The global skills and competency framework for the digital world

SFIA for government

SFIA is used by governments, government agencies and NGOs to support national and international industrial strategies and education programmes.

Governments and government agencies using SFIA

There are, broadly, two ways that governments and government agencies use SFIA. 

  1. Like all other employers; government digital and IT departments and teams can use SFIA to support their workforce and human capital development processes. 
  2. Many governments and government agencies bodies use SFIA in a bespoke way to support their industrial and educational initiatives. In doing so, they benefit from using the world's most widely adopted skills and competency framework. In many cases, a country-wide licence will be a cost-effective and efficient option.

Contact the SFIA Foundation to discuss  or .

The benefits of partnering with SFIA

  • support national and international industrial strategies, educational and skills development programmes, and skills recognition initiatives.
  • use a single, common language to integrate educational and industrial perspectives on skills.
  • bridge the gap from academia to industry - integrating knowledge acquisition with requirements for employability.
  • save the cost, effort and time needed to develop and maintain your own skills and competency framework.
  • save costs and support effort by establishing a country-wide licence for the use of SFIA. This can significantly speed up the benefits you can achieve by developing SFIA skills and competencies in your country.
  • enhance international credibility, transparency and global awareness of your initiatives by using the only global skills and competency framework.
  • learn from generally recognised good practice in the adoption of competency frameworks.
  • ensure your requirements are fully represented in the future development of the world's most widely adopted skills and competency framework.
If you represent a government body, an international-government agency body, please contact the to see how SFIA can support your needs.

Developing and maintaining your own competency framework

Before you start work to develop your own professional competency framework it is useful to understand ...

  • how SFIA is already used by governments and government bodies
  • the activities needed to develop and maintain a framework and the time, cost and effort required
  • the questions to potential suppliers. About their approach to developing the framework and the longevity of their proposed solution
  • the links between skills, knowledge and experience in order to create an effective framework
  • how you can save time, cost and effort by using SFIA as the basis for your competency framework and/or use SFIA to kick start your own framework development 
  • the wider benefits of using SFIA and how you can join with similar organisations and shape the future scope and content of SFIA 

SFIA is a not-for-profit organisation with extensive experience of developing and maintaining the world's most widely used skills and competency framework. Please contact the for impartial advice before you start to develop your own framework. 

Government bodies using SFIA

A natural question for potential users of SFIA is "who else uses it?". We would love to provide a comprehensive answer to that question, but the SFIA Foundation does not record or track usage of the framework by government bodies. This is for a variety of reasons ...

  • Organisations can access the SFIA framework material readily – and people/organisations from around 180 countries have done this already
  • IT leaders and managers typically "take SFIA with them" as they move organisations without re-registering their new organisation as a new SFIA user
  • GPDR and other data privacy regulations limit the information collected and what information the SFIA Foundation can share publicly
  • The SFIA Foundation is an active collaborator with current and potential users of SFIA but, as a not-for-profit organisation, we do not actively market or promote these relationships.
  • In the early days of SFIA, annual conferences would be held to facilitate knowledge sharing amongst user organisations. This provided useful knowledge of government bodies using SFIA. Now that the user base is truly global this is not feasible, although, the SFIA Foundation is looking to alternative knowledge and experience sharing events.

If you are a government body and are willing to share knowledge and experience on how you use SFIA please contact the.

Examples