GROUP 7 PRESENTS

How IT Enabled
Business Model
Innovation at
VDAB
Story of disruptive business model
What We'll Discuss
TOPIC OUTLINE
1. VDAB TIMELINE
2. VDAB, HOW IT OPERATES, DRIVERS FOR CHANGE, AND VDAB PERSPECTIVE
3. NEW STRATEGIC GOALS FOR VDAB FROM 2011-15 BY VONK STRATEGY.
4. VDAB IT DEPARTMENT
5. STRATEGIC IT THEME, PLATFORM - CAREER PORTAL
6. PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT PLAN, CAREER PORTAL FUNCTIONS
7. NEW WOW - ENABLED BY IT
2
Timeline of Important events at VDAB
1989 2005 2007 2010 2011-15

Founding year of CEO- Leroy CIO-Daneels VONK Strategy New Agreement

VDAB

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 PUBLIC EMPLOYMENT SERVICE
Founded in 1989. It offers Employment services, training and career
guidance for flemish region.

PUBLIC FUNDED
VDAB It is an autonomous agency run by board of directors which includes
CEO, Representatives from flemish govts, trade unions etc.

DANEELS AND IT TEAM

they know they are in transformation and lot at stake due to high
expectations from government and due to heavy scrutiny.

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 HOW VDAB OPERATES

Mutual Touch Screen Multi Channel

commitments Local One
UI at public Approach
for every 5 Stop Shop
places
Years 68 training centres and 360
one stop shops providing
Integrated services and Details about vacancies on
For delivering the service needed,
VDAB used multiple channels like
Internet, call center, text
Policy priorities and strategic Information VDAB website were displayed messages etc.
goals between VDAB and on Local bustsops, Railway
Government. stations etc.

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 Drivers for Change in Labor market
Demographic Pressure
Due to the aging population & shift of balance between working age and retirees.
Qualitative mismatch between worker's skills and skills required for the vacancy.

Globalization
Economic cycles were shortening
Flexibility to cope up with changing labor markets.
Career security will take the place of job security.

IT Enabled World
Labor market processes had become IT-driven.
New technologies for data collection, data mining or data exchange.
Alternative communication and collaboration channels.
Social and mobile internet.
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VDAB Perspective

People will have to show more self-management.

Different labor market actors will have to adapt.
Mismatch on the labor market can only be solved if more people work longer.
Working longer is only feasible if people can work differently.
This requires a broadening labor market and career policies.
 New strategic goals for VDAB (2011-15)
by VONK strategy document

Activate non- Provide Career Extend Services for

active citizens in service to working Partnerships Competency
personalized population
recognition and
manner

development
job seekers to job seekers Give working people a
career design service those
this will help in counter-
affecting the un-certainities

along + non active citizens involved , to achieve goals Organize labor market oriented ,
with an aim t their long term who want to have a shift in flexible and future proof services
deployment services. their careers and a Win-win situation for
both the parties for competency recognition and
development

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 VDAB IT
DEPARTMENT
WORKING PRINCIPLES
1. The project delivery model relies on partnership with the business for all IT projects.
2. Portfolio-based functioning, that is selection and prioritization based on strategic fit, costs, and risks, ensures
clear agreements and plans as well as project coherence.
3. IT resources are allocated and managed at a corporate level in order to ensure professional support based on
agreed procedures.
4. A strong internal core IT team, supplemented with external service providers, ensures maximum flexibility and
agility.
5. Work is done on the basis of an overall architectural framework (to enable and facilitate the integration of
applications and systems).
6. A controllable and robust infrastructure and reliable service delivery ensure good availability of IT-enabled
services.
7. The information strategy ensures easy access for internal and external users.
 NEW IT ORGANIZATION STRUCTURE
IT Department adopted a project-based organizational structure.

