From the Desk of
Greg DiDonato

Alaska has, through decades of investment in its workforce delivery infrastructure, built one of the most regionally-coordinated systems for credential production in any state — a particular achievement given the scale and rural nature of Alaska’s geography. The Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development serves as the State’s lead workforce agency, implementing the WIOA State Plan, with the Alaska Workforce Investment Board (now situated in the Office of the Commissioner under the Department’s workforce consolidation) providing oversight and direction for regional workforce planning. The State Training and Employment Program — funded by a set-aside from the Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund and administered jointly by DOLWD and AWIB — provides industry-specific training, on-the-job training, registered apprenticeship support, and classroom job-linked training to Alaska residents. AVTEC, Alaska’s Institute of Technology, anchors residential workforce training. The University of Alaska System — UAA, UAF, and UAS — offers more than 150 academic certificate and degree programs from short-term workforce credentials to graduate programs. The Alaska Performance Scholarship — funded through the Alaska Higher Education Investment Fund established by the Legislature in 2012 — provides up to $7,000 per year for high-school graduates pursuing eligible postsecondary or career-training programs in Alaska, alongside the needs-based Alaska Education Grant. The Alaska Native Science and Engineering Program (ANSEP), a generation-old pipeline connecting thousands of Alaska Native students to STEM careers, continues to operate at UAA as one of the most successful programs of its kind in the country. Regional Native corporations and Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium serve as workforce intermediaries, particularly for rural and Alaska Native communities. Few states have built so much, so deliberately, in service of their workers.

This letter is written in admiration of that work, and with a specific proposition: that the next chapter of Alaska’s education-to-workforce strategy may benefit from a learner-held layer that the State has not yet had occasion to build. EBSCOed is the division of EBSCO Information Services that has spent the last several years constructing that layer — the LER talent marketplace — and offering LER.me to states, learners, educators, and employers at no cost. We write to share what it is, where it complements Alaska’s investments, where it bridges systems that today operate in parallel, and how it is designed to extend rather than disturb the credential infrastructure Alaska has already built.

LER.me is an open-standards platform that gives each individual a portable digital wallet containing their verified learning and employment records. The marketplace is built on the IEEE Learning and Employment Record standard, Open Badges 3.0, and Comprehensive Learner Record 2.0 — the same open standards used across the credentialing field — so the data Alaska already publishes to the Credential Engine Registry, and the credentials issued by the three University of Alaska universities, AVTEC, K-12 districts, and registered apprenticeship sponsors, remain authoritative and continue to operate exactly as they do today. The marketplace exchanges with those systems; it does not replace them. The platform itself is free to learners, to educators, and to employers, with optional subscription services available to states and large institutions that want deeper integration or custom analytics. The foundation is the foundation, and the foundation is free.

Four capabilities are most relevant to Alaska’s context. The first is free credential issuance: any approved Alaska institution, apprenticeship sponsor, regional Native corporation training entity, or employer can issue verifiable credentials into learner-held wallets without licensing fees, supporting institutions of every size and budget on equal footing — a particular benefit in a state where credentialing happens across vast geographic distances and across rural, urban, and Alaska Native community contexts. The second is an open employer marketplace, in which Alaska employers post opportunities and discover qualified candidates based on verified skills and credentials, again at no cost. The third is public workforce intelligence — dashboards that aggregate credential issuance and labor demand data as linked open data, available to State agencies for planning, reporting, and supporting AWIB’s regional workforce planning mission. The fourth is the contributor framework, which crosswalks issued credentials to occupational standards and to State-defined high-demand and Alaska-hire-priority occupations at the point of issuance, so the demand signal Alaska has invested years in defining is operationalized at the individual level, automatically.

Alaska’s distinctive context is geographic. A workforce credential earned in Bethel that a Bethel resident cannot easily prove to an Anchorage or Fairbanks employer is a credential whose value has been left partially on the table. A credential earned through ANSEP, a regional Native corporation training entity, ANTHC, AVTEC, or one of the UA campuses that does not travel to an out-of-state employer when the credential-holder needs to relocate temporarily for work is a credential whose portability is limited. These are not failures of Alaska’s credential producers — they are limitations of the legacy systems in which those credentials live, where transcripts and paper certificates dominate over verifiable, portable, learner-held records. What sits underneath every one of those investments is the same need: a verifiable, portable, learner-held record that lets each Alaskan carry their UA credential, their AVTEC training, their ANSEP attainment, their regional Native corporation-supported credential, their registered apprenticeship milestones, their STEP-funded training credential, and their employer-issued microcredentials in one place, recognized by employers within Alaska and out. That record is what the LER marketplace provides, at no cost, on the open standards the State already uses. EBSCOed is not asking Alaska to do anything its credential producers are not already doing well — we are offering the learner-side layer that lets the credentials Alaska produces travel with each Alaskan across the State’s geography and the seasonal patterns of Alaska’s economy.

There are three lenses through which we have found it useful to discuss this marketplace with state leadership, and we offer them here in the same spirit. The first is complement — where the marketplace adds capability Alaska has not yet had reason to build. AWIB measures workforce planning at the regional and State level; the marketplace adds the learner-side artifact, a verifiable record each Alaskan carries with them. The Alaska Performance Scholarship and Alaska Education Grant fund attainment at participating Alaska institutions; the marketplace gives each UA campus, AVTEC, and approved training provider a free way to issue scholarship-funded credentials as verifiable Open Badges directly into learner wallets, with APS or AEG designation embedded in the badge metadata at issuance. ANSEP students, who are increasingly carrying credentials across UAA, UAF, internships, and into STEM employment, particularly benefit from a portable record. Registered apprenticeship completers — Alaska has more than 70 years of registered apprenticeship history — face the same opportunity at every milestone. None of this displaces Alaska’s current investments. All of it makes them more visible, more durable, and more useful to the Alaskans who earn them.

The second lens is bridge — where the marketplace connects systems that today operate in parallel. An Alaskan who completes K-12 CTE coursework, earns an Alaska Performance Scholarship to attend a UA campus or AVTEC, participates in ANSEP, completes a STEP-funded industry-specific training, enters registered apprenticeship through a maritime, construction, healthcare, or energy sector sponsor, and gains employer-issued microcredentials currently has those attainments living in different places. The marketplace allows them to travel together in one learner-owned record. Alaska Job Center navigators serving Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants — through the Career Support and Training Services case management network — can see a complete skill picture rather than reconstructing it from a paper trail. The State’s coordination through DOLWD and AWIB at the regional planning level can be operationalized at the learner level through a credential wallet that travels with each Alaskan — including across the State’s distinctive economic regions (Northern, Interior, Western, Southwest, South Central, Southeast) and across seasonal and migratory work patterns.

The third lens is interoperability — where existing Alaska platforms occupy adjacent space and where it is essential that the State’s investments be respected. The Alaska Workforce Investment Board remains the State’s authoritative workforce planning body; the marketplace operates as a learner-side complement that supports AWIB’s regional planning mission. The Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development continues exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives credentials produced through DOLWD-overseen programs. The Alaska Commission on Postsecondary Education remains the State’s authoritative administrator of the Alaska Performance Scholarship, the Alaska Education Grant, and the Alaska Student Aid Portal; the marketplace receives credentials produced at APS- and AEG-funded institutions. ALEXsys remains Alaska’s official labor exchange; the marketplace acts as a complementary skills-and-credentials profile layer that posts to ALEXsys through standard application programming interfaces. The University of Alaska System’s institutional credential issuance systems continue unchanged; the marketplace ingests issued credentials as Open Badges.

The matrix below — included here as a reference Alaska leadership may return to — applies three perspectives to selected initiatives. The Complement column identifies where the marketplace adds capabilities current State investments do not provide. The Bridge column identifies where the marketplace connects presently separate systems. The Interoperability column describes how the marketplace is designed to work alongside existing Alaska platforms.

If the State were to find this conversation worth continuing, three paths forward suggest themselves — each with discrete decision points and none requiring the State to commit beyond the step in front of it. The first is a discovery brief: a joint presentation to the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development, the Alaska Workforce Investment Board, the Alaska Commission on Postsecondary Education, the University of Alaska System leadership, AVTEC, the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development, and — where the State considers it useful — the Alaska Apprenticeship and Training Coordinators Association, Alaska Works Partnership, and regional Native corporation training entities, outlining the marketplace’s open-standards architecture, the at-no-cost foundation, and what a small first cohort could look like. The second is a sector pilot: subject to a State decision to proceed, a focused cohort drawn from one of Alaska’s strategic sectors — health care (with ANTHC and Alaska Primary Care Association employer partners), maritime, construction trades, oil and gas, or mining are natural candidates — in which UA graduates, AVTEC completers, ANSEP STEM students, or registered apprenticeship completers receive a Comprehensive Learner Record aligned with State Alaska-hire priorities and made available through the EBSCOed marketplace. An ANSEP pilot, a regional Native corporation pilot, or an STEP-funded training cohort pilot are other natural starting shapes. The third path would, only at the State’s direction, layer in optional subscription services that integrate the marketplace with ALEXsys, the Eligible Training Provider List, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act case management, registered apprenticeship sponsor records, STEP-funded program data, the Alaska Student Aid Portal, and ACPE’s Alaska Performance Scholarship administration. Any eligibility automation Alaska wished to pursue for Workforce Pell, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, or registered apprenticeship would live in this phase. State funds engage only here, and only to the extent the State chooses to procure subscription services. The first two phases require no new State appropriation.

Several considerations may inform Alaska’s thinking about the partnership. The marketplace’s open-standards foundation ensures the State’s prior investments in the Credential Engine Registry, ALEXsys, the Alaska Student Aid Portal, and the credentialing work of the three University of Alaska universities, AVTEC, and the regional Native corporation training entities continue to operate as they do today; the marketplace exchanges data with those systems rather than displacing them. The no-cost foundation means that the early phases require no new State appropriation; State funding considerations arise only in the third phase, and only for services the State elects to procure. Alaska’s distinctive geography and the seasonal nature of much of the State’s economy may make a learner-held credential wallet that travels with each Alaskan a particularly natural fit.

