Competency Model Clearinghouse

The Competency Model Clearinghouse (CMC) was developed to provide validated industry competency models and a tool to help corporate users build custom models for their industry.

Resources Search

The CMC contains a huge repository of resources that list, describe, or are based on competencies, such as curriculum, assessment instruments, skill standards, apprenticeship work process schedules, and certification requirements. XPAND proposed and implemented Endeca, an award winning search engine, to assist CMC users search for these resources. The CMC Endeca helps users identify, develop, and customize competency models for their business, workforce investment project, and curriculum development. XPAND customized the Endeca platform to provide search capabilities that include thematic searches that rank keyword search results based on predefined weights assigned to the result sets, highlighting the search phrase, and further narrowing search results. XPAND follows a rigorous quality assurance process to ensure content accuracy on the site. There are constant checks for performance of the search and accuracy of the search results. Schedulers are run on a daily basis to keep the engine up to date with information from the database.

Industry Competency Models

The Department of Labor (DOL) has recently engaged with business, industry, and education/training leaders to develop competency models for targeted industries and broker information on resources that are used, based on, or used in conjunction with competency models to prepare the workforce.

XPAND, in collaboration with DOL, has successfully developed and launched 21 Industry Competency Models thus far and has diligently verified and validated the underlying data. These industry models are available to all CMC users in building custom models. New industry models are constantly added to the CMC site, and there is an on-going effort by XPAND and DOL to keep the existing industry models up to date.

Tools

The Competency Model Clearinghouse offers a tool designed to help businesses, educators, and workforce professionals achieve their talent development goals: the "Build a Competency Model Tool"."