Questions/Answers

The BQ-Portal addresses an issue of high-level political importance in Germany, namely skills shortages. The portal promotes digital transformation in the public sector as it is the first online work and knowledge-sharing platform to pool all relevant information on foreign professional qualifications and vocational education and training systems. The aim is to assist both the assessment authorities, chambers responsible for the recognition process, and employers in assessing foreign professional qualifications. Objectives: • Assisting assessment authorities in implementing the Recognition Act by offering the relevant information and providing a platform for exchanging practices. Under the Recognition Act anyone with foreign professional qualifications can have these assessed to determine equivalence to German qualifications. Before 2011, numerous chambers all over Germany responsible for recognition had only isolated pieces of inadequate and incomplete information regarding foreign professional qualifications. The BQ-Portal was designed to change this. The online platform provides detailed and quality assured information regarding foreign vocational education, the substance and duration of individual training programs, and the legal basis on which they are offered. • Contributing to consistency, transparency, efficiency, quality and acceleration of the recognition process and fostering transparency of foreign professional qualifications. All assessment authorities are given access to the same pool of information, which reduces the costs and time consumption. The outcomes of recognition procedures available in the restricted area of the BQ-Portal foster consistency and efficiency of the recognition procedures. • Helping companies evaluate foreign professional qualifications and facilitating labor market integration of people with foreign professional qualifications including refugees. • Contributing to securing supply of skilled workers. On 1 March 2020, the Skilled Immigration Act will come into force in Germany, which is intended to facilitate the immigration of qualified professionals from non-EU countries. Comprehensive reliable information about the foreign professional qualifications is decisive for the recruitment of skilled workers from abroad.

The BQ-Portal is an online work and knowledge-sharing platform with a centrally maintained technical digital infrastructure, which is being updated and expanded in a decentralized way by various users all over Germany. The Drupal content management system enables to assign different access rights for different user groups. Registered users can update and create the contents of the BQ-Portal. The platform fosters collaboration of different public institutions and guarantees an active inclusion of all different stakeholders thereby promoting digital transformation in the public sector. The information portal is a “learning system” that helps build up knowledge in a distributed way.

Goal 8. Target 8.3: Germany is faced with the immense challenge of demographic change. The BQ-Portal helps to reduce the skills shortage. By fostering transparency of foreign professional qualifications, the BQ-Portal contributes to taping the potential of immigrants and refugees in Germany and recruiting skilled workers from abroad. Targets 8.5 and 8.8: The BQ-Portal fosters acceptance of foreign professional qualifications. Better market access and shorter processing deadlines for recognition procedures reduce unemployment. Goal 10. Targets 10.2, 10.3, 10.4, 10.7: The BQ-Portal fosters recognition of foreign professional qualifications and resolves the uncertainties of employers regarding qualifications held by foreign applicants. Thus, the BQ-Portal makes it more likely that the skilled migrants are hired according to their qualification and find it easier to integrate into the new society. Goal 17. Target 17.17: The BQ-Portal has helped to form a network between the stakeholders involved in the recognition process. It is being expanded by various stakeholders in a decentralized way based on a collaborative approach. By providing chambers responsible for recognition with an opportunity to collaborate effectively via a digital work and knowledge-sharing platform the BQ-Portal encourages partnerships and transforms public administration towards E-Governance.

The BQ-Portal makes a lasting contribution to the Federal Government’s campaign to attract skilled workers. It contributes to improve the procedure of recognizing foreign professional qualifications, tapping potential skills of migrants and promoting skills-appropriate integration into working life. The BQ-Portal is thus helping Germany to meet the current and future need for skilled work force. The BQ-Portal’s technical digital infrastructure encourages active collaboration of all stakeholders involved in the recognition process and fosters effective knowledge building in a distributed way.