A further consideration may be relevant to the State’s long-term planning. As the marketplace becomes the trusted system of record for skills and credentials across Alaska, states often find that certain point solutions they currently maintain — case management tooling supporting Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants, Eligible Training Provider List eligibility workflows, standalone skills-assessment platforms, district- or institution-level credential wallets that today operate in isolation, and the patchwork of employer-side job-board and applicant-tracking subscriptions that result when many platforms each serve a slice of the same workforce — become candidates for consolidation or retirement, with associated reductions in ongoing licensing and maintenance costs. EBSCOed offers no opinion on which systems Alaska may wish to retain and which it may wish to consolidate; those decisions belong to the State and the relevant agencies, on the State’s own timeline. We mention the possibility only because the cost-of-ownership story is one states have asked us to address, and because we are glad to support evaluations of that kind when the State considers them useful.

We recognize that Alaska has earned the right to be deliberate. The State’s coordination among the Department of Labor and Workforce Development, the Alaska Workforce Investment Board, the Alaska Commission on Postsecondary Education, the University of Alaska System, AVTEC, the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development, the regional Native corporation employment and training entities, the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, and the State’s Local Workforce Investment Areas reflects decades of careful institution-building under conditions other states do not face. EBSCOed has no interest in disrupting that coordination. Our interest is in offering a free, open-standards layer that makes Alaska’s existing investments — particularly the Alaska Performance Scholarship, STEP, ANSEP, the registered apprenticeship system, and the regional Native corporation training infrastructure — more useful to the Alaskans they serve, across the State’s distinctive geography.

If any of this is worth a conversation, we would welcome one — at the convenience of whoever the State considers the right convening authority, in whatever form would be most useful, and on whatever timeline the State prefers. The contact information below is the appropriate first point of contact. The QR codes that follow provide direct access to the current EBSCOed ecosystem overview, which is kept current as capabilities evolve, and to LER.me itself, where any Alaskan may today create a free Learning and Employment Record in a few minutes.

With great respect for the work Alaska is already doing, and with hope that the next chapter may be written together,

Arizona has, with Executive Order 2024-04 issued in September 2024, made one of the most ambitious workforce coordination commitments in the country. The Talent Ready AZ Initiative — launched simultaneously with the creation of the Governor’s Workforce Cabinet — directs State agencies to align their efforts around connecting Arizonans to the education and training needed to fill the State’s growing industry demand. The Workforce Cabinet, led by the Office of Strategic Initiatives in coordination with the Office of Economic Opportunity, the Department of Economic Security, and the Arizona Commerce Authority, organizes its work through industry- and population-specific working groups shaped by the Workforce Arizona Council. The Executive Order additionally requires State agencies to allocate at least one percent of competitive and formula federal program funds toward workforce development — a structural shift that has already directed more than $25 million toward Arizona workers. The Arizona Community College Workforce Scholarship Program has provided scholarships to 6,200 Arizonans pursuing credentials in high-growth, high-demand fields. The Future48 Workforce Accelerators, led by the Arizona Commerce Authority in partnership with community colleges, deliver customized training for advanced manufacturing, semiconductors, battery manufacturing, aerospace and defense. BuildItAZ aims to double registered apprentices in skilled construction trades by 2026. The Semiconductor Technician Apprenticeship Initiative supports Arizona’s leadership as the chips capital of the United States. The Achieve60AZ goal anchors the State’s attainment vision. Few states have built so much, so deliberately, in service of their workers.

This letter is written in admiration of that work, and with a specific proposition: that the next chapter of Arizona’s education-to-workforce strategy may benefit from a learner-held layer that the State has not yet had occasion to build. EBSCOed is the division of EBSCO Information Services that has spent the last several years constructing that layer — the LER talent marketplace — and offering LER.me to states, learners, educators, and employers at no cost. We write to share what it is, where it complements Arizona’s investments, where it bridges systems that today operate in parallel, and how it is designed to extend rather than disturb the credential infrastructure Arizona has already built.

LER.me is an open-standards platform that gives each individual a portable digital wallet containing their verified learning and employment records. The marketplace is built on the IEEE Learning and Employment Record standard, Open Badges 3.0, and Comprehensive Learner Record 2.0 — the same open standards used across the credentialing field — so the data Arizona already publishes to the Credential Engine Registry, and the credentials issued by Arizona’s community colleges, public and independent universities, CTEDs, K-12 districts, and registered apprenticeship sponsors, remain authoritative and continue to operate exactly as they do today. The marketplace exchanges with those systems; it does not replace them. The platform itself is free to learners, to educators, and to employers, with optional subscription services available to states and large institutions that want deeper integration or custom analytics. The foundation is the foundation, and the foundation is free.

Four capabilities are most relevant to Arizona’s context. The first is free credential issuance: any approved Arizona institution, CTED, apprenticeship sponsor, or employer can issue verifiable credentials into learner-held wallets without licensing fees, supporting institutions of every size and budget on equal footing. The second is an open employer marketplace, in which Arizona employers post opportunities and discover qualified candidates based on verified skills and credentials, again at no cost. The third is public workforce intelligence — dashboards that aggregate credential issuance and labor demand data as linked open data, available to State agencies for planning, reporting, and supporting the Workforce Cabinet’s reporting mission and the Achieve60AZ progress dashboard. The fourth is the contributor framework, which crosswalks issued credentials to occupational standards and to State-defined high-demand categories — including the In-Demand Jobs designated by the Workforce Arizona Council — at the point of issuance, so the demand signal Arizona has invested years in defining is operationalized at the individual level, automatically.

Arizona’s distinctive moment is the convergence of CHIPS Act semiconductor investment, the Workforce Cabinet’s coordinating mandate under EO 2024-04, and the State’s high-demand sector strategy. The Future48 Workforce Accelerators, the Arizona Community College Workforce Scholarship Program, BuildItAZ, the Semiconductor Technician Apprenticeship Initiative, and AZ Healthy Tomorrow together represent one of the most coherent industry-aligned credential strategies in the Mountain West. What sits underneath every one of those investments is the same need: a verifiable, portable, learner-held record that lets each Arizonan carry their Community College Workforce Scholarship credential, their Future48 training, their BuildItAZ apprenticeship milestones, their CTED completions, their AZ Healthy Tomorrow nursing credentials, and their employer-issued microcredentials in one place, recognized by employers, transferable across institutions, and durable beyond any one platform. That record is what the LER marketplace provides, at no cost, on the open standards the State already uses. EBSCOed is not asking Arizona to alter the Workforce Cabinet’s mission — we are offering the learner-side layer that makes Talent Ready AZ visible at each Arizonan’s hand.

There are three lenses through which we have found it useful to discuss this marketplace with state leadership, and we offer them here in the same spirit. The first is complement — where the marketplace adds capability Arizona has not yet had reason to build. Talent Ready AZ measures workforce alignment at the State level through the Workforce Cabinet’s reporting; the marketplace adds the learner-side artifact, a verifiable record each Arizonan carries with them. The Workforce Arizona Council’s In-Demand Jobs designations anchor the State’s labor-market signal; the marketplace lets every Arizona community college, university, CTED, Future48 Accelerator, BuildItAZ sponsor, and approved provider issue those credentials as verifiable Open Badges directly into learner wallets, with In-Demand Jobs designation embedded in the badge metadata at issuance. Arizona Community College Workforce Scholarship recipients — 6,200 already served — face the same opportunity. None of this displaces Arizona’s current investments. All of it makes them more visible, more durable, and more useful to the Arizonans who earn them.

The second lens is bridge — where the marketplace connects systems that today operate in parallel. An Arizonan who attends a CTED in high school, uses the Arizona Community College Workforce Scholarship to earn a community college credential, participates in a Future48 Workforce Accelerator, completes a BuildItAZ or Semiconductor Technician apprenticeship, and gains employer-issued microcredentials currently has those attainments living in different places. The marketplace allows them to travel together in one learner-owned record. Arizona’s Department of Economic Security and Local Workforce Development Board navigators serving Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants can see a complete skill picture rather than reconstructing it from a paper trail. The Workforce Cabinet’s industry- and population-specific working groups can work from a unified learner-credential view rather than reconciling separate program records.

The third lens is interoperability — where existing Arizona platforms occupy adjacent space and where it is essential that the State’s investments be respected. The Workforce Arizona Council remains the State workforce development board under WIOA and the authoritative body for State workforce policy direction; the marketplace operates as a learner-side complement that supports the Council’s high-demand designations. The Workforce Cabinet remains the State’s authoritative coordinating body under EO 2024-04; the marketplace operates alongside the Cabinet by providing the learner-side credential layer the Cabinet’s work points toward. Arizona@Work labor exchange functions remain Arizona’s official employment channels; the marketplace acts as a complementary skills-and-credentials profile layer that posts to Arizona@Work systems through standard application programming interfaces. The Arizona Commerce Authority’s Future48 program continues exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives credentials produced through Future48 partnerships.

The matrix below — included here as a reference Arizona leadership may return to — applies three perspectives to selected initiatives. The Complement column identifies where the marketplace adds capabilities current State investments do not provide. The Bridge column identifies where the marketplace connects presently separate systems. The Interoperability column describes how the marketplace is designed to work alongside existing Arizona platforms.