CIO IT CORE TEAM CIO'S OFFICE HR AND LOGISTICS

Responsible for the Consists of CIO and
Took care of the Monitored the
management
strategy and general following activities: administrative work for
members.
management. It decided the
Budget Monitoring the following activities:
following activities: Invoicing
Recruitment
IT Strategy Staffing
Purchasing
Sourcing Strategy
Budget Allocation Asset Management

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The organization was divided as:
Strategic Projects Business Projects Technical Projects
Project teams retained ownership from concept, implementation to rollout
The approach reduced the number of handovers and hence errors.
Project teams are staffed by internal VDAB personnel, supplemented by external
consultants.
Increased flexibility and cost-effectiveness for varying demands.
Joint business and IT control groups take care of the project monitoring of
deliverables, milestones, and budget.
Adoption of SCRUM to optimize value creation and business satisfaction.
Architecture & Innovation Unit: Directly worked with the project teams & took care
of the technical roadmaps.
PIT - Process Innovation Team
Monitored if the project proposed by the business
would contribute to the achievement of the strategy
and its budgetary impact both on IT and at the
business level.
Members: People from business, IT Architect, and
External Consultants.
Reporting: directly to CEO and indirectly to CIO.

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Service Delivery & Operations

Provide follow-up of incidents, on-site

Negotiate, establish, and monitor Service
support at job shops and local training
Level Agreements (SLAs).
centers.
Maintain contracts with internal and Take care of technical management and
external service providers. support of the telephone, network, and
application infrastructure.
Responsible for the development of
Provide technical application support.
framework and process improvement
Actual infrastructure hosting and
initiatives management were outsourced.

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Strategic IT themes
A platform with necessary information, tools, and standards for data exchange

Provide transparency, trust and authenticity to the data and reports published in the platform

Focus on the source and status of the data along, improving transparent labor market with

maximum exchange of data

Competency-based matching, collaboration, and co-creation were the main themes focussed

Increase in transparency and flexible labor market is achieved when users provide or access

relevant information, the data collection is dynamic and relevant

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Career Portal
Digital transformed portal, manage career, trainings, validating certificates
Job seekers can access relevant opportunity in market
Trainings to enhance competencies, groupings of certificates(storage)

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PDP
Personal Development Plan helps in support,competency and skill gap assessment,
making the portal self support and reliable
Duplication of data in PDP and MyCareer must be eliminated(Redundant data
discrepancy)
Individuals would have the admin power over the data and would define the
information to be shared
both Career and PDP portal can be used 24/7
Offline contact of VDAB counsellors is available and scheduling is done through video
conferencing, telephone,email or chat

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Employers - Career Portal
select eligible candidates through manually or auto matching with their competencies, helping employers
to manage vacancies(MasterVac platform) and integrate employer's portal with the career portal
Helps to access the information about job seekers, quality of trainings and competency that were
provided in competency data services in the platform.
Provide information on labor market and other policy information

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Competency based Match
maximizing an individual’s employability –equal to finding right fit between his or her
competencies, preferences with the job requirements of the employer
Diplomas and previous work experience would no longer be the only criteria for job
selection.
VDAB integrated and enriched an existing competence platform into a new platform
named Competent, a dynamic database to act as a central, standardized
competence backbone for the labor market.
Competent would be integrated with the other building blocks of the VDAB digital
platform, such as My Career, PDP, and MasterVac, to enable more sophisticated
automatic matching of job seekers and vacancies.
Collaboration and co-creation

social media by information exchange and
Integration of information from
collaboration with market actors, making it available for other labor markets, enabled
them to co-create their own applications
The tools and applications supporting the strategic themes (e.g. My Career, PDP,
Competent, and MasterVac) are integrated into a mobile-ready digital platform, made
accessible via the internet.
The systems and applications that were supporting only internal VDAB applications, is
made available to outside world which also needed to meet customer requirements.
NEW WOW - ENABLED BY IT
ROLE OF VDAB – NOT ONLY SERVICE
PROVIDER BUT CONDUCTOR OF THE
LABOUR MARKET AS WELL

