Webinar Series

Advancing Skills-Based Education and Hiring Through the Open Skills Network

March 17, 2021
NICE Framework News!

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Visit the web page to 

view the draft documents 

and instructions on how 

to submit comments.

https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2021/03/nice-framework-competencies-assessing-learnerscybersecurity-work
OPEN SKILLS NETWORK

NICE Webinar: Advancing Skills-Based Education and Hiring 

Through the Open Skills Network
OPEN SKILLS NETWORK

Topic Presenter

• Introductions Rodney Petersen, Director of the National Initiative for 

Cybersecurity Education (NICE), NIST

• About the Open Skills Network Deborah Everhart, Chief Strategy Officer, Credential Engine

• Business perspective Phil Komarny, Vice President of Innovation, Salesforce

• Credential and skills transparency 

perspective Deborah Everhart, Chief Strategy Officer, Credential Engine

• Education perspective Gwendolyn Britton, Academic Associate Vice President, 

Southern New Hampshire University

• Questions and Answers All

Agenda

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OPEN SKILLS NETWORK

Questions and Answers

If you have questions about today’s presentation or the future of skills-based learning and hiring, please add 

it to the Q&A box.

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OPEN SKILLS NETWORK

The Open Skills Network (OSN)

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OPEN SKILLS NETWORK

• Skills describe work in granular, modular, and flexible ways

• Education and career pathways can be modularly defined and adapted using skills

• Skills give us more transparency for connecting job descriptions, resumes, and educational 

credentials

Why Do Skills Matter?
OPEN SKILLS NETWORK

• As people move between learning and jobs, they need to be able to communicate their skills in 

different contexts

• Employers and educators need to be able to understand skills that people bring from somewhere 

else

• Proprietary and siloed skills definitions don’t allow learning and hiring processes to flow through 

thriving ecosystems 

What are “Open Skills”?
OPEN SKILLS NETWORK

Our Vision

• The Open Skills Network (OSN) is a coalition of employers, education providers, military, and other 

stakeholders dedicated to advancing skills-based education and hiring. The OSN envisions a world 

where individuals are trained for in-demand skills and hired for what they can do.

Our Goals

● Create the foundation to advance a more equitable labor market.

● Empower learner-workers to understand and communicate the value of their skills, talent, and 

experiences.

● Eliminate barriers to implementing skill-based education and hiring practices across industry 

sectors at scale.

What is the Open Skills Network?
OPEN SKILLS NETWORK

Building the Skills Ecosystem

• Implementing Rich Skills Descriptors (RSDs)

• Developing open toolsets (including the Open Skills Management Tool)

• Creating a national network of skills libraries 

• Developing a skills community of practice

What is the Open Skills Network Doing? 
OPEN SKILLS NETWORK

• RSDs enable us to explore the details of a skill and quickly get the contextual information needed to 

understand a particular skill, ensuring all users of skills are working from the same definitions

• Each RSD has a unique web address - anyone can create links between skills and other data -

enabling the combination of data from multiple diverse sources 

• RSDs are both humanly readable (like exploring information related to my own skills) and machineactionable (like apps that recommend learning opportunities based on my skills)

What are “Rich Skill Descriptors” (RSDs)?
OPEN SKILLS NETWORK

• To help organizations develop and collaborate around skills libraries, the OSN is developing a free, 

open source tool to facilitate the production of RSD-based open skills libraries, called the Open 

Skills Management Tool (OSMT)

• Existing programs, curricula, and job descriptions can all use these open libraries as “Rosetta 

stones” for understanding skills in a portable, machine-actionable way

What is the Open Skills Management Tool (OSMT)?
OPEN SKILLS NETWORK

White labeled header

Act on one or more 

RSDs Library organized by 

skill categories with 

truncated metadata for 

quick visibility

Simple and advanced 

search options

Create RSDs and 

collections
OPEN SKILLS NETWORK

Required fields

Supporting metadata
OPEN SKILLS NETWORK

• Officially launched September 2020

• 800+ network members, 350+ partnered organizations

• 4 Work Groups: Governance,Technical, Market Leadership, and Policy

• Skills sector pilots March-June 2021

OSN Progress to-date
OPEN SKILLS NETWORK

Goal: Develop RSD collections with collaborative partners through pilots that result in RSDs that can be 

published within OSMT and released in June 2021. The published RSD collections will empower 

organizations to access and use open skills data for their own use cases.