Before the Recognition Act came into force in 2012 many immigrants were prevented from realizing their full potential, as their professional qualifications were not being fully recognized in Germany. A decisive obstacle was that the chambers had no access to reliable information on these qualifications. It was extremely difficult for chamber’s staff members to pass on their expertise to new staff members in a systematic way. Exchange between the various assessment authorities was sporadic and rare. Thus, the recognition procedures were inconsistent and lacking transparency, whilst also requiring a lot of manpower. The BQ-Portal broke the isolation of assessment authorities by providing comprehensive information on foreign professional qualifications and a digital platform for exchanging practices. The BQ-Portal contains 92 country profiles, detailed information regarding foreign vocational training systems, and over 3.550 professional profiles, descriptions of individual vocational training programs. For people with foreign professional qualifications, this means that they are more likely to receive a document providing proof of their qualifications and that this information is much more detailed than it would otherwise have been. Thereby the BQ-Portal promotes the recognition of foreign professional qualifications and the related access to the labor market for a sizeable segment of the population.

Under the Recognition Act everyone who has obtained vocational training outside of Germany has a legal right to have this qualification reviewed for equivalence to a German qualification – irrespective of citizenship, residence status or gender. Recognition of their qualifications opens up new opportunities for the labor market integration and societal participation for women. The BQ-Portal provides detailed descriptions of various foreign individual training programs including those in typical female professions. Thereby, the BQ-Portal renders women with foreign professional qualifications more attractive for employers.

The main target groups of the BQ-Portal are the assessment authorities, employers and foreign skilled workers. • The BQ-Portal ensures that all assessment authorities draw on the same database. This fosters consistency between the decisions made by various chambers across Germany and renders the entire process more transparent and cost-effective. The information is gathered and organized in a collaborative approach: assessment authorities also expand the portal and keep it up-to date. They publish new information on foreign individual training programs and outcomes of the relevant recognition procedures. This enables them to pass on their expertise to the staff of other assessment authorities in a systematic way and promotes digital transformation in public sector. • The employers gain a better and faster understanding of what a particular set of foreign professional qualifications actually entails. The detailed outcomes of recognition procedures enable employers to obtain formal confirmation of the comparability of the foreign qualifications with a corresponding German qualification. Companies become able to make profitable use of the potential of well-trained foreign workers. • By providing detailed information on foreign individual training programs, the BQ-Portal enables foreign skilled workers to have an opportunity in Germany to work in a job they are qualified for.

The implementation phase started in June 2011. It included following stages: - 2011: creating an information website; - 2012: transforming an information website into an online work and knowledge-sharing platform by uploading country profiles and professional profiles, as well as practical guidelines; - 2013: enhancing functions of the online work and knowledge-sharing platform by developing „My workbench“, forum and comments function, expanding range of content types available on the BQ-Portal, optimizing operation by simplifying the input of the outcomes, inserting the function of comparing different versions of the content types as well as creating an English version of the BQ-Portal; - 2014: external evaluation by the Federal Office for Economic Affairs and Export Control, implementing the recommendations from the evaluation and proceeding to regular operation such as expanding information, ongoing maintenance and optimization and increasing the number of competent editors; - 2015: winning the European Public Sector Award and promoting the BQ-Portal’s approach in digital transformation at the international level; - 2016: collecting and publishing information on vocational education systems and individual training programs of the refugee’s main countries of origin; - 2017/2018: extensive technical update. Along with the technical and functional innovations, the user interface of the portal was adapted. The update was required mainly for data security reasons, but it was also used to make the BQ-Portal even more user-friendly. New shortcuts to the most important information, faster and easier access to country, professional profiles and outcomes of recognition procedures as well as an improved search function were introduced. - 2018: external evaluation by the Federal Office for Economic Affairs and Export Control and implementing the recommendations from the evaluation; - 2019: expanding information on countries relevant for the Skilled Immigration Act, developing concepts for generating technical interfaces with other German platforms.

- developing and programming a database for the purpose of systematically gathering and uploading information by various users in a decentralized way. Solution: the Drupal content management system; - involving all stakeholders in conceptual development. Solution: a large number of meetings in various configurations; - building a user base to generate new contents on a collaborative approach. Solution: numerous training sessions, ongoing activation work; - developing and maintaining the portal, sustainability of the portal. Solution: the BQ-Portal is a “learning system”, ongoing technical adjustments; - quality assurance of information being uploaded in the portal. Solution: a multistage quality control process.

