The global skills and competency framework for the digital world
September 2023 - SFIA update

September 2023 - SFIA update

Shaping the road map for SFIA

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes

Levels of Responsibility and Generic Attributes

As we look towards SFIA 9, we're exploring updates to the Levels of Responsibility (LoRs) and Generic Attributes. Our goals are to:

  • Expand on the successful developments from SFIA 8, including:
    • Enhanced readability.
    • The behavioural factors glossary for integrating soft skills with professional skills e.g. for recruitment, career development, upskilling and reskilling.
  • Provide support for small and medium sized organisations (SMEs), educational entities, and individual career growth.
  • Collaborate with other skill and digital literacy framework to ensure SFIA's relevance across the diverse roles within the digital workspace.
  • Help organisation understand how the LoRs work alongside their own job grading frameworks

Approach

While we don't aim to alter the responsibility levels themselves, we're open to refining their presentation and description. As we move forward we will:

  • Prototype materials will be developed and shared during the SFIA 9 consultation phase.
  • understand the level of interest in expanding the generic attributes.
  • create guidance notes for better comprehension and context.

Review of SFIA 8

SFIA 8, introduced in 2021, introduced major updates based on feedback from our global user base.

  • Feedback on these has been good - and one of the benefits of SFIA’s large global user base is that we can get feedback from people actively using SFIA.
  • This is a good time to review and improve the SFIA 8 changes and suggest changes for SFIA 9 evolution.

Notable SFIA 8 changes included:

  • Cybersecurity: Alignment with the United States Government's NIST/NICE frameworks
  • Data, Analytics, and Machine Learning
  • Cloud skills and FinOps 
  • Business administration
  • Technology management
  • Business analysis skills

New topics

  • AI Integration: Skills for designing, developing, testing, operating and improving AI systems.
  • Impact of generative AI in augmenting the human tasks and responsibilities described in SFIA's skill descriptions.
  • Using SFIA's components to analyse and design jobs impacted by the use of generative AI.
  • Review the scope and content of skills relevant to the jobs and roles in procurement.
  • Reviewing hardware-related skills for cyber-physical AI systems.
  • Operational Technology: Industry 4.0 blends IT and OT and with impact for SFIA in areas such as cybersecurity and edge computing.
  • Creative Tech: The fusion of technology and artistry, driving innovative digital experiences.
  • Digital Health: The integration of digital technologies into healthcare, enhancing diagnosis, monitoring, and treatment.

Website Updates

Thank you to everyone who has provided feedback on the SFIA Foundation website and also to our API testers. We're in the process of:

  • Implementing incremental changes for a more organized and user-friendly site - the home page was updated this week with
    • a streamlined top menu and
    • the addition of 3 tiles at the top of the page for most common use cases and provided direct links to the popular pages
  • Researching new methods for resource access, including additional APIs.
  • Improving site-based searching

SFIA's Future Direction


Our "Future SFIA" section has been renamed "Roadmap." It outlines the prospective changes for SFIA v9 and includes other suggested community improvements.

  • anyone can raise ideas and change requests here

Thank you for shaping the future of SFIA through your ongoing participation and feedback. 

Please get in touch. Click below to send an email.

Peter Leather

SFIA Updates Manager 

Keywords
sfia9