Pilot Objectives:

• Validate RSD data schema across multiple industries

• Develop Open Skills Libraries

• Create recommendations and practices for use of OSMT 

• Allow early users to test OSMT functionality for their institutions and needs

• Identify opportunities for continuous improvement in process and tools

Skills Sector Pilots
OPEN SKILLS NETWORK

Why this work is important

Equitable pathways in the global shift to skills-based learning and hiring: a business perspective

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Canada

Jobs: 33K 

Revenue: $20B

United States

Jobs: 869K Revenue: 

$514B

Americas

Jobs: 1.6M 

Revenue: $634B

New Salesforce economy 

jobs 

by 2025

Global Jobs

New business revenue 

by 2025

Global 

Economic Impact

4.2M

$1.2T Mexico

Jobs: 223K 

Revenue: $38B

Brazil

Jobs: 491K 

Revenue: $62B

Spain

Jobs: 49K 

Revenue: $17B

United Kingdom

Jobs: 144K 

Revenue: $71B

Netherlands

Jobs: 35K 

Revenue: $23B

Germany

Jobs: 62K

Revenue: $30B

France

Jobs: 154K 

Revenue: $79B

Australia

Jobs: 42K Revenue: 

$26B

Japan

Jobs: 200K 

Revenue: $110B

India

Jobs: 548K 

Revenue: $67B

Singapore

Jobs: 9K 

Revenue: $6B

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7

8

9

3 10

4

12

11 13

1

2

3

2

1

4

5

6

7

8

9

Western Europe

Jobs: 492K

Revenue: $242B

Asia Pacific

Jobs: 799K 

Revenue: $208B

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Source: IDC white paper sponsored by Salesforce, 

The Salesforce Economic Impact: 4.2 Million New Jobs, 

$1.2 Trillion of New Business Revenues from 2019 to 2024, October 2019. 

The statements are based on the data from 2019 through 2024.

Rest of World Jobs: 1.3M Revenue: $98B

The 

Salesforce 

Economy
The Accelerated Digital Skills Gap

Companies Job Seekers

Bot Building

Machine Learning

Low Code

Remote Collaboration

Digital Processes

Online Engagement

Process Automation
OPEN SKILLS NETWORK

C VID Catalyst Of Verifiable I ndividual Data
OPEN SKILLS NETWORK
Growth of Digital 

Communities

Support for

Digital Employees

Importance 

of Digital Apps

Skills are Powering the Digital Imperative

Shift to

Digital Channels

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Trailhead Platform

Free, gamified learning platform that empowers 

anyone to skill up for the future

Trailhead GO

Learn marketable skills from anywhere on the 

Trailhead GO mobile app

Trailhead LIVE

Reinvented classroom experience with livestreamed expert-led classes on today’s most indemand skills

Learn on-demand at your own pace for free

Trailhead 
Trailblazers are Growing their Careers with Trailhead

1/3

found a new job or 

made a career change

More productive 

because of Trailhead

Got a promotion or 

raise

50%

2/3

Source: Valoir, June 2020 
Earn Resume-Worthy Credentials

Skill-based Badges

800+ badges that showcase your knowledge in a 

specific topic area

Role-based Credentials 

Salesforce Certifications - globally recognized 

credentials that give you a competitive edge

Superbadges - capstone projects that put your skills 

to the test in real-world business scenarios
Trailblazers are Reaching New Milestones 

33M

Badges 

Earned

2.8M

Learners
Trailhead Skills Span the Salesforce Ecosystem

People Salesforce Technologies

Learn 

your way to your next opportunity

Virtual Collaboration

Public Speaking Skills

Fearless Teaming

Equality Ally Strategies

Storytelling & Communication

Salesforce Platform

Salesforce Customer 360

CRM

Sales Cloud

Service Cloud

Flow Builder

Einstein Pots

Process Automation

Digital Transformation

Artificial Intelligence 
Unified Profile

Single view of your expertise and experience across 

Trailhead, Trailblazer Community, AppExchange and 

more

Skills Graph

Personalized graph that showcases all of a 

Trailblazer’s abilities that badges represent

Vanity URL

Custom short URL that links back to your 

Trailblazer.me profile and can be shared with future 

employers

Trailblazer.me Profile 

Showcase your experience on your reinvented resume
Capture

Open Badges

Evaluate

Open Skills

Verify

Verified Credentials

Capture, Evaluate and Validate

A Personal and Trusted Skills Profile

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Trailhead provides learning for every stage of your career

Chart Your Own Learning Journey

Free OnDemand

Learning

Expert-Led 

Training 

Get 

Salesforce 

Certified

Skill up for the future

Higher 

Education
OPEN SKILLS NETWORK

Credential Engine and the Credential 

Transparency Description Language (CTDL)

Linked Open Data infrastructure for credential and skills transparency

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Credential Engine: 

Our Mission and Vision

Credential Engine is a non-profit whose mission is to map the 

credential and skills landscape with clear and consistent 

information, fueling the creation of resources that empower people 

to find the pathways that are best for them.

We envision a future where millions of people worldwide have 

access to information about credentials and skills that opens their 

eyes to the full range of opportunities for learning, advancement, 

and meaningful careers.

