April 2021 - SFIA 8 consultation update

A 2 minute update on the SFIA 8 consultation - and a reminder of how you can get involved.

Estimated reading time - 1 min, 43 secs.

Thanks to all who have contributed to SFIA 8

For this month...

SFIA 8 publication plans
helping SFIA users - SFIA support material and more on readability
view the SFIA 8 change log - to track new/changed skills plus the roll out of guidance notes and improved readability

we can confirm that we plan to publish SFIA 8 in Q3 2021 - mid-September is our target
the graphic summarises the activity
we will publish a beta version of SFIA 8 in June - to encourage focussed feedback
we told you the full details behind this plan last month

click for a larger image

in the December webinar we highlighted SFIA's growing global eco-system
the graphic shows our design concept for content access for a range of individual needs and use cases
as the eco-system grows - it is essential that we provide easy access to experienced users and to new users
we continue to build different ways to access the framework...
- SFIA views
- industry standard SFIA skills profiles
- mappings to other frameworks and bodies of knowledge
- related SFIA skills - recently added
- enhanced web searches for the website
- behavioural attributes (for SFIA 8)
- guidance notes (for SFIA 8)

We make the content of the framework available for employers and partners who build their own custom tools using SFIA

in February we told you about the addition of guidance notes
these have received positive feedback - so we are expecting these to be a feature of SFIA 8
an opportunity has emerged from this to create a single active sentence to describe each skill - to help users quickly understand the scope/nature of the skill
in most cases we can re-use the existing SFIA 7 descriptions so that users familiar with SFIA 7 will have no surprises
example below

as we approach the conclusion of the SFIA 8 consultation - please use the change log to monitor the current status
most proposed changes are firming up now - some new skills, some re-named skills, some new skill levels and some re-worded descriptions
you can currently view proposals for 18 changed/new skills plus 88 with guidance notes added
we will release the beta for SFIA 8 in June
please browse the log and bookmark the page for future reference

SFIA Updates Manager & SFIA 8 Project Manager