Functionality of closely associated services

The objective in this section is to outline some of these services, and how people might interact with them through or in conjumction with e-portfolio systems.

Some related services:

• education
• training and skills development
• HR in the workplace
• personal choice
• transition between episodes of education and work
• information advice guidance mentoring
• reflection
• planning, scheduling, appointments diary
• assessment
• CV and presentation management
• contact details updater
• educational administration
• public sector agencies

A distinction which may be helpful is between e-portfolio-related services, which deal with at least some e-portfolio information, but are not full EPMSs, and e-portfolio-enabled services, which can exist only where an EPMS exists.

Another distinction might be made between "personal" and "organisational" services, therefore between individual EPMSs & and their organisational implications.

For example, a typical "organisational" service using the information of an ePortfolio is the directory. Directories could be built as aggregation of individual ePortfolios.

Need: an ePortfolio flexible enough to let allow choice in filling in information using forms (e.g. if lazy or lacking in imagination) or through a free-form editor, allowing later addition of context.

Need: ePortfolio automatically updates some of its contents and presentations, e.g. having my résumé automatically updated when new work experience added (but still with the ability to edit it manually).

Need: like wikis (semi-) automatically cross-reference documents, e.g. when I have an item on a particular work experience, and if I write a reflection where the name of the employer is mentioned, create a link between the name and the item.

(Point: this is OK, but should really should be added as a gloss at the point of presentation, so that different viewers can overlay their own, or someone else's, topics.)

Questions:

• Can web services be defined for these (human) services?
• How much can (and should) these or other non-educational services be integrated into the e-p architecture?
• What about information that is required by public agencies but may be of no (or negative) interest to the individual?