Australia and New Zealand SFIA Week 2025 - All Events

Monday 10 November

Event Name

Speakers

Format & Registration

SFIA version 9 introduction & refresher 

Whether you’re new to SFIA or looking for a refresher, this event will help you understand the SFIA and how it can support your career, your team, and your organisation. This session will cover:

• Introduction to SFIA: What it is, how it works, and why it matters for digital skills.
• SFIA 9 Highlights: What’s new in the latest version, including updated behaviours, expanded skill areas, and practical changes for users. 
• Practical Applications: How to use SFIA to map your skills, plan your development, and support recruitment and workforce planning.
• Getting Started: Free resources, community support, and next steps for individuals, managers, and organisations.

The skills ecosystem  - frameworks  to monitoring and response,

SFIA 9 is near complete for skills assessment of technology and technology adjacent roles. For other domains, professions and jurisdictions, there may be other frameworks. Assessment is only part of the value chain though; we assess skills to standardise, track, develop and plan at multiple scales. This presentation and discussion will explore the wider skills ecosystem and how SFIA 9 can contribute to that value chain

SFIA in Action: APS Career Pathfinder

You will also see how the Australian Government Digital Transformation Agency has applied SFIA within the Digital Marketplace Panel 2 to support labour hire.

How DigComp and SFIA can be used together to support pathways into in-demand jobs. 

Ian Seward, SFIA Foundation
Jude Cosgrove, European Commission, Joint Research Centre. 

• Brief overview of DigComp (The Digital Competence Framework ) and SFIA frameworks. 
• How the 2 frameworks complement each other and can be used together to support pathways into in-demand jobs and professional development in general. 
• Questions/discussion

Event Name

Speakers

Format & Registration

SFIA Week 2025 Launch

• Welcome by Lisa Syrek, ACS (in person) 
• Monica Greenan, General Manager, New Zealand Agency Partnerships and Capability (virtual) 
• Sebastian Brash, Policy manager for Tech Council of Australia (virtual) 
• Chris Fechner, SFIA Board Chair and CEO, Digital Transformation Agency, (in person)

SFIA Behaviours with Untapped Talent

Michael Fieldhouse, Senior Partner, Untapped

Online Presentation, 30 minute event– Register here 

Presentation on how the SFIA behaviours can be leveraged to attract and support untapped talent into the workplace

Digital leadership skills

Catherine, TalentJam (NZ)

Online Presentation, 30 minute event– Register here 

A practical approach to using the 16 generic attributes from SFIA 9 to define, describe, and develop digital leadership capability, and enable early identification and development of leadership talent.

From skills to cyber shields: fortifying the human firewall across the lifecycle with SFIA

Participants will be guided through the practical application of SFIA, from initial familiarisation for the whole workforce, right through to the granular tailoring for the specialist cyber workforce, taking into consideration the organisational context. The session will demonstrate how SFIA can be embedded into key workforce management activities such as attraction, recruitment, onboarding, performance management, career development, and succession planning. Attendees will learn how to activate SFIA progressively, avoiding the pitfalls of a “big bang” approach, and instead focusing on high-impact areas like skills gap analysis and targeted learning to address the journey of transformation driven by AI  

Implementing SFIA for work-integrated learning: what we've learned

Fraser Macdonald,  University of Strathclyde

Martin Caminada, Cardiff University

Work-integrated learning creates distinctive assessment challenges. This webinar brings together practitioners from two universities to share their approaches to key decisions around learning outcomes, assessment, supervision, and logistics. Whether you're designing a new work-placement programme or refining an existing one, you'll gain practical insights and guiding questions for your own teams.
We will also introduce a set of 21 guiding questions — developed from their experience of applying SFIA in higher education. These questions provide a structured way for academic teams to explore the key design choices involved in using SFIA to assess and support workplace learning. We are also keen to hear from others and to build a community resource for sharing good practice in this area.

Event Name

Speakers

Format & Registration

State public sector SFIA Practitioners Round Table

Leveraging skills to review performance and plan growth 

Elias, TalentJam

Traditional growth and performance management is prone to being reactive and exhibiting deficit thinking. In contrast, basing your performance review process on explicit skills reduces bias and helps makes feedback feel less personal. This feedback, coupled to the team member’s stated career goals, can then be used to help guide the growth and development pathway conversation.

