As custodians of the skills and training system and the representatives of the workers who undertake the qualifications it offers, unions are keenly interested in the Government’s considerations with regard to the development of a national skills passport. The robustness and integrity of any system that workers will use to prove their qualifications are of paramount importance to the union movement and our members. We are not in-principle opposed to the development of a skills passport which has particular design features and safeguards.
In the age of digitisation there are circumstances in which it may be useful for workers to have access to a digital record of their training – much as they may have a digital Medicare card, vaccine record or driver’s licence. It is our view that these benefits would be, though real, minor at best.
In designing the passport, we must learn the lessons of the COVIDSafe app – that we should not fall to techno-optimism and assume that, without careful design and implementation planning, the benefits of a technological solution which seem apparent at inception will necessarily be realised. A poorly designed or implemented passport has the potential to not only fail to deliver on the potential benefits of such a system but could also result in a number of significant negative outcomes. Below can be found a short outline of the features which unions believe a skills passport must have, in addition to a number of concerns which we believe should be top-of-mind for Government when designing the passport’s features.
Government should carefully consider the risks raised in this submission, alongside the tangible but not revolutionary benefits offered to workers, when making a decision about whether to commit the significant funds the development of a national skills passport would require.
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