HR-XML and EIfEL to sign MoU

“The rapid development of the ePortfolio worldwide, is an opportunity to increase significantly the efficiency and effectiveness of tomorrow’s human resources and public & private employment information systems. We are looking particularly to EU and government agencies across Europe to support us, in recognition of the many benefits that can be achieved from a common approach to ‘Lifelong’ HR information exchange, in particular for the future of the lifelong learning and the Europass initiative” declares Luk Vervenne, member of the Board of HR-XML Consortium Europe.

For Serge Ravet, CEO of EIfEL, “in order for the ePortfolio to bring all its promises, it is critical to insure that all the participants support a set of standards that will allow each individual with an ePortfolio to interact with many different people and organisations. While ePortfolio is now solidly established in the field of initial education, we believe that by working with HR-XML the ePortfolio have stronger foundations to develop in the world of work and employment”.

• The partnership will expand the work of the current HR-XML Consortium Europe workgroups:
• The Staffing Industry Data Exchange Standard, SIDES, to streamline data interchange between software applications in order to automate the procurement of human capital by enterprise customers from staffing companies.
• The Staffing Exchange Protocol (SEP) a set of XML specifications to support many types of recruiting and staffing transactions. These include the posting of jobs to job boards and company career sites, and the exchange of a candidate details.
• The Competencies Workgroup for a "lifelong competency framework", able to span education, industry and employment services domains

About HR-XML Europe

HR-XML Consortium Europe is the European branch of the international HR-XML Consortium. We are an independent, non-profit organization dedicated to the development and promotion of data interchange standards to enable e-business and the automation of human resources-related data exchanges. The goal of HR-XML Europe is to ensure that local requirements and subject-matter expertise are leveraged wherever possible to strengthen core HR-XML standards. HR-XML Europe will also coordinate the growing number of country-specific HR data standards initiatives within Europe. 

By developing and publishing open data exchange standards based on Extensible Markup Language ("XML"), the Consortium provides the means for any company to transact with other companies without having to establish, engineer, and implement many separate interchange mechanisms. In Europe, with its wide variety of cultures, legislation and business practices, the  goal is to develop and promote data exchange standards that successfully embrace local, national, and international requirements.

Contact: www.eu.hr-xml.org
PJ Bryniks pj.bruyniks@eu.hr-xml.org Tel: +31 20 569 56 58
Luk Vervenne luk@synergetics.be Tel: +32 476 53 00 21

About EIfEL

EIfEL (European Institute for E-Learning) is a non-profit European professional association created in 2001 and headquartered in France, whose mission is to support the continuing professional development of individuals and the transformation of organisations to build a knowledge economy and a learning society. EIfEL is at the forefront of eLearning and ePortfolio in Europe, supporting organisations and public authorities in developing the learning policies of the 21st Century. EIfEL is leading Europortfolio, the European consortium for the ePortfolio (www.europortfolio.org) and numerous projects linked to ePortfolios. EIfEL has also organised and co-organised numerous ePortfolio events in Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
Contact: www.eife-l.org

Philippe Verstraete philippe.verstraete@eife-l.org  Tel: +33 3 8643 1343