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● Who We Are

○ Non-profit

○ Community built

○ Vendor agnostic

○ Data Driven

○ Mission oriented around credential, skills, and 

pathways transparency

● What We Do

○ Advocate for credential and skills transparency

○ Develop and support linked open data schemas

○ Provide open, interoperable infrastructure

○ Build and mobilize partnerships

○ Provide expertise and services

● What We Do NOT Do

○ Collect or verify personally identifiable 

information

○ Issue credentials

○ Verify issued credentials

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Credential Engine’s Open Technologies

Publishing Tools

After creating a user 

account, organizations 

use the API or any of the 

Publishing System tools 

to convert information to 

CTDL and publish to the 

Registry.

Credential Registry

More than a database, 

the Registry collects 

and connects 

credential and skills 

data described with 

CTDL and supports an 

open applications 

marketplace.

Credential Finder

A tool to view and 

explore the information 

stored in the Registry. 

Community – A wide range of stakeholders provide and receive technical assistance and other 

services to both publish to the Registry and consume the data it houses. Credentialing bodies, 

developers, and other users have access to resources such as do-it-yourself guides, best practices, and 

technical support. 

Credential 

Transparency 

Description 

Language

Common language that 

describes key features of 

credentials and skills.

https://credreg.net

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Credentialing 

Organizations

Quality 

Assurance 

Entities

Employers

Credential 

Registry (CTDL)

Issue 

credentials to 

learners

Publish credentials 

and skills in CTDL

Credential 

Earners Use CTDL data to hire, upskill, and re-skill 

Issued 

credentials 

contain CTDL 

and URIs

Accredit, approve, endorse, 

recognize credentials and/or 

credentialing organizations

Publish 

credentials, skills, 

and jobs in CTDL

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Tags

Alignments, 

including 

URIs to the 

Registry

Earning

Criteria

Digital Badges: Baked-in Linked Open Data

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Supporting Rich Descriptions of Credentials and Skills

● Credential issuer information

● Learning opportunities and assessments

● Skills and competencies earned

● Alignments to quality assurance frameworks

● Connections, such as stacking of credentials and 

combining of skills 

● Accreditation and other third-party quality recognitions

● Occupational alignment 

● Prerequisites, requirements, cost, and time to earn

● Jurisdiction and revocation where applicable

● Transfer value to other institutions

● Components of education and career pathways 

● Bridges to jobs, work roles, and tasks

● Aggregate outcome and labor market information

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Credential 

Transparency 

Description Language 

(CTDL)

A linked open data schema 

modeled on the semantic web 

for transparency and 

comparability of credential and 

skill information.

https://credreg.net

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Linked Open Data Connections in CTDL

View JSON-LD and CTID

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Education and career pathways with 

CTDL and RSDs

● Education and career pathways identify one 

or more starting points and various 

components along routes with options for 

arriving at a destination goal. 

● Any pathway can have multiple options to 

help a person achieve their education and 

career goals. 

● CTDL supports designing and publishing 

education and career pathways and related 

RSDs as linked open data. 

Education and Career Pathway 

CTDL Components

Assessment

Basic

Co-curricular

Competency/Skill/RSD

Course 

Credential

Extracurricular

Job 

Work Experience

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OPEN SKILLS NETWORK

RSDs and CTDL Pathways in Cybersecurity

Work in progress examples that will be widely available and shareable soon

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OPEN SKILLS NETWORK

What kind of cyber jobs are there?

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OPEN SKILLS NETWORK

What does that mean?

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OPEN SKILLS NETWORK

On-ramp to explore and discover

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OPEN SKILLS NETWORK

On-ramp to explore and discover

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OPEN SKILLS NETWORK

Foundational pathways (on-ramps)

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OPEN SKILLS NETWORK

Alternative pathways

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OPEN SKILLS NETWORK

Stackable Pathways

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OPEN SKILLS NETWORK

Behind the scenes - alignment magic

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OPEN SKILLS NETWORK

Open shared libraries

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OPEN SKILLS NETWORK

An open skills infrastructure is critical to support the future of work and the development of agile and 

robust talent pathways where all individuals have equitable opportunities to achieve their career goals.

Join the Open Skills Network

OSN membership starts with like-minded organizations and individuals like yourself who are 

working to build the skills ecosystem. As an open network, membership has no associated cost or 

fee.

Contribute your expertise and resources

The OSN is committed to the democratization of skills as a sharable, interoperable currency through 

the practical application of open, accessible, machine-actionable skills data.

Call to Action

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OPEN SKILLS NETWORK

THANK YOU FOR 

JOINING US TODAY

www.openskillsnetwork.org
Q & A 

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Thank You for Joining Us!

Upcoming Webinar: Getting Girls into STEM and Cybersecurity - Pathways to Progress

When: Wednesday, April 21, 2-3PM ET

Register: https://nistnice.adobeconnect.com/webinarapril2021/event/registration.html

nist.gov/nice/webinars

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