The HR-XML workgroups are open to corporate and individual members so if you'd like to contribute to the payroll standards, please sign up on the HR-XML website.

I'm John Kleeman, Chairman of Questionmark, the assessment management systems company. Here is why open specifications and standards like HR-XML save effort when developing software. Suppose you are responsible for application A, and your customer needs it to integrate with application B. How do you do this? One option is to build a proprietary interface, where you write code which connects A to B directly.

Another option, if a suitable standard exists, is for each application to connect via the standard, for instance by exchanging data using HR-XML:

Open standards and specifications not only reduce the workload for developers but enable best of breed applications to interoperate with an organizations core applications. It pays to be a keen supporter of standards because they make it much easier to integrate with other applications.

Here are eight reasons why using a standard or open specification saves time:

1. Standards provide a common vocabulary to allow developers to talk the same language
   
2. Standards reduce maintenance costs. A proprietary interface is painful to maintain - every time A or B gets updated, you need to update the interface. When both systems connect to the standard, if one gets updated, the interface still works. I've seen many examples of proprietary integration failing when new versions come out.
   
3. Learn from others. Standards reduce the amount you as a software developer need to learn. Understanding two systems well needs special skills, especially if A and B use different technology like Java and .NET.
   
4. Stand on the shoulders of giants. Standards are usually developed by bright, smart people from a wide community and are well thought-through. You can take advantage of the thinking that's been done before on how integration needs to happen. It can stop you re-inventing the wheel.
   
5. Improve quality. Standards make QA easier by providing test data. For instance HR-XML has self-testing tools to make it easier to check compliance.
   
6. Forum to demonstrate commitment. If you use a standard, you can get your application certified (see HR-XML certified logo right), this gives customer confidence and marketing benefits.
   
7. Expand your horizon. Interfacing via a standard gives you interoperability with other products for free. Your code will work not just with B but with other applications that support the standard.
   
8. Maintain interoperability over time. If your customer moves from B to another application, you can still integrate providing it supports the standard.

There are times where you have to use proprietary integration – for instance if no standard is available or if you need to integrate with a product that doesn't support standards. But if a standard like HR-XML is available for your integration use case, you will save a lot of time and effort by using it.

I have been involved with the technical standards community for many years and was first introduced to HR-XML over ten years ago. I was working on standards for learning systems (with a particular interest in assessment) and the various consortia representing different industry sectors were just beginning to colaborate to prevent duplication of effort. I later worked, briefly, as the liaison between some of the working groups of the IMS Global Learning Consoritium and HR-XML.

During those early liaison discussions it was clear that everybody involved understood the value of re-using work from other bodies to create coherent packages of standards for their own special interest group. This doesn't just save time but also adds value to those adopting the standards. For example, e-Learning developers may not be familiar with the concepts defined in a typical HR system so they need the project teams writing e-Learning standards to work through these touch points and adopt a sensible profile for their industry.

Although one often hears the standards joke, "so many to choose from", the reality is that most standards are a synthesis of existing standards combined with some unique added value appropriate to their specific audience.

My personal perspective is not one of an HR-professional but of someone who works in the related world of e-Learning. As the world of e-Learning reaches out to HR-XML so I catch glimpses of the way the HR-XML consortium itself reaches out to other bodies. For example, the 3rd generation of the HR-XML standard draws on the work of OAGIS which deals with such things as "supply chain management, general ledger operations, and manufacturing". I know little of the challenges these aspects of business face but I know that by profiling their work, the HR-XML consortium ensures that I don't have to.

At Questionmark, we work with a range of standards bodies, including HR-XML, to promote a set of robust and complementary technical standards that together underpin our Open Assessment Platform initiative.

This week, in Chicago, the next meeting of the AICC will be co-located with a meeting of the HR-XML consortium. This is an important time for the world of learning standards because the AICC have recently opened up their work on the next generation of e-Learning standards for public comment, called CMI-5.

The new CMI-5 initiative [http://www.aicc.org/joomla/dev/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=158&Itemid=34] aims to replace the existing, and related, SCORM and AICC standards for integrating learning content.

Both of these standards have served the community well but the success has largely been about content interoperability and the reporting of summary scores. The current impetus is to expand the range and types of evidence that can be collected and analysed.

Questionmark is also certified by HR-XML through our support for reporting results using the HR-XML data model. The advantage of supporting the HR-XML model is not the interoperability 'out of the box' that cusotmers expect with AICC or SCORM but a more subtle alignment of our data models with those of the HR system.

