetency Dictionary” (iCD) framework developed andannounced by Information-technology Promotion Agency (IPA),a Japanese government organization in 2015. IPA developed thisiCD framework for IT user organizations and IT vendor
companies for their human resource development. Since its
announcement, iCD has been expanding very rapidly within
Japanese IT industries and the framework is becoming a referencein many IT organizations outside Japan. In the meantime,
universities and educational organizations are starting to use iCD
to develop and evaluate their curricula since it contains richindustry requirements reflecting today’s rapid IT changes. The
authors believe that iCD can contribute much to educational areas
and they illustrate examples of the iCD successes in academic
circles.
Keywords—i Competency Dictionary, task dictionary, skill
dictionary, task×skill matrix, human resource development,competency, educational organizationsI.
INTRODUCTION
Information technology (IT) industries are changing very
rapidly due to the introduction of new technologies and services
such as the internet of things, cloud services, big data, andartificial intelligence. Under these environments, an IT company
or an IT department within a company must grow its humanresources (HR) rapidly and flexibly to respond to new changes.
In this paper, the authors focus on the “i Competency
Dictionary” (iCD) framework announced by the Informationtechnology Promotion Agency (IPA) in June of 2015 for IT
human resource development in IT organizations [1,5]. A‘human resource’ within an organization (sometimes called “anorganization member”) is the source of organization capability
since it provides a ‘competency’ for business execution. Other
major frameworks such as the Skills Framework for the
Information Age (SFIA) [2] or European e-Competence
Framework (e-CF) [3] are all skill-based frameworks that
require people to acquire necessary skills and to utilize them on
their jobs. However, from our experience with skill-based
frameworks such as the IT Skill Standards (ITSS) [4], we
believe these frameworks cannot catch up with the rapidlychanging IT environment since selected skills do not always
match to the needs for accomplishing a job. Furthermore, theskill selection requires trial and error modification. In contrast,
the iCD framework contains the task dictionary and the skill
dictionary that innovatively accomplish task allocations fororganization members to develop their competencies, thereby
enhancing an organization’s capability. Tasks of an organizationand its organization members directly indicate jobs they must do
now and in the future so they can easily understand what theymust do today. Skills associated with tasks are available, butthese are secondary in support of tasks.
On the academic side, educational organizations anduniversities usually avoid industry needs since they develop
their curricula very academically. Today, however, these
institutions must reconsider their IT curricula since industry
needs graduates that are “ready-to-go” in the workplace. Hence,
academic organizations are now interested in iCD to designmodern IT curricula to develop students with current industry
requirements since iCD reflects such needs. To address theseissues, the authors show how iCD can be useful to academicorganizations in developing their IT curricula.
II. THE ICD FRAMEWORKThe iCD framework consists of the task dictionary and theskill dictionary (Fig. 1). The task dictionary is the collection oftasks required for an IT business; the skill dictionary is thecollection of IT skills required to perform specific tasks. In theiCD framework, a task identifies a function of the IT
organization. In other words, a task is a specific job while a skillmeans the ability to handle knowledge. The iCD framework
contains many necessary elements from three previous skill
standards in Japan. These include the Information Technology
Skill Standards (ITSS), the Embedded Technology Skill
Standards (ETSS) [6], and the Users' Information Systems Skill
Standards (UISS) [7]. Moreover, the iCD framework refers toprocess standards such as the Software Life Cycle Processes(SLCP) – the Japan Common Frame 2013 – and bodies ofknowledge such as the Project Management Body of Knowledge(PMBOK), the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge(SWEBOK), and the Software Quality Body of Knowledge(SQuBOK).

978-1-5386-4889-6/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE

The most distinctive characteristics of the iCD framework
are to allocate tasks to organization members based on their roles
and to evaluate the task performances with scores from 0 to 4
leveling at regular intervals. Since allocated tasks are equal totheir daily jobs, organization members can accept allocated tasks
naturally. As mentioned previously, conventional methods of
HR development are to allocate skills to organization members
and to force them to “skill up” through studying, taking
certification examinations, or attending education classes.
However, problems exist with this method; having high-levelskills does not always guarantee having high-level task
execution or performance. Moreover, a person’s skill allocation
does not always match with a daily job. Hence, allocated skills
reduce to a meaningless management matter. In HR
development by the iCD framework, the first thing organizations
do is to allocate tasks, not skills to organization members. Since
these members understand the allocated tasks, real HR
development can begin based on tasks.

evaluate task performance in the second layer rather than in thethird to avoid much detail.

Figure 2: Task Dictionary Structure
Appendix A shows 43 tasks in the first layer. This diagram
indicates tasks located from the upper to the lower on the left;these are tasks in the system development process. Tasks on theright side are several supporting tasks.