If the State were to find this conversation worth continuing, three paths forward suggest themselves — each with discrete decision points and none requiring the State to commit beyond the step in front of it. The first is a discovery brief: a joint presentation to the Office of Strategic Initiatives, the Office of Economic Opportunity, the Department of Economic Security, the Arizona Commerce Authority, the Workforce Arizona Council, the Workforce Cabinet, and — where the State considers it useful — community college and CTED leadership, outlining the marketplace’s open-standards architecture, the at-no-cost foundation, and what a small first cohort could look like. The second is a sector pilot: subject to a State decision to proceed, a focused cohort drawn from one of Arizona’s strategic sectors — semiconductors, advanced manufacturing, healthcare, construction, or cyber security are natural candidates — in which Future48 Accelerator graduates, BuildItAZ apprenticeship completers, or Arizona Community College Workforce Scholarship recipients receive a Comprehensive Learner Record aligned with Workforce Arizona Council In-Demand Jobs designations and made available through the EBSCOed marketplace. The third path would, only at the State’s direction, layer in optional subscription services that integrate the marketplace with Arizona@Work, the Eligible Training Provider List, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act case management, registered apprenticeship sponsor records, Future48 program data, and the Workforce Cabinet’s reporting infrastructure. Any eligibility automation Arizona wished to pursue for Workforce Pell, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, or registered apprenticeship would live in this phase. State funds engage only here, and only to the extent the State chooses to procure subscription services. The first two phases require no new State appropriation.

Several considerations may inform Arizona’s thinking about the partnership. The marketplace’s open-standards foundation ensures the State’s prior investments in the Credential Engine Registry, Arizona@Work, and the credentialing work of the community colleges, the three State universities, CTEDs, and independent institutions continue to operate as they do today; the marketplace exchanges data with those systems rather than displacing them. The no-cost foundation means that the early phases require no new State appropriation; State funding considerations arise only in the third phase, and only for services the State elects to procure. Arizona’s distinctive arrangement — a Workforce Cabinet convening more than a dozen agencies and offices under EO 2024-04, with the Workforce Arizona Council setting direction — may benefit from engagement at both the State and Local Workforce Development Board level during any broader rollout.

A further consideration may be relevant to the State’s long-term planning. As the marketplace becomes the trusted system of record for skills and credentials across Arizona, states often find that certain point solutions they currently maintain — case management tooling supporting Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants, Eligible Training Provider List eligibility workflows, standalone skills-assessment platforms, district- or institution-level credential wallets that today operate in isolation, and the patchwork of employer-side job-board and applicant-tracking subscriptions that result when many platforms each serve a slice of the same workforce — become candidates for consolidation or retirement, with associated reductions in ongoing licensing and maintenance costs. EBSCOed offers no opinion on which systems Arizona may wish to retain and which it may wish to consolidate; those decisions belong to the State and the relevant agencies, on the State’s own timeline. We mention the possibility only because the cost-of-ownership story is one states have asked us to address, and because we are glad to support evaluations of that kind when the State considers them useful.

We recognize that Arizona has earned the right to be deliberate. The State’s coordination among the Office of Strategic Initiatives, the Office of Economic Opportunity, the Department of Economic Security, the Arizona Commerce Authority, the Workforce Arizona Council, the Workforce Cabinet’s working groups, the Arizona Board of Regents, the State Board of Education, the community college districts, the CTEDs, and the Local Workforce Development Boards reflects years of careful institution-building — and EO 2024-04 represents an ambitious commitment to making that coordination serve Arizona workers and employers more directly. EBSCOed has no interest in disrupting that coordination. Our interest is in offering a free, open-standards layer that makes Arizona’s existing investments — particularly Future48, BuildItAZ, the Semiconductor Technician Apprenticeship Initiative, and the Arizona Community College Workforce Scholarship — more useful to the Arizonans they serve.

If any of this is worth a conversation, we would welcome one — at the convenience of whoever the State considers the right convening authority, in whatever form would be most useful, and on whatever timeline the State prefers. The contact information below is the appropriate first point of contact. The QR codes that follow provide direct access to the current EBSCOed ecosystem overview, which is kept current as capabilities evolve, and to LER.me itself, where any Arizonan may today create a free Learning and Employment Record in a few minutes.

With great respect for the work Arizona is already doing, and with hope that the next chapter may be written together,

Arkansas has, under Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, built one of the most consequential State-level workforce architectures in the country and is positioned to lead nationwide as a result. The Arkansas Department of Commerce, under Secretary Hugh McDonald, anchors the State’s workforce coordination, with Arkansas Workforce Connections — designated under Act 695 in March 2025 as the State Apprenticeship Agency — serving as the hub of the State’s workforce development system under Executive Director Cody Waits. The Office of Skills Development (OSD), an office within Arkansas Workforce Connections under Director Stephanie Isaacs, makes strategic investments in Arkansas’s workforce through OSD Training Grants supporting Grow Our Own (for businesses with 250 or fewer employees), Customized Technical, and Professional Development tracks. Arkansas LAUNCH, the State’s skills-based platform connecting jobseekers with opportunities and helping employers find skilled workers, has engaged nearly 12,000 users, with 125 employers posting almost 6,000 job opportunities and more than 100,000 searches conducted statewide. In December 2025, Arkansas was awarded a four-year, $35.8 million cooperative agreement from the U.S. Department of Labor to lead a nationwide expansion of registered apprenticeship programs in advanced manufacturing through the newly established American Manufacturing Apprenticeship Incentive Fund — making Arkansas the State leading nationwide apprenticeship expansion. Governor Sanders' February 2023 Executive Order establishing the Chief Workforce Officer role (Mike Rogers) and Workforce Cabinet, the Arkansas Workforce Strategy report, the LEARNS Act and ACCESS Act for K-12 and higher education reform, the Arkansas Builders & Contractors Association, the Arkansas Construction Education Foundation, Apprenticely, and the Arkansas Division of Workforce Services together extend the system from K-12 through post-secondary, registered apprenticeship, and into employment. Few states have built so much, so deliberately, in service of their workers.

This letter is written in admiration of that work, and with a specific proposition: that the next chapter of Arkansas’s education-to-workforce strategy may benefit from a learner-held layer that the State has not yet had occasion to build. EBSCOed is the division of EBSCO Information Services that has spent the last several years constructing that layer — the LER talent marketplace — and offering LER.me to states, learners, educators, and employers at no cost. We write to share what it is, where it complements Arkansas’s investments, where it bridges systems that today operate in parallel, and how it is designed to extend rather than disturb the credential infrastructure Arkansas has already built.

LER.me is an open-standards platform that gives each individual a portable digital wallet containing their verified learning and employment records. The marketplace is built on the IEEE Learning and Employment Record standard, Open Badges 3.0, and Comprehensive Learner Record 2.0 — the same open standards used across the credentialing field — so the data Arkansas already publishes to the Credential Engine Registry, and the credentials issued by the Arkansas community college and technical institute system, the University of Arkansas System, the Arkansas State University System, the State’s independent four-year institutions, K-12 districts, and registered apprenticeship sponsors, remain authoritative and continue to operate exactly as they do today. The marketplace exchanges with those systems; it does not replace them. The platform itself is free to learners, to educators, and to employers, with optional subscription services available to states and large institutions that want deeper integration or custom analytics. The foundation is the foundation, and the foundation is free.

Four capabilities are most relevant to Arkansas’s context. The first is free credential issuance: any approved Arkansas institution, apprenticeship sponsor, or employer can issue verifiable credentials into learner-held wallets without licensing fees, supporting institutions of every size and budget on equal footing. The second is an open employer marketplace, in which Arkansas employers post opportunities and discover qualified candidates based on verified skills and credentials, again at no cost. The third is public workforce intelligence — dashboards that aggregate credential issuance and labor demand data as linked open data, available to State agencies for planning, reporting, and supporting Arkansas Workforce Connections, the Office of Skills Development, and Workforce Cabinet reporting missions. The fourth is the contributor framework, which crosswalks issued credentials to occupational standards and to Arkansas Workforce Strategy and OSD priority designations at the point of issuance, so the demand signal Arkansas has invested years in defining is operationalized at the individual level, automatically.

Arkansas’s distinctive achievement is being awarded the role of national lead State for advanced manufacturing apprenticeship expansion under the American Manufacturing Apprenticeship Incentive Fund. The four-year, $35.8 million federal cooperative agreement reflects U.S. Department of Labor confidence in Arkansas’s ability to modernize apprenticeship systems, reduce administrative barriers for employers, and scale Registered Apprenticeship adoption — a confidence Arkansas earned through Act 695’s designation of Arkansas Workforce Connections as the State Apprenticeship Agency, through the Arkansas LAUNCH platform’s nearly 12,000 users and 6,000 employer-posted jobs, through OSD’s strategic training grants, and through Governor Sanders' Workforce Cabinet coordination. The Arkansas Workforce Strategy report — emerging from the Chief Workforce Officer role established by the February 2023 Executive Order — specifically calls for identifying which skills are most important to Arkansas employers and rewarding meaningful credentials such as certifications. The strategy and the State’s emerging credential registry work explicitly contemplate learning and employment records as part of the architecture. What sits underneath every one of those structures is the same need: a verifiable, portable, learner-held record that lets each Arkansan carry their high school CTE credential, their community college or technical institute attainment, their University of Arkansas System or Arkansas State University System degree, their Arkansas LAUNCH-discovered employer credential, their registered apprenticeship milestones, their American Manufacturing Apprenticeship Incentive Fund-supported attainment, their OSD-funded training credential, and their employer-issued microcredentials in one place, recognized by employers, transferable across institutions, and durable beyond any one platform. That record is what the LER marketplace provides, at no cost, on the open standards Arkansas has already begun to adopt. EBSCOed is not asking Arkansas to alter Arkansas LAUNCH or the American Manufacturing Apprenticeship Incentive Fund leadership role — we are offering the learner-side layer that lets the credentials Arkansas is now positioned to produce at national scale travel with each Arkansan in a verifiable wallet, complementing the work the State has already begun.

There are three lenses through which we have found it useful to discuss this marketplace with State leadership, and we offer them here in the same spirit. The first is complement — where the marketplace adds capability Arkansas has not yet had reason to build at scale. Arkansas LAUNCH operates as the State’s skills-based platform connecting jobseekers and employers; the marketplace adds the learner-side artifact, a verifiable record each Arkansan carries with them, complementing Arkansas LAUNCH’s matching capability with a portable credential wallet. OSD’s Training Grants fund Grow Our Own, Customized Technical, and Professional Development training delivered through community college and technical institute partners, university partners, Apprenticely, and Arkansas Builders & Contractors Association programs; the marketplace gives each grant recipient and training provider a free way to issue credentials as verifiable Open Badges directly into learner wallets, with OSD funding designation and American Manufacturing Apprenticeship Incentive Fund designation preserved at issuance where applicable. None of this displaces Arkansas’s current investments. All of it makes them more visible, more durable, and more useful to the Arkansans who earn them.