As I complete a week of co-located meetings it is interesting to compare and contrast these two approaches. The new work by the AICC presents an opportunity to take some of the formal data modelling from HR-XML and investigate whether or not it can be adopted directly by the e-Learning community. That might even mean literally, by inclusion of elements drawn from an XML namespace developed or profiled by HR-XML. One of the major changes being suggested in the latest CMI-5 work is an XML binding for delivering services over SOAP. Even if direct inclusion of definitions turns out too be too hard -- the AICC also have compatibilty goals -- closer alignment of the data models in areas of common functionality is a worthy goal in itself. For example, value-space definitions might be referred to directly rather than duplicated. Even a published cross-walk between two data models can be very valuable to developers and will make interoperability much more predictable (as well as speeding up implementation).

Personally I'm a big fan of this pix-and-mix approach to developing specifications. To me, the nouns defined by the HR-XML specification provide an entire library of data elements that can be referenced in the standards of related industries - their usefulness goes beyond the suggested scenarios and pre-defined messages. In fact, it is worth getting an idea of scale here. The work targetted by CMI-5 is probably about the size of just one of the HR-XML scenarios incorporating or just one or two nouns.

Reusing existing resources like this allows new specifications to be developed more quickly, and to focus on the added value they bring. That should also result in more timely publication and improve adoption.

Since the start of SETU in 2007, SETU has been active in customizing the international HR-XML standard for use in the flexible staffing industry in the Netherlands. A lot of work has been done in the nearly five years that the SETU exists. Standards were developed to exchange requests for quotes, offers, assignments, timecards and invoices. These SETU standards define the information that is exchanged, while the technical format for the exchange are the HR-XML 2.5 standards. In those five years more than one version of the SETU standards were developed. Comment and questions of users of the standards resulted in modification, clarifications and additions to the standards. The SETU timecard and invoice standards are therefore currently in their 1.2 version, for the request for quote, offer and assignment standard the 1.2 versions are developed in 2012.

Next to the standards for the ‘regular’ process, a number of other developments are coming into play. Last year (2011) the SETU created a standard for exchanging vacancies and advertisements between vacancy owners and jobboards. This standard was developed together with the UWV (UWV is an autonomous administrative authority commissioned by the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment implement employee insurances and provide labour market and data services.) and fulfills the need of the UWV and other parties that want to exchanges vacancies in a standardized manner. This standard uses the HR-XML 2.5 standard for the technical implementation and makes easier to match vacancies to the profiles of job seekers. In 2012 we expect to start with the development of a standard to exchange planning information, a new information stream that can profit from the use of standards to simplify processes and to enable savings.

In the last five years the SETU has put the HR-XML standards in the picture in the Netherlands by creating the SETU standards. Parties in the flexible staffing industry that want to start standardizing their information exchange are almost obliged to use the SETU standards (and therefor the HR-XML standards). For the next five years we will be building on top of the current base and hope to be as successful as in the first five years.

Prior to the HR-XML 3.0 Candidate schema, the Cedefop (the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training) developed its own internal XML schema to store and edit Europass CV using their website CV editor. Starting 2008, they have published free opensource tools such as XML transformation sheet to help cross interoperability with the HR-XML candidate specifications (v2.5 as well as v3.x) based on the Europass CV HR-XML Application Profile document.

What is Europass?

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).

In 2005, the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training (Cedefop) has launched the Europass website which is a central resource of information related to the Europass documents. Its purpose is also to help all users create, with a simple wizard, a curriculum vitae or a language passport in the Europass format. It is available in 26 languages. In every country, a National Europass Centre promotes and provides information on the Europass documents. The Europass website and the online CV/LP editor continue to attract more and more citizens every month (1.3 million visits in March 2012, among 50 million visits in march 2012 since its launch in 2005, more than 18 million CV completed online since its launch).

Next steps:

In a next blog entry we will focus more on the support of the HR-XML specification in the Europass transformation web service available online as well as the other European standardization efforts planned for 2012 and 2013 from Cedefop, CEN (European Centre for Normalisation) within last projects of the Learning Technology working group such as Interoperability of Learning Outcomes and Competencies (Inloc) and Modelling European Learner-Ownable Information (MELOI) and how they relate to HR-XML recruiting work.

Other resources:

The HR-XML Europass CV Application Profile is already supported by online service such as eurocv and opensource tools such as the Rhizome project Europass CV plugin for wordpress. For more information please ask Marc Van Coillie, member of HR-XML consortium, member of the Europass community and expert for the CEN/ISSS Workshop on Learning Technology.