The BQ-Portal is the first online work and knowledge-sharing platform to pool all the relevant information on foreign professional qualifications and vocational training systems. The BQ-Portal follows an innovative approach to delivering administrative services. Various assessment authorities are all involved in the process of researching, recording, and verifying information in a central database – whilst also generating information for use by the public at large. All content that has been added undergoes a multistage quality control process to ensure that it meets the predefined standards. This approach ensures that the administrative work is meeting high standards of efficiency and quality.

The BQ-Portal was created in order to assist assessment authorities while implementing the new Recognition Act. The BQ-Portal became the first platform to invite all the relevant public organizations to closely cooperate and engage in networking, both at the technical and content levels. In terms of its approach, its scope, and its purpose, the project represents a unique contribution to comparative research into professional training. To our knowledge, no other country has a similar database that is publicly available and offers information on such a wide range of vocational training systems and individual training programs.

The BQ-Portal's approach has been presented on various national and international conferences. In 2015, the BQ Portal was recognized as the best and most innovative performer in public administrations across Europe and received the European Public Sector Award (EPSA) from the European Institute of Public Administration (EIPA). This aroused international interest in the BQ-Portal. Thus, the approach of the portal has been increasingly presented abroad as an example of best practice in public sector administration. Furthermore, numerous articles about the BQ-Portal and its approach to transform public administration were published in German and English languages. The BQ-Portal served as a model for the Norwegian Agency for Quality Assurance in Education (NOKUT) in setting up new structures for implementing the new Recognition Act in Norway in 2016. Several discussions and an on-site visit took place. The cooperation continues in form of exchange of information on foreign individual training programs and joint presentations at conferences (TAICEP Conference 2018). We have no information about further adaptions of the BQ-Portal’s approach.

The BQ-Portal’s collaborative decentralized approach to researching and collating information, the decentralized quality control in tandem with the centrally maintained technical digital infrastructure and the structure of information as coordinated with the stakeholders could be transferred to many more areas of administration. In particular, it would be feasible to use this type of portal in areas in which various stakeholders can derive mutual benefit from the information lodged in the system and at the same time can provide information for a closed user group or for the public via a central portal. One possibility to establish the project as a sort of standard might be the recognition of foreign qualifications in other countries with decentralized educational structures: the collection and systematic processing and presentation of information on the other education systems and courses for the competent authorities of other countries in their respective language. This could particularly serve as a best-practice example for countries in which, as in Germany, many different levels and organizations are involved simultaneously in the recognition process.

The BQ-Portal is run by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. The IW and ]init[ are commissioned with implementing the project. The IW is responsible for finding, translating and preparing information about foreign vocational training systems as well as administrative support. ]init[ develops the technical infrastructure. The overall budget for the project from 2011-2022 exceeds 12 million Euros. Staff processing the recognition cases in the assessment authorities are responsible for expanding the database and keeping it up to date.

The BQ-Portal significantly reduces the assessment authorities’ research loads and thereby reduces costs. The BQ-Portal forms a “learning system”. The assessment authorities can create and change the content of the portal, as well as upload outcomes of recognition procedures. Their work helps to expand the database and increase its value for assessment authorities and general public. The portal has a decentralized quality control, which includes review of all database entries before publication. The final check is verified by a designated “competent editor” who can be the trained staff of the assessment authorities or the competence center.

Yes

The BQ-Portal has been evaluated internally and externally. Internally, the outcome of the initiative is monitored via examining the achievement of objectives and yearly surveys among competent bodies. Externally, initiative was evaluated by the Federal Office for Economic Affairs and Export Control (BAFA) in 2014 and 2018. The final reports were published online.