The second lens is bridge — where the marketplace connects systems that today operate in parallel. An Arkansan who completes high school CTE, earns a community college or technical institute credential, participates in an Apprenticely apprenticeship in IT or financial services, completes an Arkansas Builders & Contractors Association construction apprenticeship, completes an American Manufacturing Apprenticeship Incentive Fund-supported manufacturing program, transfers to the University of Arkansas System or Arkansas State University System, uses Arkansas LAUNCH to find employment, and gains employer-issued microcredentials at companies like Simmons Bank, Metova, Hytrol, or Arvest Bank currently has those attainments living in different places. The marketplace allows them to travel together in one learner-owned record. Arkansas Division of Workforce Services navigators serving Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants can see a complete skill picture rather than reconstructing it from a paper trail. The connective tissue Arkansas Workforce Connections and the Office of Skills Development provide at the State level can be operationalized at the learner level through a credential wallet that travels with each Arkansan.

The third lens is interoperability — where existing Arkansas platforms occupy adjacent space and where it is essential that the State’s investments be respected. Arkansas Workforce Connections — the State’s designated State Apprenticeship Agency under Act 695 — remains the State’s authoritative coordinating body; the marketplace operates as a learner-side complement that supports Arkansas Workforce Connections’s mission. The Office of Skills Development continues exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives credentials produced through OSD-funded training with OSD funding designation preserved at issuance. The Arkansas Division of Workforce Services continues exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives credentials produced through DWS-overseen WIOA programs. Arkansas LAUNCH continues exactly as it operates today; the marketplace acts as a complementary learner-held credential wallet layer that posts to Arkansas LAUNCH and similar systems through standard application programming interfaces, with Arkansas LAUNCH’s matching capability extended to the marketplace’s verified credentials.

The matrix below — included here as a reference Arkansas leadership may return to — applies three perspectives to selected initiatives. The Complement column identifies where the marketplace adds capabilities current State investments do not provide. The Bridge column identifies where the marketplace connects presently separate systems. The Interoperability column describes how the marketplace is designed to work alongside existing Arkansas platforms.

If the State were to find this conversation worth continuing, three paths forward suggest themselves — each with discrete decision points and none requiring the State to commit beyond the step in front of it. The first is a discovery brief: a joint presentation to the Arkansas Department of Commerce, Arkansas Workforce Connections, the Office of Skills Development, the Arkansas Division of Workforce Services, the Arkansas Department of Education, the Arkansas Department of Higher Education, the University of Arkansas System, the Arkansas State University System, and — where the State considers it useful — Chief Workforce Officer Mike Rogers, the Workforce Cabinet, community college and technical institute leadership, Arkansas Builders & Contractors Association, Apprenticely, and employer partners participating in the American Manufacturing Apprenticeship Incentive Fund, outlining the marketplace’s open-standards architecture, the at-no-cost foundation, and what a small first cohort could look like. The second is a sector pilot: subject to a State decision to proceed, a focused cohort drawn from one of Arkansas’s strategic sectors — advanced manufacturing (with American Manufacturing Apprenticeship Incentive Fund partners and the Steelmaking Bootcamp in Mississippi County), IT and cybersecurity (with Simmons Bank, Apprenticely, and similar partners), construction trades (with Arkansas Builders & Contractors Association), or healthcare are natural candidates — in which OSD Training Grant participants, Arkansas LAUNCH-engaged jobseekers, American Manufacturing Apprenticeship Incentive Fund participants, or registered apprenticeship completers receive a Comprehensive Learner Record made available through the EBSCOed marketplace. The third path would, only at the State’s direction, layer in optional subscription services that integrate the marketplace with Arkansas LAUNCH, the Eligible Training Provider List, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act case management, registered apprenticeship sponsor records, OSD grant data, and the American Manufacturing Apprenticeship Incentive Fund administration pipeline. Any eligibility automation Arkansas wished to pursue for Workforce Pell, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, or registered apprenticeship would live in this phase. State funds engage only here, and only to the extent the State chooses to procure subscription services. The first two phases require no new State appropriation.

Several considerations may inform Arkansas’s thinking about the partnership. The marketplace’s open-standards foundation ensures the State’s prior investments in the Credential Engine Registry, Arkansas LAUNCH, and the credentialing work of Arkansas community colleges and technical institutes, the University of Arkansas System, the Arkansas State University System, and the State’s independent institutions continue to operate as they do today; the marketplace exchanges data with those systems rather than displacing them. The no-cost foundation means that the early phases require no new State appropriation; State funding considerations arise only in the third phase, and only for services the State elects to procure. Arkansas’s distinctive operational position — leading nationwide advanced manufacturing apprenticeship expansion under the $35.8 million American Manufacturing Apprenticeship Incentive Fund cooperative agreement, with Arkansas Workforce Connections designated as State Apprenticeship Agency under Act 695, and with Arkansas LAUNCH already operational as a skills-based platform — may make Arkansas a particularly natural fit for a learner-side marketplace that scales credential portability across the multi-state apprenticeship expansion Arkansas now leads.

A further consideration may be relevant to the State’s long-term planning. As the marketplace becomes the trusted system of record for skills and credentials across Arkansas, states often find that certain point solutions they currently maintain — case management tooling supporting Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants, Eligible Training Provider List eligibility workflows, standalone skills-assessment platforms, district- or institution-level credential wallets that today operate in isolation, and the patchwork of employer-side job-board and applicant-tracking subscriptions that result when many platforms each serve a slice of the same workforce — become candidates for consolidation or retirement, with associated reductions in ongoing licensing and maintenance costs. EBSCOed offers no opinion on which systems Arkansas may wish to retain and which it may wish to consolidate; those decisions belong to the State and the relevant agencies, on the State’s own timeline. We mention the possibility only because the cost-of-ownership story is one states have asked us to address, and because we are glad to support evaluations of that kind when the State considers them useful.

We recognize that Arkansas has earned the right to be deliberate. The State’s coordination among the Department of Commerce, Arkansas Workforce Connections, the Office of Skills Development, the Arkansas Division of Workforce Services, the Department of Education, the Department of Higher Education, the University of Arkansas System, the Arkansas State University System, the State’s community colleges and technical institutes, Arkansas Builders & Contractors Association, Arkansas Construction Education Foundation, Apprenticely, and the Workforce Cabinet reflects years of careful institution-building under Governor Sanders' direction. EBSCOed has no interest in disrupting that coordination. Our interest is in offering a free, open-standards layer that makes Arkansas’s existing investments — particularly Act 695, the American Manufacturing Apprenticeship Incentive Fund national leadership role, Arkansas LAUNCH, the Office of Skills Development Training Grants, the Workforce Cabinet, and the Arkansas Workforce Strategy — more useful to the Arkansans they serve, and to extend Arkansas’s leadership beyond its borders as the State implements the multi-state apprenticeship expansion.

If any of this is worth a conversation, we would welcome one — at the convenience of whoever the State considers the right convening authority, in whatever form would be most useful, and on whatever timeline the State prefers. The contact information below is the appropriate first point of contact. The QR codes that follow provide direct access to the current EBSCOed ecosystem overview, which is kept current as capabilities evolve, and to LER.me itself, where any Arkansan may today create a free Learning and Employment Record in a few minutes.

With great respect for the work Arkansas is already doing, and with hope that the next chapter may be written together,

California has, with the Master Plan for Career Education unveiled in April 2025 and the proposed Career Passport initiative in the 2025-26 budget, made one of the most explicit state commitments to Learning and Employment Records infrastructure in the country. The Career Passport — described by the Governor’s office as a digital tool combining academic records with verified credentials from work, military service, training programs, and more, and explicitly named as an LER — is proposed at $50 million within a $100 million Master Plan investment. The Master Plan organizes State workforce strategy across six focus areas including a statewide interagency council, the Career Passport, expanded Credit for Prior Learning, career pathways for high school and college, a no-wrong-door workforce training system, and expanded access and affordability. Vision 2030 — refreshed in the July 2025 Edition by the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office — anchors the postsecondary side, with a commitment to the 116 California community colleges' 2.2 million students and 6.8 million additional adults ready to earn a credential. California is also on track for the Governor’s 500,000 apprenticeship goal by 2029, with more than 190,000 completions since 2019 and $221 million invested last fiscal year. Thirteen regional collaboratives — including North State Together — coordinate K-12 districts, the State’s three public higher education systems, and local employers. CalHR has eliminated college-degree requirements for tens of thousands of State jobs, with a target of 62,000. The California Cradle-to-Career data system anchors longitudinal analysis. Few states have built so much, so deliberately, in service of their workers.

This letter is written in admiration of that work, and with a specific proposition: that the next chapter of California’s education-to-workforce strategy may benefit from a learner-held layer that the State has not yet had occasion to build. EBSCOed is the division of EBSCO Information Services that has spent the last several years constructing that layer — the LER talent marketplace — and offering LER.me to states, learners, educators, and employers at no cost. We write to share what it is, where it complements California’s investments, where it bridges systems that today operate in parallel, and how it is designed to extend rather than disturb the credential infrastructure California has already built.

LER.me is an open-standards platform that gives each individual a portable digital wallet containing their verified learning and employment records. The marketplace is built on the IEEE Learning and Employment Record standard, Open Badges 3.0, and Comprehensive Learner Record 2.0 — the same open standards used across the credentialing field — so the data California already publishes to the Credential Engine Registry, the verified records the Career Passport will produce, and the credentials issued by the California Community Colleges, CSU, UC, K-12 districts, AICCU institutions, and registered apprenticeship sponsors all remain authoritative and continue to operate exactly as they do today. The marketplace exchanges with those systems; it does not replace them. The platform itself is free to learners, to educators, and to employers, with optional subscription services available to states and large institutions that want deeper integration or custom analytics. The foundation is the foundation, and the foundation is free.

