Invited Talk at the Human Capital & Social Innovation Summit 2007 @ Maastricht (encompassing eportfolio 2007). Competency-oriented approaches are gaining ground in human resource development. Key technology to cope with the complexity of these approaches are ontologies, both for defining competency frameworks and concrete competency catalogs. Ontologies enable the automation of competency-related tasks like competency gap analysis, suggestion of learning opportunities or similarity-based profile matching for team staffing or job applicant selection. To provide a unified view on these issues at the crossroads of Human Resources Management and Development, knowledge management and informal learning and e-learning, we have developed the Professional Learning Ontology as a reference ontology, which is freely available. It provides reusable upper-level concepts that can be refined for concrete application cases. For sustainability in companies, however, we need to go beyond mere technology and consider usage and update processes embedded into interwoven corporate processes. For that purpose, we have developed a reference process (providing continuous update processes connecting operational and strategic levels) which closely interlinks competence management and human resource development processes. This references process uses the ontology as a mediating artefact.

1. A Methodological Framework for Building, Applying, and Updating Competency Ontologies 1 FZI Research Center for Information Technologies Karlsruhe, Germany [email_address] 2 Christine Kunzmann Kompetenzorientierte Personalentwicklung, Germany [email_address] Andreas Schmidt 1 Christine Kunzmann 2

6. Core part of an Upper-Level Ontology from the Professional Learning Ontology http://professional-learning.eu

7. Example Ontology-based Competency Model

9. The Professional Learning Ontology

10. The Professional Learning Ontology (2)

12. Learning on Demand

13. Competency-driven learning services

15. Reference Process