FAMILY INFORMATION DIRECTORY

Since August 2008, we have been responsible for the design, development, implementation and governance of the controlled vocabularies which underpin the Department for Education’s Family Information Directory (FIDy).  All Local Authorities in England upload records of information about services for children and families such as Childcare, child protection, leisure and recreation, education and so forth.  This constitutes 10s of 1000s of individual records which are stored centrally in a single database known as the Aggregator.  In turn, the Aggregator is accessed from multiple different portals including DirectGov and portals operated by third sector organisations.  This means that people are able to easily search for information across Local Authority boundaries.  This innovative system works because all Local Authorities use the same controlled subject vocabulary to classify (“tag”) their information records.  The vocabulary itself was developed using a multi-iteration approach, involving parents and practitioners, with the aim of developing a thesaurus that would be more reflective of the language used by parents than the jargon used by the policy makers.  And it works.  Read more...

A VOCABULARY STRATEGY FOR THE EDUCATION AND CHILDREN'S SERVICES SECTOR

Becta commissioned Vantaggio to undertake a wide scale research study into the use and values of controlled vocabularies in the Education and Children’s Services sector, as well as other public and private sectors for comparison. Read more... 

A VOCABULARY MANAGEMENT SERVICE FOR THE EDUCATION AND SKILLS SECTOR

Between 2004 and 2007, we were responsible for managing and developing Becta’s embryonic Vocabulary Management Service for the Education and Skills sector.  The service provided government agencies and non-profit agencies free access to an online vocabulary management and editing application, combined with an online repository for vocabularies.  This was the first time that all organisations involved in the education and skill sector would have access to the same vocabulary application, producing vocabularies in the same format (Zthes).  It was also the first time that all of these vocabularies could be made transparently available for re-use, thus avoiding expensive duplication and reinventing of wheels.  The service was well used and, in 2008, was transitioned to the Department for Education’s Information Standards Board.  It has since been closed down.

PACKAGING AND PUBLISHING: SCORM

Vantaggio was commissioned by Becta to research and write a set of best practice guidelines for eLearning content packaging and publishing for the UK education sector. The aim is to introduce common technical standards, based on SCORM 2004, to underpin the drive for system interoperability. This substantial piece of work, which includes a number of detailed technical best practice exemplars, was officially launched at a national education exhibition, and also at a special Technology Experts conference. The guidelines can be found in our Whitepapers section.

LEARNING AND SKILLS PORTAL

We developed a significant new learning solutions strategy for Go Skills Sector Skills Council for the Passenger Transport industry in the UK.  GoSkills was appointed by the Government to promote the take up of vocational and academic learning, and to develop basic and personal skills and competencies throughout the sector. This sector employs more than 800,000 people, mainly through small to medium sized enterprises.  The strategy was based on developing and launching a portal that would contain a subscription-accessed gateway to learning and skills content, advice, support, peer communications, information on courses and counsellors and much, much more.  It would be a “micro-college” for the sector.  The portal was successfully launched at a national event.  We acted in the role of technical and design consultant throughout the development of the portal itself, and researched the sources for some of its content.

The important feature of the portal is that it sits in front of a content management system, which enables GoSkills itself to manage all of the content on a daily basis.