Four capabilities are most relevant to California’s context. The first is free credential issuance: any approved California institution, apprenticeship sponsor, or employer can issue verifiable credentials into learner-held wallets without licensing fees, supporting institutions of every size and budget on equal footing — a particular benefit given the scale of the State’s 116-college community college system and the breadth of the three public higher education systems. The second is an open employer marketplace, in which California employers post opportunities and discover qualified candidates based on verified skills and credentials, again at no cost. The third is public workforce intelligence — dashboards that aggregate credential issuance and labor demand data as linked open data, available to State agencies for planning, reporting, and supporting Cradle-to-Career analytic functions. The fourth is the contributor framework, which crosswalks issued credentials to occupational standards and to State-defined Master Plan high-demand designations at the point of issuance, so the demand signal California has invested years in defining is operationalized at the individual level, automatically.

California’s distinctive achievement is the explicit naming of an LER as State workforce strategy. The Master Plan for Career Education describes the Career Passport in terms — "verified academic records and confirmation of mastered competencies from a trusted third party," a tool to "shift hiring practices toward valuing skills over just degrees" — that match the LER definition that underpins LER.me and the marketplace. The Governor’s office press materials explicitly note that the Career Passport "is also known as a Learning and Employment Record (LER)." EBSCOed is not approaching California to propose what an LER is; California has already defined it. What we are offering is an open-standards implementation of the Career Passport vision — built on the IEEE LER standard, Open Badges 3.0, and CLR 2.0, made available at no cost to the State, to learners, to community colleges, to CSU and UC institutions, to the AICCU, and to California employers. The Master Plan calls for the Career Passport. EBSCOed has spent the last several years building exactly that, on the open standards California’s existing credential infrastructure already uses.

There are three lenses through which we have found it useful to discuss this marketplace with state leadership, and we offer them here in the same spirit. The first is complement — where the marketplace adds capability California is in the process of building under the Master Plan. The proposed $50 million Career Passport investment funds State-level architecture; the marketplace’s open-standards layer can support that architecture at no additional cost, accelerating delivery. Vision 2030’s Credit for Prior Learning Workplan calls for scaling CPL across the 116 California community colleges; the marketplace gives each community college a free way to issue CPL credentials as verifiable Open Badges directly into learner wallets, with CPL designation embedded in badge metadata at issuance. The 500,000 apprenticeship goal benefits from portable apprenticeship credentials carried by each apprentice. K-12 graduates from the 13 regional collaboratives face the same opportunity. None of this displaces California’s current investments. All of it makes them more visible, more durable, and more useful to the Californians who earn them.

The second lens is bridge — where the marketplace connects systems that today operate in parallel. A Californian who participates in a regional collaborative work-based learning experience, attends a community college funded under California’s strong financial aid programs, transfers to CSU or UC, earns Credit for Prior Learning for military service or workplace experience, completes a registered apprenticeship, and gains employer-issued microcredentials currently has those attainments living in different places. The marketplace allows them to travel together in one learner-owned record — exactly what the Master Plan describes the Career Passport accomplishing. America’s Job Center of California navigators serving Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants can see a complete skill picture rather than reconstructing it from a paper trail. The Cradle-to-Career data system’s longitudinal architecture at the State level can be paired with a learner-held credential wallet at the individual level.

The third lens is interoperability — where existing California platforms occupy adjacent space and where it is essential that the State’s investments be respected. The California Cradle-to-Career data system remains the State’s authoritative cross-agency longitudinal data infrastructure; the marketplace operates as a complementary, learner-side layer that gives each Californian a portable record while C2C continues to serve State analytic functions. The California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office, the CSU Chancellor’s Office, and the UC Office of the President remain their respective systems' authoritative coordinating bodies; the marketplace receives credentials issued by the institutions of each system. California’s Department of Industrial Relations Division of Apprenticeship Standards continues exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives credentials issued through DAS-registered apprenticeship programs. CalJOBS remains California’s official labor exchange; the marketplace acts as a complementary skills-and-credentials profile layer that posts to CalJOBS through standard application programming interfaces. The Career Passport that the Master Plan envisions, if implemented through a different vendor or built in-house by the State, can interoperate with the LER marketplace through the same open standards both rely on.

The matrix below — included here as a reference California leadership may return to — applies three perspectives to selected initiatives. The Complement column identifies where the marketplace adds capabilities current State investments do not provide. The Bridge column identifies where the marketplace connects presently separate systems. The Interoperability column describes how the marketplace is designed to work alongside existing California platforms.

If the State were to find this conversation worth continuing, three paths forward suggest themselves — each with discrete decision points and none requiring the State to commit beyond the step in front of it. The first is a discovery brief: a joint presentation to the Office of the Governor, the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office, the CSU Chancellor’s Office, the UC Office of the President, the Labor & Workforce Development Agency, the California Workforce Development Board, the California Department of Education, CalHR, and — where the State considers it useful — AICCU and regional collaborative leadership, outlining the marketplace’s open-standards architecture, the at-no-cost foundation, and how the marketplace can support the Career Passport vision while the State pursues its own implementation path. The second is a sector pilot: subject to a State decision to proceed, a focused cohort drawn from one of the Master Plan’s high-demand sectors — healthcare, education, advanced manufacturing, semiconductors, or clean energy are natural candidates — in which California Community College CPL recipients, registered apprenticeship completers, or regional collaborative work-based learning graduates receive a Comprehensive Learner Record aligned with Master Plan designations and made available through the EBSCOed marketplace. The third path would, only at the State’s direction, layer in optional subscription services that integrate the marketplace with CalJOBS, the Eligible Training Provider List, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act case management, DAS-registered apprenticeship sponsor records, the Cradle-to-Career data system, and the Career Passport program infrastructure as it is built. Any eligibility automation California wished to pursue for Workforce Pell, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, or registered apprenticeship would live in this phase. State funds engage only here, and only to the extent the State chooses to procure subscription services. The first two phases require no new State appropriation.

Several considerations may inform California’s thinking about the partnership. The marketplace’s open-standards foundation ensures the State’s prior investments in the Credential Engine Registry, CalJOBS, the Cradle-to-Career data system, and the credentialing work of the 116 California community colleges, the 23 CSU campuses, the 10 UC campuses, the AICCU institutions, and the State’s registered apprenticeship sponsors continue to operate as they do today; the marketplace exchanges data with those systems rather than displacing them. The no-cost foundation means that the early phases require no new State appropriation; State funding considerations arise only in the third phase, and only for services the State elects to procure. California’s distinctive moment — the Master Plan for Career Education’s explicit naming of the Career Passport as an LER and the $100 million Master Plan budget proposal — may make the present an unusually direct moment for the State to engage with an open-standards LER implementation aligned with the State’s stated direction.

A further consideration may be relevant to the State’s long-term planning. As the marketplace becomes the trusted system of record for skills and credentials across California, states often find that certain point solutions they currently maintain — case management tooling supporting Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants, Eligible Training Provider List eligibility workflows, standalone skills-assessment platforms, district- or institution-level credential wallets that today operate in isolation, and the patchwork of employer-side job-board and applicant-tracking subscriptions that result when many platforms each serve a slice of the same workforce — become candidates for consolidation or retirement, with associated reductions in ongoing licensing and maintenance costs. EBSCOed offers no opinion on which systems California may wish to retain and which it may wish to consolidate; those decisions belong to the State and the relevant agencies, on the State’s own timeline. We mention the possibility only because the cost-of-ownership story is one states have asked us to address, and because we are glad to support evaluations of that kind when the State considers them useful.

We recognize that California has earned the right to be deliberate. The State’s coordination among the Office of the Governor, the Labor & Workforce Development Agency, the California Workforce Development Board, the three public higher education systems (the California Community Colleges, the CSU, and the UC), the AICCU institutions, the California Department of Education, the California Department of Industrial Relations Division of Apprenticeship Standards, CalHR, the 13 regional collaboratives, and Local Workforce Development Boards reflects years of careful institution-building — and the Master Plan for Career Education represents one of the most ambitious workforce alignment commitments any state has made in recent memory. EBSCOed has no interest in disrupting that coordination. Our interest is in offering a free, open-standards layer that operationalizes the Master Plan’s Career Passport vision at the level of the Californians it serves.

If any of this is worth a conversation, we would welcome one — at the convenience of whoever the State considers the right convening authority, in whatever form would be most useful, and on whatever timeline the State prefers. The contact information below is the appropriate first point of contact. The QR codes that follow provide direct access to the current EBSCOed ecosystem overview, which is kept current as capabilities evolve, and to LER.me itself, where any Californian may today create a free Learning and Employment Record in a few minutes.

With great respect for the work California is already doing, and with hope that the next chapter may be written together,

Colorado has, with Executive Order D 2025-006 issued in May 2025, made one of the most ambitious commitments any state has made to redesigning its postsecondary talent development system. The order — Reimagining the Future of the Postsecondary Talent Development System in Colorado — directs the Departments of Education, Higher Education, Labor and Employment, and Regulatory Affairs to work with the Office of Economic Development and International Trade on a unified, learner-centered talent ecosystem, building on the foundation established by HB21-1330 and the HB22-1215 Task Force. The December 2025 EO report frames the vision in skills-driven, no-wrong-doors terms, and Opportunity@Work has called Colorado’s emerging approach "a new benchmark for states working to expand opportunity for all workers." The Colorado Workforce Development Council’s Quality Career Pathways Framework — released in 2025 — anchors industry-aligned credential planning across the State, supported by Colorado’s annual Talent Pipeline Report, which finds that 77 percent of Top Jobs in 2025 typically require a postsecondary credential for entry. My Colorado Journey provides the State’s free public resource for career exploration. The Colorado Community College System and the Colorado Department of Higher Education partner with CWDC to refresh career pathways annually. Opportunity Now grants, Reisher Scholars partnerships, the Education to Employment Alliance, and tax incentives for apprenticeship-offering employers round out an extraordinary mid-decade investment. Few states have built so much, so deliberately, in service of their workers.

