Building the skills ecosystem.
Much of the data needed to support skills-based education and hiring already exists; however, this skills data is siloed, not easily accessible nor machine-actionable, making the switch to skills-based practices for most employers and education institutions a manual and expensive endeavor.
The OSN envisions a world where learners and workers are empowered to use their skills as currency—with the ability to understand the value of their achievements—within the employment and education marketplace.
This problem contributes to the ongoing skills gap and the inability to effectively and efficiently keep up with the needs of an ever-changing and dynamic labor market. The OSN seeks to solve this problem as a collective advocate and innovation engine for creating a decentralized national network of open, accessible, machine-actionable skills libraries.
Our purpose is to promote a more equitable, skills-driven labor market that matches learners and workers with skills-based education and career opportunities to the benefit of the individual, employer, and economy at large.
WHY NOW?
A national open skills infrastructure is critical to support the future of work and the development of agile and robust talent pipelines where all individuals have the opportunity to achieve their career goals. The scale and urgency needed for this transformation necessitates a significant commitment to the democratization of skills as a sharable, interoperable currency through the creation of a national network of open, accessible, machine-actionable skills.
The OSN helps solve talent pipeline challenges across key employment sectors and the dynamic demands of the future economy - a mission that is even more potent to solve for post-COVID as we face workforce challenges that will require urgent solutions to get individuals back to work. OSN is the independent advocate for open skills and the skills-based practices they unlock.
The OSN will enable workers and learners to more rapidly and seamlessly move between education and work along skills-based pathways, and historical inequities in hiring will be reduced as more people will be hired for what they can do and not for where they got their degree. Individuals will be empowered to understand and communicate the value of their own skills and talent, and employers are able to see that talent and make informed, skills-based hiring decisions.
INITIALLY FUNDED BY
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