The external evaluation by BAFA was conducted using a mix of methods involving various quantitative and qualitative survey and analysis methods (method triangulation): - document analysis: existing relevant data and reports were evaluated; - qualitative interviews: interviews were held with the project team, ministries, chambers, umbrella organizations and other projects in the field of skills recognition; - online survey: an online survey addressed to all assessment authorities, whether registered with the BQ-Portal or not, was carried out; - analysis of the statistical data available: monthly website statistics and media resonance analysis were reviewed.

Overall, all targets were met or even exceeded. The satisfaction of the chambers with the content uploaded, with the expert support offered to users and with the training courses and events had increased over the 2014 survey. During the period under review, the BQ-Portal was successfully established in the field of vocational qualification recognition and among the players in that field. When offering advice and processing applications for the recognition of foreign vocational qualifications, all categories of chamber (skilled trades, commerce and industry, liberal professions and agriculture) actively use the portal and would no longer want to be without it. Without the BQ-Portal, according to the assessment authorities, fewer applications would have led to a recognition procedure. Overall, the BQ-Portal enables a more consistent, rapid and transparent evaluation of applications. In addition, the recommendations of the last evaluation have been convincingly implemented. For example, the active participation of the assessment authorities in the expansion of the BQ-Portal has increased. The chambers increasingly promoted the topic of professional recognition among their companies and specialists in the field. Furthermore, the team managed to significantly reduce the annual costs while maintaining the consistently high quality of the contents.

The BQ-Portal centers on those who practically implement the Professional Qualifications Recognition Act – the chambers all over Germany. These are public statutory bodies with self-administration responsible for different branches of trade: chambers of skilled trades, commerce and industry, liberal professions and agriculture. The staff of chambers responsible for recognition procedures can register in the BQ-Portal and get access to the restricted area. In the restricted area the registered users independently change and create new contents as well as communicate with each other. As of now, over 400 staff members of chambers have registered with the BQ-Portal. With the help of a digital platform with different access rights the BQ-Portal fosters active collaboration and effective networking of public authorities at the same institutional level. Furthermore, the expert body and various project groups consisting of public authorities at different institutional levels have been involved in developing and expanding the database from the very beginning. The links that have been formed between the various stakeholders involved are being maintained: there are conferences, meetings of working groups formed by the various ministries and research institutes, and other fora that all provide opportunities for debate and bring the issue to public attention.

From the very beginning, active inclusion of all stakeholders involved into the conceptual and content development of the BQ-Portal was crucial. One of the objectives was to actively involve the end users in the processes of gathering and managing information based on a collaborative approach. For this reason, the project had to take account of their individual needs and interests. The assessment authorities had to be able and willing to independently upload new information to the database and see the benefits of this. Various “project groups” consisting of assessment authorities, umbrella associations, ministries and other relevant organizations were formed, which discussed the structure of the database before programming began. An expert body, the Round Table, consisting of senior staff members from politics, economy, various associations and civil society, supported the BQ-Portal until 2015. The Round Table advised the BQ-Portal in strategic questions regarding the further development and integrated the expertise, knowledge and requirements of the various stakeholders into its set-up and expansion. The Round Table continues in form of co-operations and bilateral meetings. Constant communication with the staff of the assessment authorities and an annual feedback survey helps to track possible errors, optimize the database and evaluate the initiative.

• Including all user groups from the very beginning in all processes is a key success factor to reach commitment for collaboration. The more intensive is the collaboration with all the stakeholders involved in the process, the more tailored to the interests of the target groups is the portal. • To generate contents on a collaborative approach requires ongoing training and activation work. The users generating new contents must profit from their own active contribution. The technical digital structure must be robust, cost-effective and user-friendly. While designing an online work and knowledge-sharing platform one must be aware of a necessity of ongoing maintenance and optimization of the platform. • A differentiated rights management is used so that the documents and outcomes are only accessible for the users intended. • All content must undergo a multistage quality control to ensure consistency. • The future perspective is to generate technical interfaces with other platforms, i.e. to use outcomes of recognition procedures in the digital process of visa applications to enhance skilled immigration. • To expand our international partnerships with international recognition authorities is considered an activity for the future, also to further promote the BQ-Portal as an example of best practice for digital transformation in the public sector.