HR-XML

Standards/specification body

HR-XML Consortium

Scope The set of loosely coupled specifications currently provided by the consortium (HR-XML 2.5) cover data consumed or produced by components within Human Resource (HR) ICT supported processes such as formal educational achievement data, or produced by them.

HR-XML specifications significantly overlap similar education processes: for example to enable a Development Plan produced within an Employee Performance Management System (EPMS) to be called by a Web Service hosted by a  Learning Management System (LMS) specification to support the development of an employee’s professional and skills profile. The HR-XML specification supports use both within a single organisation and between an employer and an external provider. UK universities and colleges have an interest in both modes of use.

European work on employability ePortfolios initially made use of the IMS Portfolio specification but is now focusing on HR-XML.

The consortium in Europe takes a close interest in the use of federated repositories for personal information as evidenced in the Ontology Outreach Advice HR chapter which consists in large part of HR-XML members.

The current formal status of HR-XML Europe within the wider consortium is unclear. Active work in Europe is being undertaken by HR recruiters in the UK, Public Employment Services in the Netherlands and Flanders, SAP and Oracle, Staffing Industry Data Exchange Standards (SIDES) France and the development of HR-XML schemas for Europass, especially the CV is being led by Eifel.

Implications of HR-XML Just as HR services are directly relevant to HE so the national ICT infrastructure for England being develooped by government through MIAP is directly relevant to both the HR and HE worlds: for example the work of MIAP led by QCA on a service to provide authenticated achievement data is relevant to both employers and HEIs. The schemas currently being developed for MIAP are held on a password protected site and only being made openly available when they are at the pilot stage. It is very important that the schemas held on the Government Standards Catalog relevant to this area are made openly available alongside open standards such as HR-XML and IMS

The move to HR-XML 3.0 The primary reason for the development of a non-backward compatible version of HR-XML is the need to develop a common language across vertical industry consortia. It is likely that the current separate specifications contain many small duplications and differences which a single schema will iron out.

“Although the language discontinuity problem is the primary issue, there are also several secondary issues. The secondary issues are related to organization, development infrastructure, etc. that are necessary to develop the data interchange standards. Stakeholders (i.e., consortium members, standards users, standards workgroups, etc.) are often forced to reconcile these issues when dealing with multiple data standard organizations.”

HR-XML 3.0 Data Interoperability Objectives Build a canonical (interchange) language that resolves the language discontinuity problem between OAGIS and HR-XML standards. •	Build a canonical language that maximizes ability to exchange and share information within and among enterprises. o	Eliminate language differences for domain independent concepts. o	Establish a foundation of domain independent concepts upon which domain dependent concepts may be defined. •	Provide a library-based approach, offering reusability and extensibility of language elements

JISC CETIS involvement JISC funded projects, in particular ePet and a vendor working closely with JISC-CETIS, Pebble Pad, have made effective use of HR-XML. ePet’s assessment is that HR-XML can deliver interoperability for personal information held in Portfolios more effectively than existing IMS specifications.

Peter Rees Jones has attended several HR-XML workshops and is currently mapping candidate services for the e-Framework against HR-XML. It appears likely that these could be readily rendered as HR-XML. By assessing the interfaces in this way it will become practicable to identify which services in the education world correspond to which services in the HR-XML world and in this way identify services genres common to both worlds. Results of this work should become available from January 2008 as new service expressions and genres for the e-Framework are scoped.

Next Steps Ahead of this a Business Case for JISC-CETIS engagement in specific areas of HR-XML will be provided in early December.

Peter Rees Jones 2007 11 25