Europass CV and Language Passport

Introduction

Europass is a European Union (Directorate General for Education and Culture) initiative to increase transparency of qualification and mobility of citizens in Europe. It aims to be a "Life Long Learning Portfolio" of documents containing the descriptions of all learning achievements, official qualifications, work results, skills and competencies, acquired over time, along with the related documentation. The five Europass documents are the curriculum vitae, Language Passport, Europass Mobility, Certificate supplement, and Diploma supplement, sharing a common brand name and logo. It aims to make a person's skills and qualifications clearly understood throughout Europe (including the European Union, European Economic Area and candidate countries).

(source wikipedia)

InLOC produced an Application Profile for this: see the Europass CV and LP AP.

General information

(This is meant to be generally useful information about the stakeholder or source model.)

information to be gathered details
Name / title of source/model and version if applicable Europass CV/LP v2.0
Stakeholder Europass Cedefop Agency, EURES, EURAXESS, EuroCV online jobboard
URL http://europass.cedefop.europa.eu/en/home
Orientation Very simple and generic: Language competencies based on ECF levels and other personal skills and competencies section based on a simple text field
Explicit / implicit Explicit
Organisational competence Yes for language competencies No for the personal skills section
Number of people currently affected Large 17,634,806 CV and LP completed online since the launch in february 2005 up to january 2012 (17,309,807 CV, 324,999 LP).
Sectors covered Any sector. 
User communities Yes joinup.eu (formerly semic.eu) (https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/europass/description)
Significant use cases Online CV or LP edition, publication to online jobboard (Eures, Euraxess), or localy using one of the office type doc (PDF+XML, ODT, DOC, HTML), interoperability with other HR tools or services (by import/export process or using the online transformation webservice)
Significant business cases Eures 
Gather sample materials See Cedefop Europass website: http://europass.cedefop.europa.eu/en/home
Key features influencing uptake support of extensions and both internal/external relationship especially for the competency part (support of extended competency framework for the personal competencies part like eCF or ECDL for a more structured computer skills and competenccies part)

Features of the model

(The model described can be either explicit (as in a specification) or implicit in the stakeholders data or practice. If a source covers separate more than one LOC, it might be useful to duplicate this table, and fill in once for individual LOCs, and once for frameworks or LOC structures. In the "?" column, put 1 if the feature is present, 0 if it is not.)

Todo

N Features ? notes (replace these explanations with your gathered information)
00 More than one model 0 Only one model
01 Identifiers 1 any string identifiers allowed, envisaged as eventually being URIs
02 Hierarchy (internal) 1
within the Language skills part
03 Internal relationships 0 not supported
04 External relationships 0
not supported
05 Conditionality / optionality 0 not supported
06 Text syntax 1 provision for optional explicit action verb(s) starting short description
07 Structured identifiers 0 no prescribed structure beyond recommended URI (the RDC xml files are not used yet as reference within the europass CV or LP, used only by the HR-XML application profile)
08 Classification 1 simple categories for the 6 personal competencies (social, organsational, technical, computer, artistic and others) supporting ECF for the languages skills part
09 Level attribution 1 ECF for languages part, ISCED for educational experience (educational level) 
10 Level definition 1 clear model (EQF A1 to C2); ISCED level 5 for educational level
11 Context 0
not supported
12 Evidence and assessment 0 Self-assessment for languages skills ECF, anyway using the Language Portfolio (LP) it is possible to add evidences linked to a language
13 Extensions 0 not supported yet
14 Profiles 0 not supported
15 Adaptation 0
not supported
16 Definition by example 1
some examples provided for the Languages ECF level, especially if the 'show table' is selected to add the description table at the end of the CV or LP
17 Learning resources 0 not supported
18 Learner records 0 not supported (to check within the LP part)
19 Multilinguality    

High-level model

The Europass CV competency area is divided in two parts:

1) Language skills based on ECF level from A1 to C2 for five different sub competencies.

2) Personal skills and competencies (social, organisational, technical, computer, artistic and others), all of them simply based on a blank text field.

Some others semantic links and levels could be optionaly used:

1) in the educational experience part: ISCED for the educational level and for the educational field.

2) in the professional experience part: ISCO 88 level 5 for the occupational field, NACE for the business sector.

See Guidance source requirements part for more information.

Technical model

All the relevant information are included in the XML schema files (XSD), therefore here is a short sample of the competency/skills part of a Europass XML CV file:

<languagelist>
        <language xsi:type="europass:mother">
            <code>fr</code>
            <label>français</label>
        </language>
        <language xsi:type="europass:foreign">
            <code>en</code>
            <label>anglais</label>
            <level>
                <listening>c1</listening>
                <reading>b1</reading>
                <spokeninteraction>c1</spokeninteraction>
                <spokenproduction>c2</spokenproduction>
                <writing>b2</writing>
            </level>
        </language>
    </languagelist>
    <skilllist>
        <skill type="social">- Bon esprit d’équipe;
- Capacités adaptation aux environnements multiculturels;
- Bonnes capacités de communication</skill>
        <skill type="organisational">...</skill>
        <skill type="technical">...</skill>
        <skill type="computer">...</skill>
        <skill type="artistic">...</skill>
        <skill type="other">...</skill>
        <structured-skill xsi:type="europass:driving">
            <drivinglicence>A1</drivinglicence>
            <drivinglicence>A</drivinglicence>
            <drivinglicence>B</drivinglicence>
            <drivinglicence>B1</drivinglicence>
            <drivinglicence>BE</drivinglicence>
        </structured-skill>
    </skilllist>

Therefore in the context of the cross HR-XML interoperability support based on the eportfolio application profile the Cedefop agency has published a set of competency files conformant with IEEE RDC specification for better semantic purpose. Each IEEE file is supporting:

The link is build using a uri within the HR-XML Candidate file.

Guidance source requirements

(Here please put what you think needs to be in the Guidance deliverable to help this stakeholder, or to relate to this source.)

The relationship issue is a point that need guidance/enhancement in the actual Europass system. How to reprensent a link between a professionnal or educational experience or annexe and a specific personal competency ?

How to link with other referential used within Europass:
- Professional experience : isco88com-level5 for the occupational field (http://europass.cedefop.europa.eu/xml/EUROPASS_ISCO_88_COM_V1.2.xsd) and nace:sector-level1 for the business sector (http://europass.cedefop.europa.eu/xml/resources/NACE_COM.xsd)
- Educational experience : ISCED for the educational level and isced:field-level2 for the educational field (http://europass.cedefop.europa.eu/xml/resources/ISCED97.xsd)