This letter is written in admiration of that work, and with a specific proposition: that the next chapter of Colorado’s education-to-workforce strategy may benefit from a learner-held layer that the State has not yet had occasion to build. EBSCOed is the division of EBSCO Information Services that has spent the last several years constructing that layer — the LER talent marketplace — and offering LER.me to states, learners, educators, and employers at no cost. We write to share what it is, where it complements Colorado’s investments, where it bridges systems that today operate in parallel, and how it is designed to extend rather than disturb the credential infrastructure Colorado has already built.

LER.me is an open-standards platform that gives each individual a portable digital wallet containing their verified learning and employment records. The marketplace is built on the IEEE Learning and Employment Record standard, Open Badges 3.0, and Comprehensive Learner Record 2.0 — the same open standards used across the credentialing field — so the data Colorado already publishes to the Credential Engine Registry, and the credentials issued by the Colorado Community College System, the State’s four-year institutions, K-12 districts, and registered apprenticeship sponsors, remain authoritative and continue to operate exactly as they do today. The marketplace exchanges with those systems; it does not replace them. The platform itself is free to learners, to educators, and to employers, with optional subscription services available to states and large institutions that want deeper integration or custom analytics. The foundation is the foundation, and the foundation is free.

Four capabilities are most relevant to Colorado’s context. The first is free credential issuance: any approved Colorado institution, apprenticeship sponsor, or employer can issue verifiable credentials into learner-held wallets without licensing fees, supporting institutions of every size and budget on equal footing. The second is an open employer marketplace, in which Colorado employers post opportunities and discover qualified candidates based on verified skills and credentials, again at no cost. The third is public workforce intelligence — dashboards that aggregate credential issuance and labor demand data as linked open data, available to State agencies for planning, reporting, and informing future iterations of the Talent Pipeline Report. The fourth is the contributor framework, which crosswalks issued credentials to occupational standards and to State-defined Top Jobs at the point of issuance, so the demand signal Colorado has invested years in defining — through CWDC, the Talent Pipeline Report, and the Quality Career Pathways Framework — is operationalized at the individual level, automatically.

Colorado is, by Executive Order, in the middle of one of the most consequential structural redesigns in American workforce policy. EO D 2025-006 explicitly directs the State to move from a program-centric model to a learner-centric one — a transition every state will eventually face, but which Colorado is the first to make a Governor’s directive. The December 2025 EO report names the goal in unambiguous terms: a system with "no wrong doors and no dead ends," centering skills and learners over institutional silos. The Quality Career Pathways Framework operationalizes that vision at the program level. What sits underneath every one of those moves is the same need: a verifiable, portable, learner-held record that lets each Coloradan carry their CCCS credential, their four-year degree progress, their registered apprenticeship milestones, their Opportunity Now-funded training, and their employer-issued microcredentials in one place, recognized by employers, transferable across institutions, and durable beyond any one platform. That record is what the LER marketplace provides, at no cost, on the open standards the State already uses. EBSCOed is not asking Colorado to alter the direction of EO D 2025-006 — we are offering the learner-side layer that operationalizes the EO’s learner-centric vision at the credential level.

There are three lenses through which we have found it useful to discuss this marketplace with state leadership, and we offer them here in the same spirit. The first is complement — where the marketplace adds capability Colorado has not yet had reason to build. EO D 2025-006 and the December 2025 report frame the strategic destination — a learner-centric, no-wrong-doors talent system; the marketplace provides the artifact that makes that vision visible at the learner level, a verifiable record each Coloradan carries with them. The Quality Career Pathways Framework defines what counts as a quality pathway from Employer Needs and Skills Alignment through Education and Training Program Quality, Clear Pathways and Navigation, and Outcomes; the marketplace gives every CCCS institution, four-year college, registered apprenticeship sponsor, Opportunity Now grantee, and employer partner a free way to issue credentials aligned to those pathways as verifiable Open Badges directly into learner wallets, with Top Jobs alignment embedded in the badge metadata at issuance. None of this displaces Colorado’s current investments. All of it makes them more visible, more durable, and more useful to the Coloradans who earn them.

The second lens is bridge — where the marketplace connects systems that today operate in parallel. A Coloradan who participates in K-12 work-based learning under the HB22-1215 framework, attends a CCCS college, uses Opportunity Now funding for sector-aligned training, completes a registered apprenticeship under the BuildItAZ-equivalent Colorado apprenticeship structures, and gains employer-issued microcredentials currently has those attainments living in different places — the State’s three-tiered system (CDE, CDHE, CDLE) has, by the Governor’s own acknowledgement, struggled to coordinate them. The marketplace allows them to travel together in one learner-owned record. Colorado’s American Job Center navigators serving Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants can see a complete skill picture rather than reconstructing it from a paper trail. The connective tissue EO D 2025-006 envisions at the agency level can be operationalized at the learner level now, while administrative redesigns proceed.

The third lens is interoperability — where existing Colorado platforms occupy adjacent space and where it is essential that the State’s investments be respected. My Colorado Journey remains the State’s authoritative free public resource for career exploration; the marketplace operates as a complementary credential-carrying layer that supports learners who use My Colorado Journey to plan, then earn the credentials the marketplace makes portable. The Talent Pipeline Report remains CWDC’s authoritative annual analysis; the marketplace’s public workforce intelligence dashboards complement that report at the credential-issuance level. Connecting Colorado and CDLE labor exchange functions remain Colorado’s official employment channels; the marketplace acts as a complementary skills-and-credentials profile layer that posts to those systems through standard application programming interfaces. The Quality Career Pathways Framework remains CWDC’s authoritative pathway-quality standard; the marketplace operates as an issuance-layer complement.

The matrix below — included here as a reference Colorado leadership may return to — applies three perspectives to selected initiatives. The Complement column identifies where the marketplace adds capabilities current State investments do not provide. The Bridge column identifies where the marketplace connects presently separate systems. The Interoperability column describes how the marketplace is designed to work alongside existing Colorado platforms.

If the State were to find this conversation worth continuing, three paths forward suggest themselves — each with discrete decision points and none requiring the State to commit beyond the step in front of it. The first is a discovery brief: a joint presentation to the Office of the Governor, the Department of Education, the Department of Higher Education, the Department of Labor and Employment, the Department of Regulatory Affairs, the Office of Economic Development and International Trade, CCCS leadership, and the Colorado Workforce Development Council — the same agencies named in EO D 2025-006 — outlining the marketplace’s open-standards architecture, the at-no-cost foundation, and what a small first cohort could look like. The second is a sector pilot: subject to a State decision to proceed, a focused cohort drawn from one of Colorado’s Top Jobs sectors — healthcare, construction, manufacturing, or technology are natural candidates — in which graduates receive a Comprehensive Learner Record aligned with the Quality Career Pathways Framework and made available through the EBSCOed marketplace. The third path would, only at the State’s direction, layer in optional subscription services that integrate the marketplace with My Colorado Journey, Connecting Colorado, the Eligible Training Provider List, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act case management, registered apprenticeship sponsor records, and the Talent Pipeline Report data pipeline. Any eligibility automation Colorado wished to pursue for Workforce Pell, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, or registered apprenticeship would live in this phase. State funds engage only here, and only to the extent the State chooses to procure subscription services. The first two phases require no new State appropriation.

Several considerations may inform Colorado’s thinking about the partnership. The marketplace’s open-standards foundation ensures the State’s prior investments in the Credential Engine Registry, My Colorado Journey, Connecting Colorado, and the credentialing work of CCCS, the public and independent universities, and the Colorado School of Mines continue to operate as they do today; the marketplace exchanges data with those systems rather than displacing them. The no-cost foundation means that the early phases require no new State appropriation; State funding considerations arise only in the third phase, and only for services the State elects to procure. Colorado’s distinctive mid-decade moment — EO D 2025-006, the December 2025 report, and the legislative redesign process now underway — may make the present an unusually opportune time for the State to engage with a learner-side credential layer aligned with the EO’s stated direction, and EBSCOed welcomes the opportunity to participate in such conversations at the State’s direction, in whatever forum the State considers most useful.

A further consideration may be relevant to the State’s long-term planning. As the marketplace becomes the trusted system of record for skills and credentials across Colorado, states often find that certain point solutions they currently maintain — case management tooling supporting Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants, Eligible Training Provider List eligibility workflows, standalone skills-assessment platforms, district- or institution-level credential wallets that today operate in isolation, and the patchwork of employer-side job-board and applicant-tracking subscriptions that result when many platforms each serve a slice of the same workforce — become candidates for consolidation or retirement, with associated reductions in ongoing licensing and maintenance costs. EBSCOed offers no opinion on which systems Colorado may wish to retain and which it may wish to consolidate; those decisions belong to the State and the relevant agencies, on the State’s own timeline. We mention the possibility only because the cost-of-ownership story is one states have asked us to address, and because we are glad to support evaluations of that kind when the State considers them useful.

We recognize that Colorado has earned the right to be deliberate. The State’s coordination among the Office of the Governor, the Department of Education, the Department of Higher Education, the Department of Labor and Employment, the Office of Economic Development and International Trade, the Colorado Workforce Development Council, CCCS, and the public, independent, and tribal institutions reflects years of careful institution-building — and EO D 2025-006 represents a forward-looking commitment to making that coordination serve learners more directly. EBSCOed has no interest in disrupting that coordination. Our interest is in offering a free, open-standards layer that operationalizes Colorado’s existing investments — particularly the Quality Career Pathways Framework, the Talent Pipeline Report, and the learner-centric vision articulated in EO D 2025-006 — at the level of the Coloradans they serve.

If any of this is worth a conversation, we would welcome one — at the convenience of whoever the State considers the right convening authority, in whatever form would be most useful, and on whatever timeline the State prefers. The contact information below is the appropriate first point of contact. The QR codes that follow provide direct access to the current EBSCOed ecosystem overview, which is kept current as capabilities evolve, and to LER.me itself, where any Coloradan may today create a free Learning and Employment Record in a few minutes.

