CA Public Executive Summary Formatted FINAL

1 Overview McKinsey estimated in 2017 that the exponential growth in automation and the digital economy would require upskilling 375 million workers globally. This societal challenge has intensified with record- breaking job loss due to COVID-19: more than 33 million Americans have filed for unemployment as of May 2020. Yet even with increased need, effective digital technology (DT) upskilling for the workforce remains a challenge for employers to accomplish at scale. The Business-Higher Education Forum (BHEF) and its partners will support employers by creating an Upskilling Solutions Marketplace (Marketplace), connecting employers to skills- analysis tools, micro-credentials, and applications for worker engagement. Description BHEF will create an employer-focused Marketplace, where data providers share information on regional- skill demand and job trends, application (app) developers provide tools to capture employee skills and identify opportunities for upskilling, higher education institutions supply micro-credentials, and learners document skills, develop career plans, and upskill. The Marketplace will address employers’ key barriers to upskilling; enable an increase in rapid upskilling connections between individuals, employers, and educational institutions; and provide additional solutions for the post-COVID-19 employment landscape. The Marketplace will allow employers to overcome upskilling barriers by increasing continuous learning opportunities, improving access to skilled-talent pathways, and aligning the proficiency of essential DT skills for tens of thousands of American workers. Universities will develop upskilling opportunities with improved skills-demand data, and workers will better understand career pathways and the skills and training required of them. BHEF and the Greater Washington Partnership (GWP) will work with four employers in the Washington D.C, Maryland, and Virginia region (DMV), Northrop Grumman, EY, General Dynamics IT, and Stanley Black and Decker, to perform usability tests on the interoperable, blockchain-based platform and provide feedback on the labor-market data, tools, and micro-credentials. BHEF will then scale the model to other regions. While BHEF and partners will lead the identification of an initial suite of tools and micro-credentials, the Marketplace will be open for additional higher education and app developers to offer products, tools, and training modules tools that meet employer needs for DT upskilling. Differentiators 1. Compelling workforce challenge: The Marketplace will remedy frictions employers have when upskilling their workforce. It will serve as the first national platform for employer- facing labor market and skill-level workforce insights aligned with university micro- credentials. 2. Synergistic responsiveness: The Marketplace provides a framework for different, aligned initiatives to work together. Designed for agility, the Marketplace can support workers unemployed due to COVID-19 by translating labor market and skill-level needs to individuals and facilitating connections between companies and job seekers. 3. Audience understanding: This project has deep employer involvement through its Advisory Board, pilot partners, project team, and in-kind collaborators. Work is led by BHEF, a membership organization with a forty-year track record of bridging the gap between higher education and employers. 4. Convergent team, technologies, and tools: The diverse team and underlying technology platform for the Marketplace will make use of existing and new technologies supporting credential B6894: Creating a Marketplace for Upskilling the Nation’s Workforce Lead PI Jennifer Thornton Jennifer.Thornton@bhef.com Co-PI Brian Fitzgerald Co-PI Sara Hooshangi Brian.Fitzgerald@bhef.com shoosh@vt.edu 2 management, data analytics, and competency frameworks. 5. National Distribution: Intermediary organizations will deploy a comprehensive scaling strategy for national reach after pilot testing in the DMV. Road Map Data and technology strategy:  Strategy covering tools, technology, processes, rules, and requirements developed - Jan 2021 Marketplace platform ready for:  Limited Phase-1 testing with fictional user (employee/learner) data - Nov 2021  Phase-2 testing with fictional user data - March 2022  Phase-2 testing with real user data - Aug 2022 Data and tools:  Initial tool for jobseekers available (COVID- 19 response) - Nov 2020  Initial employer facing tool available - Dec 2020  Competency mapping tool available - Mar 2021  Additional upskilling tools available - Dec 2021 Pilot conducted in the DMV:  Four higher education institutions develop and add DT micro-credentials to Marketplace - Aug 2021  Four employers test Marketplace platform, data, tools, and micro-credentials with a subset of employees - Nov 2021 Scale:  Additional DT micro-credentials from within and outside DMV on Marketplace - July 2022  C-Accel teams’ products integrated in Marketplace - Aug 2022  Business stakeholders from three additional regions begin using Marketplace - Sept 2022 Partnerships During Phase I, BHEF and GWP led a consortium of universities and businesses in qualitative and quantitative research activities, which informed market intelligence on the DMV region’s DT talent landscape. As part of this research, Virginia Tech served as an adviser on BHEF’s higher education working group, and Emsi conducted labor market analysis. In Phase II, BHEF and GWP will continue with a subset of Phase I business partners testing the platform and tools, four university partners (Virginia Tech, University System of Maryland, George Mason University, and Georgetown University) creating upskilling modules, and Emsi providing labor market data and employer-facing tools. IBM will provide Marketplace infrastructure, augmenting their blockchain credential platform and interoperable learner record system. Other businesses such as PwC, Accenture, Wiley, Ellucian, and Stanley Black & Decker have committed tools, in-kind support, and/or to serve on the Advisory Board. The convergent core team and advisers bring expertise in disciplines such as economics, workforce development, business, organizational development, data science, higher education, psychology, AI, and computer science. Intellectual Property The Marketplace will include user rules and licenses for the platform and shared content. Each partner, solution, and service provider retains ownership of any background and intellectual property created independent of this project and any solely created inventions and copyrightable materials under this project. Jointly created materials will be jointly owned. Each ownership party provides BHEF a nonexclusive, royalty free, revocable license to utilize the materials solely for work under this project.