Figure 1: iCD Structure
The iCD framework can visualize the task execution
capability by the member’s task performance evaluation resultsof assigned tasks. A statistical analysis by department or by rolehelps managements to understand the organization status of task
execution capability.

The skill dictionary is also a four-layer structure (Fig 3). The
construction of the skill dictionary started from the integrationof the fourth layer. The iCD framework calls the fourth layer the
body of knowledge (BOK) and the construction started thecollection of BOKs from various BOK sources. The BOK
sources are the old Skill Standards in Japan such as ITSS, UISS,ETSS, computing curriculum standards J07 [13], ITIL, thebusiness analysis body of knowledge (BABOK), SWEBOK,and the strategy and analysis body of knowledge (SABOK).
These BOKs integrate into the third level (skill item), thenintegrate into the larger second level (skill classification), andthen into the first level (skill category) in the same manner.

Each organization defines its own task requirement for its
business processes by extracting activities from a list of tasks
contained in the task dictionary. Therefore, its own task
definitions are different depending on an organization’s
characteristics. An organization can prepare its own tasks bysimply selecting tasks from the task dictionary. Small andmedium sized companies with insufficient human power can
implement the iCD framework through efficient and laborsaving selection operations. Large companies can also easily
implement the iCD framework not only for a whole company,
but also for a department or a project within the company.
III. TASK AND SKILLS DICTIONARIESThe task dictionary is a four-layer structure (Fig. 2). A task
breaks down in detail from the first layer to the second layer andto the third layer. Organization members evaluate the task
performance typically based on allocated third layer tasks. The
fourth layer (called “evaluation items”) helps to understand themeaning of the third layer task. Organization members may

Figure 3: Skill Dictionary Structure
Appendix B shows the first and second layers of the skill
dictionary. Five items in the first layer (skill category) are
technology, methodology, related knowledge, IT human skill,and specific skills (optional). The second layer (skill
classification) consists of 79 items.
IV. HR DEVELOPMENT PROCESSES BY TASK DICTIONARY
The process of HR development by the task dictionary
consists of following four steps.
Step1: Biz Strategy & Task Analysis
An organization analyzes its own task requirements
corresponding to its business strategy by referencing the task
dictionary.
Step2: Tasks & Roles Definition
An organization drafts its own tasks to meet its businessstrategy from the task dictionary. An organization includes not
only ‘as-is’ tasks but also ‘to-be’ tasks for its future business.
The consideration of ‘to-be’ tasks is quite important to realize
the business strategy for this process.
Step3: Tasks & Roles Determination
An organization refines its own draft tasks by taking task
feasibility into consideration. The organization confirms its
tasks and roles after several trials by setting the role for each task
and updating it. Moreover, this process assigns required roles
and responsible tasks for each organization member.
Step4: Evaluation
An organization starts this process based on its own definedtasks and its task assignment to each organization member.
Each organization member evaluates the assigned task
performance in five levels, from level 0 to level 4. Organization
members can evaluate task performance for the third layer orthe second layer depending on the requirements of theevaluation detail. Typically, this occurs at the end of a fiscal
year. Organization members discuss and adjust the task
evaluation result with their managers. Then, the manager
approves the final evaluation result, which departments analyze
by roles.
Even after the process begins, adjustment and improvement
is possible so organization members feel comfortable using theprocess by avoiding the separation from actual daily businessactivities. The process goes back to the plan-do-check-act(PDCA) continuous improvement cycle for the next fiscal year.
In this process, after reviewing a task performance levelevaluation of all organization members, the organizationassesses and fixes the task performance of each member.
Organization members discuss with their manager the statusof the task performance and the future direction to determine thefuture task performance objective. They also determine the task
they must enhance and its performance target of the next fiscal
year. To achieve higher target results in the next fiscal year, they
will try to accumulate the target task experience and enhance theskill for the task. At the end of the next fiscal year, they will
identify the improvement status of their target and demonstrate
the contribution to the organization if they made progress.
Since the summary of the evaluation by department shows
the reality of the business process competency of a department
or a member, executives and HR departments of an organization

can construct an efficient HR development strategy. The
evaluation result of each organization member and theaggregation by a department or a role makes the organization
status visible. This information is useful beyond the HR
development.
V.

CAPABILITY ENHANCEMENTS BY TASK×SKILL MATRIXAn organization can enhance its capability by augmenting
competitive advantage tasks against competitors in addition tothe organization’s member HR development. Organizations
should select competitive advantage tasks to meet their businessstrategy.
Once an organization determines its competitive advantage
tasks, it can identify the corresponding skills by the Task×Skill
Matrix. Fig. 4 shows a portion of a Task×Skill Matrix that cancontain up to 500 vertical third-level tasks from the task
dictionary and up to 400 horizontal third-level skills from skill
dictionary. The circles within the matrix indicate thecorresponding skill required for the task execution.
For example, in the Task 3 row, there are circles under Skill
1 and Skill 6. This means the organization should require theseskills to achieve Task 3. Based on these relations between tasks
and skills, an organization can identify skills needed forcompetitive task advantages of a specific task. Hence, acompany can enhance its organizational capability and thecompetitiveness as well by using the task dictionary, the skill
dictionary, and the Task×Skill Matrix.

