Launched in September 2020, the Open Skills Network (OSN) is “a coalition of employers, education providers, military, and other stakeholders dedicated to advancing skills-based education and hiring”. As a founding partner of the Open Skills Network, Learning Economy Foundation has been engaged from the start, and is thrilled to be involved in such exciting, cutting edge, and most importantly, impactful work.

Earlier this year, LEF had the pleasure of facilitating the Open Skills Network 2021 Spring Skills Pilots. The Spring Skills Pilots, which ran from April to June, had a number of objectives centered on skills-based education and hiring. The key goals of this pilot were: to create libraries of Rich Skill Descriptors, or RSDs, a new machine-readable schema for expressing skills and competencies; and pressure-test the Open Skills Management Tool, or OSMT, a tool for publishing and sharing libraries of RSDs.

"It was a tremendous opportunity to broadcast the collective efforts of partners across many industries and institutions" - Colin Reynolds, LEF VP of Learning

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LEF, partners from Brighthive and Western Governor’s University, and 14 pilot teams from across North America began the challenging work of organizing and aligning around skills-thinking. These teams consisted of education institutions, employers, government agencies, non-profits, tech providers and more. Each team spent several months working toward these goals, collaborating with other pilots to learn from the process and tackle challenges together. In the end, the pilots published several thousand RSDs using OSMT, creating libraries of standardized descriptors for skills in industries such as healthcare, IT, education, manufacturing and more.

Open Skills Summit

In July 2021, the pilot teams had an opportunity to share their pilot experiences at the Open Skills Summit. This event, headlined by U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, featured in-depth discussions around job portability, universal competencies, and learner agency. Team members from LEF helped to moderate these discussions, which drew hundreds of viewers from across the globe. “It was a tremendous opportunity to broadcast the collective efforts of partners across many industries and institutions”, said Colin Reynolds, VP of Learning for LEF. “We were all thrilled to share our learnings and will undoubtedly build on this work as we continue contributing to a growing skills ecosystem and economy.”

About OSN

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.

To learn more about the Open Skills Network, visit www.openskillsnetwork.org.