Realisation to readiness: Building the base for skills-based Human Resource management (Australia Public Services employees only)

During the development of the Strategic workforce plan 2025 to 2027, we identified a number of workforce challenges that shared a common issue: the lack of a shared language for skills. While no one asked for a Skills framework directly, it became clear that one was needed. This session outlines how we gained executive approval, designed the delivery approach, and began the slow transition to skills-based HRM.

Adoption of SFIA and leveraging GenAI to help consultants and managers

Emmanuel Auffray, Theta, IT Consulting services, (NZ)

Online Presentation - 30 minutes,  Register here:

 Using Gen AI to enable self-assessment and development plans definition.

Event Name

Speakers

Format & Registration

Integrating frameworks and taxonomies for success: From the myth of one framework to total capability

Many organisations juggle multiple frameworks—leadership, behavioural, compliance, and technical—hoping "one framework" will solve everything. This session reframes success as integration, not consolidation. Ben will show how SFIA9 can act as an enabler for coherence across frameworks, demonstrating practical models (overlay, translation, hybrid, and ecosystem) that align SFIA with existing structures. You'll leave with actionable insights on using SFIA to enhance rather than replace other frameworks, and how to build an integrated capability story that supports transformation and workforce agility.

Skills-based strategy 

John McCoy, Linked In (AU)

Online Presentation, 60 mins, - Register here

In this session, we'll explore practical steps to:

Create the right conditions (Build a culture that values transparency around skills and Encourage cross functional collaboration )

Align development with demand (Use skills data to connect learning pathways with real workforce needs and Apply SFIA9 to map current capability and future demand.)

Unlock new pools of talent (Go beyond traditional qualifications to uncover untapped talent pools and adjacent potential.)

Making SFIA Stick:  How to Embed Skills Frameworks into Everyday Practice

Digital Skills Agency + SkillsTX (plus guest) (NZ)

Online Presentation, 30 minute event– Register here

We will share practical insights from real-world experience. We’ll explore what works (and what doesn’t) when it comes to sustaining SFIA over the long term, creating a living, breathing skills culture that supports workforce planning, career development and organisational agility. Key Takeaways:

Why SFIA initiatives often lose momentum—and how to avoid common pitfalls, How to integrate SFIA into development planning, career conversations, and learning pathways, How to keep SFIA data current and actionable, How to embed SFIA into governance, leadership practices, and culture
Real world stories: What worked for our special guest, what challenges they faced, and what they’d do differently

14:00 pm AEDT

16:00 pm NZDT

SFIA & Vocational education

FSO, ACS & C4 Digital

Online Presentation, 1 hour event–Register here

Event Name

Speakers

Format & Registration

SFIA and HR Tech - Collaborative Exploration

Peter Leather, SFIA Foundation

Online Presentation,  30-60 mins (flexible) – Register here

This isn't a product demo or a sales pitch - the SFIA Foundation is seeking to understand where demand lies and what's worth building together. We welcome employers implementing SFIA internally and technology providers exploring SFIA-enabled solutions.

As organisations embrace skills-based approaches, the quality of underlying skills data becomes critical. The SFIA framework offers an expert-curated, community-governed skills and competency framework, tried and tested in real workplaces over 25 years – this offers something different than data-inferred taxonomies.
Join this collaborative session to explore how SFIA can best serve the HR tech ecosystem. Whether you're building AI-powered tools, implementing traditional platforms, or managing governance requirements, we want your input on priorities and opportunities. If you are interested in the topic, can't make the webinar please get in touch.

Developing SFIA 10

Grant Nicholson , Senior Capability Architect, APSC  (AU)

Online Presentation,  1 hour – Register here 

Join us to help identify the key themes for the development of the next version of SFIA.

Self-assessment using SFIA

Are you considering completing a SFIA skills self-assessment and looking for some guidance?

 This introductory presentation will walk-through the official SFIA website resources, including:

·       self-assessment resources including the Visual Self-Assessment guide,

·       leveraging your self-assessment and

·       new website resources introduced since Version 9 Launch

The presentation is more focused on the process of self-assessment than a deep dive into SFIA. 

A SFIA-First approach to skills framework design