Figure 4: Task x Skill Matrix ImageVI.

ICD IMPLEMENTATION IN INDUSTRY

The iCD framework has almost a thousand real
implementation cases in Japan. Focused workshops supported
by IPA have been very effective in Japan. These workshops
assemble several companies and guide them on ways toimplement iCD to each company over three months.
Approximately a hundred companies have joined theseworkshops and interest is growing steadily. Most participants
are small and medium-sized companies. This trend shows thatthe workshops have been effective in promoting iCD in thesecompanies.
Some testimonies from companies participating in theworkshops include the following.
▪ iCD increases the number of employees that fit into theirbusiness strategies.
▪ iCD motivates employees by making them understand what
to do for their companies.

▪ iCD identifies clearly the strengths and weaknesses of
employees.
▪ iCD is useful to construct an employee HR development
framework in a short period of time, which would otherwise
be impossible.
▪ iCD promotes mid-career employment effectively since it
can reflect candidate experiences through by iCD tasks.
The iCD industrial implementations have shown many effects.
The following are two examples of iCD quantified effects.
Company A: Sales volume increased
Company A is a software development company with 50
engineers. There are five teams in the company. The iCD
implementation started from joining iCD workshop by IPA in
2015. Teams 1 and 2 had 80% members joined the workshop,
teams 3 and 4 had 60% members joined, and team 5 did not join
the workshop. Company A implemented iCD and it has been
tracing the team performance by sales volume. Teams 1 and 2
have shown 50% and 225% sales volume increase, respectively,from 2015 to 2017. The reason for these sharp increases is
considered due to their team based iCD implementation effort.
Team 3 showed flat sales change and team 4 showed 50% sales
decrease from 2015 to 2017. The reason is likely their iCD
implementation effort was not team based but individual based.
Team 5 showed substantial sales decrease by ignoring iCD.
Company B: Engineer price up
Company B provides outsourcing services with about 500
engineers. They implemented iCD in 2015. Before that, they
did not have the price list of engineers; business negotiation
with engineer fees were based on individual personnel expenses.
After iCD implementation, they could define the price tablebased on roles and levels. From this table, they developed each
employee’s price list depending on role and level; businessnegotiations can now be based on the employee’s price list.
Among engineers who could improve their task level, 80% ofthem received higher engineer prices since 2016.
VII. ICD IMPLEMENTATION IN ACADEMIA
Although implementation of iCD in Japanese industries has
been progressing successfully and has expanded as intended,iCD implementation is also progressing at academicorganizations. IPA welcomes this trend since these phenomena
demonstrate iCD’s wider acceptance. Two examples of iCD
implementations at academic institutions provide a sense of use.
The first case is the Advanced Institute of Industrial Technology(AIIT), a graduate school for advanced professional education[9,10,11]; the second case is the Electronics Development
Computer College (EDC), a professional school locatedthroughout Japan.
A. The AIIT Case
1) Introduction
Founded in April of 2006, the Advanced Institute ofIndustrial Technology is a public graduate school in Tokyo. It
offers curricula to develop advanced specialists for working
professionals and graduate students. AIIT has an information
systems architecture program for information systems architectsthat enjoy success in the information systems development field.
It also has an innovation design and engineering program thatdevelops specialists capable of creating and reasonably
developing products and services that maximize consumer
benefits. IPA experiences with the information systems
architecture program are informative.
2) Issues
After years of providing IT curricula, adding new subjects,
replacing teachers, and changing topics through teacher’s reorientation, AIIT has found the following issues.
① Duplication of knowledge items cross multiple subjects;② Lack of knowledge that subjects should provide;③ Inability of students to identify precisely the knowledge
they acquired.
3) Solution
Prepare a curriculum based on CC2005 [12] or on J07 [13]by the Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ) as areference. However, since AIIT is a graduate school for IT
specialists, much of the knowledge selected from thesereferences may not provide necessary elements consistent withpractical use.
In this regard, AIIT used the iCD Skill Dictionary to show
relevant IT knowledge items and knowledge level (levels 2-4)
in the syllabus of a subject. Initially, AIIT tried to define newknowledge items by themselves if they believed there was aniCD knowledge mismatch. However, they quickly realized that
this change needed much additional effort to validate thetransition from their original knowledge item definitions. As aresult, AIIT now depends on iCD without any modification
since iCD enjoys strong public consensus as well as being a
product of the Japanese government for its people.
Because of its syllabus updates and additional syllabus
adjustments, AIIT has solved issues ① and ② whereby students
are now able to accomplish their course plan precisely while
understanding the course results objectively. Hence, AIIT also
resolved issue ③ . AIIT also implemented a new student
evaluation method that bestows a special title for excellent
students to honor them for having distinguished performance.
4) Future
In the future, AIIT plans to promote the iCD systemdeveloped and supported by IPA for students to use iCD directlyby themselves. AIIT also plans to join an iCD function open to
public that shows linkages between iCD tasks and iCD skills in
addition to educational courses provided by educationalorganization companies. Because of this function, AIIT can
improve public awareness of its curriculum and its school.
B. The EDC Case
1) Introduction
Founded in Hokkaido in 1968, the Electronics Development
Computer College now has ten schools in major cities
throughout Japan. Each year 1500 students graduate from EDC;
70,000 graduates are now successful in diverse IT industries.
The educational area of EDC includes systems, multimedia,
games, business, and medical information to meet current
requirements and needs in high evaluation industries.