VDAB CHOSE TO EXPERIMENT WITH

NEW, CUTTING-EDGE TECHNOLOGY

VDAB FIRST GOVERNMENT AGENCY

TO MOVE MAIL AND
COLLABORATION PLATFORM TO
THE GOOGLE CLOUD
GOOGLE CLOUD HAD ADVANTAGES

Cost savings, It eliminated the need to invest in hardware and client software. It enabled
low-cost development of custom applications
Example: Training Reservation System for a Dutch language course, was set up by one of the
VDAB counselors in a matter of minutes using Google Docs, without any intervention from IT.
Was a strategic fit as VDAB needed to become as open and accessible as possible for all
its stakeholders.
VDAB platform was for all to use, to share information without any technological barriers.
Cloud supported Bring Your Own Device which enabled,
Different ways of working, as all applications were available over the internet
Counsellors or any stakeholder could work from home or anywhere else, with internet
connection.
Other ways like GOOGLE apps where IT contributed to rethinking and simplifying the
functioning of the business.
Test bed projects (proeftuinen) were another.
Architecture and Innovation Unit to experiment with initiatives fitting with strategic IT
themes ,set up in a win fast/fail fast manner
THREE AREAS OF INTEREST WERE IDENTIFIED AS FOLLOWS:

Data discovery: to check how VDAB could use available info

For E.g. Design and Development of queries to extract competencies from
unstructured data such as résumés or vacancies for use in matching algorithms, or
profiling of job seekers by looking for meaningful patterns in the available
information.
Open data:
Focused on making information available in a structured way, using publicly
available Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), to enable other stakeholders
to develop their own applications such as all the offices of the VDAB, vacancies, and
trainings.
Communication with job seekers and other stakeholders: Initiatives in this area were
to enable more proactive and flexible communication with stakeholders.
The initiatives that had been launched until then were all related to encouraging the
use of the Google collaboration platform:
Open appointment system for counsellors, synchronizing with the agendas of
counsellors, job seekers, and team leaders.
 IT Achievements

HAD REORGANIZED THE IT DEPARTMENT AND GOVERNANCE STRUCTURES.

THE VACANCIES DATABASES FOR INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL PURPOSES HAD BEEN INTEGRATED
INTO A SINGLE SOURCE (MASTERVAC)

FIRST VERSION OF MY CAREER HAD BEEN LAUNCHED

ORGANISATION FAMILIAR WITH GOOGLE APPS AND ORGANIZED A VIRTUAL JOB FAIR
SUCCESSFULLY, POST IT CHANGES
Additional References(Appendix A,B)
VDAB CEO debate with public VDAB in 2011
On May 2nd 2012, a debate was organized VDAB organized around 73,000 coaching
by human rights commission in co- programmes and 19000 mediation
programmes.
operation with non profit Organization.
There were around 4lakh 10 thousand job
Privacy and freedom of Job- choice
seekers contacts are with VDAB in 2011.
CEO participated and debated with people Total budget for 2012 was 547 Million
from academia, trade unions and privacy Euros
commission

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Additional References(Appendix C)
Labour market ecosystem and its actors

Individuals - need job or improvement in their employability by acquiring skills.

Employers - need for qualified persons with required knowledge. need to know accurate
and objective information about the labor market they are looking for.
Others - Private staffing, recruitment agencies, educational institutions, colleges etc. the
challenge is to streamline the organizations that are accredited to assess people to certify
their non-formal and informal learning.

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IT Organization Chart - Appendix D

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 GOOGLE APPS(APPENDIX E)

GMAIL GOOGLE SITES GOOGLE DOCS GOOGLE TALK GOOGLE

mobile access Dynamic websites Documents Available as CALENDAR
email client online/offline integrated with Spreadsheets desktop client mobile access
Contact management docs and calendar Presentations Built in Gmail notify any meetings
Schedule meetings Template based forms Text,audio and schedule/ accept
in built search for mails Easy to use sync with MS office video conferencing meetings
Priority and starred inbox editable and viewable
online

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Additional References(Appendix F,G)

Migration of Group-wise to Google Apps: On 10/11th May 2012, the Engineering

150,000 euros. Mobility days took place in Lisbon.
The potential cost savings of a migration to This international job fair focused on IT and
Google Apps would amount to 513,000 engineering profiles, and was organized by
euros. the Portuguese public employment service.
The actual annual costs for Google Apps The DAB attended the event, together with a
amounted to 215,000 euros. delegation of 22 Flemish companies.
Additional annual cost savings of 650,000 In addition, 11 Flemish also employers
euros were achieved by canceling the MS participated in the virtual online job fair set
Office license maintenance. up by the VDAB.

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Thank You