With great respect for the work Colorado is already doing, and with hope that the next chapter may be written together,

Connecticut has, under Governor Lamont and Chief Workforce Officer Kelli-Marie Vallieres, built one of the most LER-aligned State workforce architectures in the country. The Connecticut Office of Workforce Strategy — established in 2020 as the administrative staff to the Governor’s Workforce Council — has explicitly engaged with Learning and Employment Records infrastructure through the SkillsFWD initiative, with OWS’s December 2023 project "Scaling the Skills-Based Workforce System in CT" expanding the State’s skills-based hiring ecosystem and leveraging LERs to bridge the skills gap. CareerConneCT — a $70 million workforce training initiative launched by Governor Lamont in 2022 — has, as of January 2025, enrolled 6,674 individuals in short-term industry-recognized credential programs across healthcare, IT, construction, advanced manufacturing, and other in-demand sectors, with 69% employment outcomes for completers. The Governor’s Workforce Council, chaired by Ryan Drajewicz, coordinates strategy across business, government, education, unions, and community-based organizations. Connecticut’s 14 Regional Sector Partnerships engage more than 500 employers across manufacturing, healthcare, IT, bioscience, and other sectors. The Connecticut State Community College system, Connecticut State Colleges and Universities, and the University of Connecticut anchor postsecondary credential delivery. In March 2026, Governor Lamont designated OWS as the lead State agency for Workforce Pell implementation. The "Work Forward: Pathways for Growth" Governor’s Workforce Strategic Plan, released in June 2025, sets the State’s direction. Few states have built so much, so deliberately, in service of their workers.

This letter is written in admiration of that work, and with a specific proposition: that the next chapter of Connecticut’s education-to-workforce strategy may benefit from a learner-held layer that the State has not yet had occasion to build. EBSCOed is the division of EBSCO Information Services that has spent the last several years constructing that layer — the LER talent marketplace — and offering LER.me to states, learners, educators, and employers at no cost. We write to share what it is, where it complements Connecticut’s investments, where it bridges systems that today operate in parallel, and how it is designed to extend rather than disturb the credential infrastructure Connecticut has already built.

LER.me is an open-standards platform that gives each individual a portable digital wallet containing their verified learning and employment records. The marketplace is built on the IEEE Learning and Employment Record standard, Open Badges 3.0, and Comprehensive Learner Record 2.0 — the same open standards used across the credentialing field — so the data Connecticut already publishes to the Credential Engine Registry, the LER infrastructure work already underway through OWS’s SkillsFWD project, and the credentials issued by Connecticut State Community College, Connecticut State Colleges and Universities, the University of Connecticut, K-12 districts, and registered apprenticeship sponsors all remain authoritative and continue to operate exactly as they do today. The marketplace exchanges with those systems; it does not replace them. The platform itself is free to learners, to educators, and to employers, with optional subscription services available to states and large institutions that want deeper integration or custom analytics. The foundation is the foundation, and the foundation is free.

Four capabilities are most relevant to Connecticut’s context. The first is free credential issuance: any approved Connecticut institution, technical high school, apprenticeship sponsor, or employer can issue verifiable credentials into learner-held wallets without licensing fees, supporting institutions of every size and budget on equal footing. The second is an open employer marketplace, in which Connecticut employers post opportunities and discover qualified candidates based on verified skills and credentials, again at no cost. The third is public workforce intelligence — dashboards that aggregate credential issuance and labor demand data as linked open data, available to State agencies for planning, reporting, and supporting OWS’s Regional Sector Partnership coordination. The fourth is the contributor framework, which crosswalks issued credentials to occupational standards and to State-defined high-demand designations — including Connecticut’s Regional Sector Partnership priority occupations — at the point of issuance, so the demand signal Connecticut has invested years in defining is operationalized at the individual level, automatically.

Connecticut’s distinctive achievement is the explicit OWS engagement with LER infrastructure through the SkillsFWD initiative. Few states have a sitting workforce coordination office that has publicly identified Learning and Employment Records as the credential-portability layer needed to bridge their skills-based hiring ecosystem. "Scaling the Skills-Based Workforce System in CT" — initiated by OWS in December 2023 as part of the national SkillsFWD initiative — names what the EBSCOed marketplace operationalizes. CareerConneCT’s 6,674 enrolled participants, the 14 Regional Sector Partnerships with 500+ employers, and the State’s $70 million workforce training investment together represent credential production at a scale a learner-held marketplace can meaningfully serve. What sits underneath every one of those structures is the same need: a verifiable, portable, learner-held record that lets each Connecticut resident carry their CSCU community college credential, their UConn or Connecticut State University degree, their CareerConneCT industry-recognized credential, their Regional Sector Partnership-aligned training, their registered apprenticeship milestones, their technical high school CTE attainment, and their employer-issued microcredentials in one place, recognized by employers, transferable across institutions, and durable beyond any one platform. That record is what the LER marketplace provides, at no cost, on the open standards Connecticut’s OWS has already engaged with. EBSCOed is not approaching Connecticut to introduce an LER concept the State has not encountered — OWS’s SkillsFWD work already establishes the State’s engagement. We are offering an open-standards implementation aligned with that direction at no cost.

There are three lenses through which we have found it useful to discuss this marketplace with State leadership, and we offer them here in the same spirit. The first is complement — where the marketplace adds capability Connecticut has not yet had reason to build at scale. OWS’s SkillsFWD project frames the State’s engagement with LER infrastructure; the marketplace provides an open-standards implementation aligned with that engagement. CareerConneCT produces industry-recognized credentials at scale through training providers; the marketplace gives those providers, the CSCU community colleges, UConn, the State universities, technical high schools, Regional Sector Partnership members, and registered apprenticeship sponsors a free way to issue credentials as verifiable Open Badges directly into learner wallets, with Regional Sector Partnership designation embedded in the badge metadata at issuance. None of this displaces Connecticut’s current investments. All of it makes them more visible, more durable, and more useful to the Connecticut residents who earn them.

The second lens is bridge — where the marketplace connects systems that today operate in parallel. A Connecticut resident who completes career and technical education at a Connecticut Technical Education and Career System high school, earns a CSCU community college credential, transfers to a State university or UConn, completes a CareerConneCT-funded short-term credential, participates in a Regional Sector Partnership-aligned training, completes a registered apprenticeship, and gains employer-issued microcredentials currently has those attainments living in different places. The marketplace allows them to travel together in one learner-owned record. American Job Center career navigators serving Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants — and Regional Workforce Development Board case managers — can see a complete skill picture rather than reconstructing it from a paper trail. The connective tissue OWS provides at the State level can be operationalized at the learner level through a credential wallet that travels with each Connecticut resident.

The third lens is interoperability — where existing Connecticut platforms occupy adjacent space and where it is essential that the State’s investments be respected. The Connecticut Office of Workforce Strategy remains the State’s authoritative workforce coordination office; the marketplace operates as a learner-side complement that supports OWS’s SkillsFWD direction and the State’s Workforce Pell implementation. The Governor’s Workforce Council continues exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives credentials produced through GWC-aligned initiatives. The 14 Regional Sector Partnerships continue exactly as they operate today; the marketplace receives credentials produced through RSP-validated training programs, with RSP designation preserved at issuance. CTHires remains Connecticut’s official labor exchange; the marketplace acts as a complementary skills-and-credentials profile layer that posts to CTHires through standard application programming interfaces.

The matrix below — included here as a reference Connecticut leadership may return to — applies three perspectives to selected initiatives. The Complement column identifies where the marketplace adds capabilities current State investments do not provide. The Bridge column identifies where the marketplace connects presently separate systems. The Interoperability column describes how the marketplace is designed to work alongside existing Connecticut platforms.

If the State were to find this conversation worth continuing, three paths forward suggest themselves — each with discrete decision points and none requiring the State to commit beyond the step in front of it. The first is a discovery brief: a joint presentation to the Connecticut Office of Workforce Strategy, the Governor’s Workforce Council, the Connecticut Department of Labor, the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities system, the University of Connecticut, the Connecticut Technical Education and Career System, and — where the State considers it useful — the Regional Sector Partnership leadership and Local Workforce Development Board representatives, outlining the marketplace’s open-standards architecture, the at-no-cost foundation, the alignment with OWS’s existing SkillsFWD engagement, and what a small first cohort could look like. The second is a sector pilot: subject to a State decision to proceed, a focused cohort drawn from one of Connecticut’s Regional Sector Partnership sectors — manufacturing, healthcare, IT, bioscience, or construction are natural candidates — in which CareerConneCT graduates, CSCU community college completers, or registered apprenticeship completers receive a Comprehensive Learner Record aligned with Regional Sector Partnership designations and made available through the EBSCOed marketplace. The third path would, only at the State’s direction, layer in optional subscription services that integrate the marketplace with CTHires, the Eligible Training Provider List, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act case management, registered apprenticeship sponsor records, CareerConneCT program data, and the OWS data pipeline, and that integrate with the Workforce Pell processing pipeline OWS will lead beginning July 2026. Any eligibility automation Connecticut wished to pursue for Workforce Pell, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, or registered apprenticeship would live in this phase. State funds engage only here, and only to the extent the State chooses to procure subscription services. The first two phases require no new State appropriation.

Several considerations may inform Connecticut’s thinking about the partnership. The marketplace’s open-standards foundation ensures the State’s prior investments in the Credential Engine Registry, CTHires, OWS’s existing SkillsFWD engagement, and the credentialing work of Connecticut State Community College, the Connecticut State Universities, the University of Connecticut, CTECS, and registered apprenticeship sponsors continue to operate as they do today; the marketplace exchanges data with those systems rather than displacing them. The no-cost foundation means that the early phases require no new State appropriation; State funding considerations arise only in the third phase, and only for services the State elects to procure. Connecticut’s distinctive LER engagement — OWS’s December 2023 SkillsFWD project explicitly leveraging LERs — and the State’s designation as Workforce Pell lead agency may make Connecticut a particularly natural moment for engagement with an open-standards LER implementation aligned with the State’s stated direction.