2) Issues
EDC had been having the following two areas of issues
regarding their curriculum.
① How to meet industry needs?
② How to solve EDC curricular design problems?
EDC was in a serious situation because their curriculum was
unable to meet the requirements of industry. The EDC
curriculum only indicated skills acquired from subjects.
However, industry strongly wanted to know what EDC
graduates can do. That is, industries were not interested in whatkind of knowledge graduates had. They wanted to know what
EDC graduates “can do” exactly. Unfortunately, the EDC
curriculum did not meet these requirements.
EDC realized that it could not develop an ideal curriculum
only by listing skills to subjects in a curriculum. EDC wanted toconstruct its curriculum in a top down manner by defining what
type of person the subject could develop or what students could
do after finishing a subject. (EDC calls this “the education
attainment target” for its purposes.) However, EDC teachers
were not confident enough to define “the education attainment
target” for the curriculum.
3) iCD Solution
To solve issues ① and ② above, EDC understood that acommon theme could work. That is, EDC must design acurriculum based on a “can do” theme in a top down manner.
For this, EDC believed that the iCD Task Dictionary covered all“can do” industry listings; the EDC team developed each subject
and the flow of subjects by identifying which iCD tasks matcheda given subject. Then, EDC designed the curriculum by dividing
subjects into two categories (1) identifying the basic subjects
aimed to acquire skills, and (2) additional core subjects aimed atfulfilling the “can do” list.
4) Future
EDC does not use the iCD Skill Dictionary in a directmanner. However, it does plan to construct a mechanism toevaluate student performance using the Skill Dictionary. This isbecause evaluating people by a “can do” method is rather
difficult while they are still students. EDC believes skill-based
student evaluation is appropriate and it prefers to extend subjects
in curriculum reflecting future Task Dictionary expansion.
VIII. CONCLUSION
The maintenance of iCD content is extremely important tokeep iCD an up-to-date framework. Hence, iCD has made many
updates with a new version announced each year to keep up with
new IT technology and application areas. The iCD framework
already contains cloud services, big data, and security areas andit contains an internet-of-things area in 2017 version.
Implementation of the iCD framework is rapidly expandingin Japan. The task dictionary of iCD is contributing to theenhancement of organization capability. Organizations need not
be IT vendors; they could be any company that has an IT
department. Since most companies have an IT department, theextent of possible users includes all industries. Additionally,organization sizes range from small to large so an IT department
can assume the role of an organization. That is, the iCD

framework is applicable to any organization of any size, any
type, or any industry, including educational institutions.
Consequently, the number of target organizations is very large.
By using the task dictionary, organization members know
their responsible tasks. Since tasks from the task dictionary arecommon, organization members can explain their tasks acrossorganizations in a common language. The skill dictionary isuseful not only for an individual skill-up; it is also useful for auniversity or an educational institution in constructing theircurriculum course development. The skill expression becomes acommon language based on words from the skill dictionary ofiCD framework.
The iCD framework is useful not only for HR development,
but also for business reengineering processing and HR hiring. In
addition, since IPA developed the iCD framework as agovernment agency, public acceptance of iCD in Japan is large.
The global collaboration between the IPA iCD framework andoverseas organizations are also progressing. The iCD
framework expects to receive greater attention in global HR
development. Indeed, the iCD framework should become a vital
tool for organizations beyond Japan.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors thank the Information-technology Promotion
Agency (IPA) of Japan for its ongoing support of the iCD project
and to ACM and the CC2020 project for assisting with thispresentation. The authors are also grateful to Ms. Y. Tahara forher continuous excellent assistance.
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Appendix A: First Layer of Task Dictionary

Appendix B: First and Second Layer of Skill Dictionary