A further consideration may be relevant to the State’s long-term planning. As the marketplace becomes the trusted system of record for skills and credentials across Connecticut, states often find that certain point solutions they currently maintain — case management tooling supporting Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants, Eligible Training Provider List eligibility workflows, standalone skills-assessment platforms, district- or institution-level credential wallets that today operate in isolation, and the patchwork of employer-side job-board and applicant-tracking subscriptions that result when many platforms each serve a slice of the same workforce — become candidates for consolidation or retirement, with associated reductions in ongoing licensing and maintenance costs. EBSCOed offers no opinion on which systems Connecticut may wish to retain and which it may wish to consolidate; those decisions belong to the State and the relevant agencies, on the State’s own timeline. We mention the possibility only because the cost-of-ownership story is one states have asked us to address, and because we are glad to support evaluations of that kind when the State considers them useful.

We recognize that Connecticut has earned the right to be deliberate. The State’s coordination among the Office of Workforce Strategy, the Governor’s Workforce Council, the Connecticut Department of Labor, the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities, the University of Connecticut, the Connecticut Technical Education and Career System, the Regional Sector Partnerships, and the Regional Workforce Development Boards reflects years of careful institution-building — and OWS’s explicit engagement with LER infrastructure through the SkillsFWD initiative establishes Connecticut as a State already conversant in the credential-portability domain. EBSCOed has no interest in disrupting that coordination. Our interest is in offering a free, open-standards layer that makes Connecticut’s existing investments — particularly OWS’s SkillsFWD engagement, CareerConneCT, the 14 Regional Sector Partnerships, and the "Work Forward" Strategic Plan — more useful to the Connecticut residents they serve.

If any of this is worth a conversation, we would welcome one — at the convenience of whoever the State considers the right convening authority, in whatever form would be most useful, and on whatever timeline the State prefers. The contact information below is the appropriate first point of contact. The QR codes that follow provide direct access to the current EBSCOed ecosystem overview, which is kept current as capabilities evolve, and to LER.me itself, where any Connecticut resident may today create a free Learning and Employment Record in a few minutes.

With great respect for the work Connecticut is already doing, and with hope that the next chapter may be written together,

Delaware has, through the Delaware Workforce Development Board’s "Raise the Bar" goal of 60 percent post-secondary credential attainment for the working-age population — explicitly including apprenticeships, certifications, credentials, and degrees — built a State workforce framework that takes credentials, not degrees alone, as the unit of attainment. The Delaware Department of Labor administers the State’s workforce delivery infrastructure under Governor Matt Meyer’s administration. Delaware Technical Community College — the State’s single statewide community college with campuses across each county — anchors postsecondary credential delivery, with more than 200 connected degree agreements creating smooth transfer pathways to four-year bachelor’s programs and the Workforce Development and Community Education Division coordinating non-credit, certificate, and short-term training. The SEED (Student Excellence Equals Degree) scholarship — expanded in 2021 to include non-credit workforce training programs alongside associate degree programs — provides free tuition at DelTech to qualifying Delaware high school and GED graduates, including individuals with non-violent felonies and learners 25 and older with continuous Delaware residency. In May 2024, the Delaware Department of Labor announced a new pathway providing individuals in select registered apprenticeship programs the opportunity to earn up to 42 college credits toward a bachelor’s degree at Wilmington University. The Delaware Center for Life Science Education and Training, opened in 2025 at the Chemours STEM Hub in downtown Wilmington with initial three-year pilot funding, prepares Delawareans of all ages with basic laboratory and biomanufacturing skills. The University of Delaware and Delaware State University round out the State’s postsecondary infrastructure. Few states have built so much, so deliberately, in service of their workers.

This letter is written in admiration of that work, and with a specific proposition: that the next chapter of Delaware’s education-to-workforce strategy may benefit from a learner-held layer that the State has not yet had occasion to build. EBSCOed is the division of EBSCO Information Services that has spent the last several years constructing that layer — the LER talent marketplace — and offering LER.me to states, learners, educators, and employers at no cost. We write to share what it is, where it complements Delaware’s investments, where it bridges systems that today operate in parallel, and how it is designed to extend rather than disturb the credential infrastructure Delaware has already built.

LER.me is an open-standards platform that gives each individual a portable digital wallet containing their verified learning and employment records. The marketplace is built on the IEEE Learning and Employment Record standard, Open Badges 3.0, and Comprehensive Learner Record 2.0 — the same open standards used across the credentialing field — so the data Delaware already publishes to the Credential Engine Registry, and the credentials issued by Delaware Technical Community College, the University of Delaware, Delaware State University, Wilmington University, K-12 districts, vocational-technical school districts, and registered apprenticeship sponsors, remain authoritative and continue to operate exactly as they do today. The marketplace exchanges with those systems; it does not replace them. The platform itself is free to learners, to educators, and to employers, with optional subscription services available to states and large institutions that want deeper integration or custom analytics. The foundation is the foundation, and the foundation is free.

Four capabilities are most relevant to Delaware’s context. The first is free credential issuance: any approved Delaware institution, vocational-technical school district, apprenticeship sponsor, or employer can issue verifiable credentials into learner-held wallets without licensing fees, supporting institutions of every size and budget on equal footing. The second is an open employer marketplace, in which Delaware employers post opportunities and discover qualified candidates based on verified skills and credentials, again at no cost. The third is public workforce intelligence — dashboards that aggregate credential issuance and labor demand data as linked open data, available to State agencies for planning, reporting, and supporting the Delaware Workforce Development Board’s Raise the Bar reporting mission. The fourth is the contributor framework, which crosswalks issued credentials to occupational standards and to State-defined high-demand designations at the point of issuance, so the demand signal Delaware has invested years in defining is operationalized at the individual level, automatically.

Delaware’s distinctive achievement is the explicit framing of credentials — not degrees alone — as the unit of State workforce attainment. The Delaware Workforce Development Board’s "Raise the Bar" goal includes apprenticeships, certifications, credentials, and degrees as equal attainment pathways. The SEED scholarship’s 2021 expansion to include non-credit workforce training programs operationalizes that framing at the financial aid level. The May 2024 Delaware Department of Labor initiative providing up to 42 college credits at Wilmington University to apprenticeship completers operationalizes it at the postsecondary articulation level. The Delaware Center for Life Science Education and Training operationalizes it at the emerging-sector level. What sits underneath every one of those structures is the same need: a verifiable, portable, learner-held record that lets each Delawarean carry their DelTech credential, their SEED-funded attainment, their University of Delaware or Delaware State University degree, their registered apprenticeship milestones, their Wilmington University apprenticeship-to-credit attainment, their vocational-technical school district credential, their Life Sciences Center training credential, and their employer-issued microcredentials in one place, recognized by employers, transferable across institutions, and durable beyond any one platform. That record is what the LER marketplace provides, at no cost, on the open standards the State already uses. EBSCOed is not asking Delaware to alter the Raise the Bar framework — we are offering the learner-side layer that lets every credential that counts toward Delaware’s 60-percent goal travel with each Delawarean in a verifiable wallet.

There are three lenses through which we have found it useful to discuss this marketplace with State leadership, and we offer them here in the same spirit. The first is complement — where the marketplace adds capability Delaware has not yet had reason to build. The Delaware Workforce Development Board measures Raise the Bar progress at the State level; the marketplace adds the learner-side artifact, a verifiable record each Delawarean carries with them. DelTech, the University of Delaware, Delaware State University, and Wilmington University issue credentials that today travel through institutional transcripts; the marketplace gives each institution a free way to issue those credentials as verifiable Open Badges directly into learner wallets, with SEED, apprenticeship-to-credit, or other State designation embedded in the badge metadata at issuance where applicable. None of this displaces Delaware’s current investments. All of it makes them more visible, more durable, and more useful to the Delawareans who earn them.

The second lens is bridge — where the marketplace connects systems that today operate in parallel. A Delawarean who completes career and technical education at a vocational-technical school district, earns a DelTech credential through SEED, enters a Delaware registered apprenticeship program, completes the Wilmington University apprenticeship-to-college-credit pathway earning up to 42 credits, transfers to the University of Delaware or Delaware State University, completes Delaware Center for Life Science Education and Training-supported training, and gains employer-issued microcredentials currently has those attainments living in different places. The marketplace allows them to travel together in one learner-owned record. Delaware Department of Labor career navigators serving Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants can see a complete skill picture rather than reconstructing it from a paper trail. The connective tissue the Delaware Workforce Development Board provides at the State level can be operationalized at the learner level through a credential wallet that travels with each Delawarean.

The third lens is interoperability — where existing Delaware platforms occupy adjacent space and where it is essential that the State’s investments be respected. The Delaware Workforce Development Board remains the State’s authoritative workforce policy body, housed within the Delaware Department of Labor; the marketplace operates as a learner-side complement that supports the Board’s Raise the Bar mission. The Delaware Department of Labor continues exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives credentials produced through DOL-overseen programs including the new apprenticeship-to-college-credit pathway. Delaware Technical Community College continues exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives credentials issued by DelTech, with SEED designation preserved where applicable. Delaware JobLink remains Delaware’s official labor exchange; the marketplace acts as a complementary skills-and-credentials profile layer that posts to Delaware JobLink through standard application programming interfaces.

The matrix below — included here as a reference Delaware leadership may return to — applies three perspectives to selected initiatives. The Complement column identifies where the marketplace adds capabilities current State investments do not provide. The Bridge column identifies where the marketplace connects presently separate systems. The Interoperability column describes how the marketplace is designed to work alongside existing Delaware platforms.

If the State were to find this conversation worth continuing, three paths forward suggest themselves — each with discrete decision points and none requiring the State to commit beyond the step in front of it. The first is a discovery brief: a joint presentation to the Delaware Department of Labor, the Delaware Workforce Development Board, Delaware Technical Community College, the University of Delaware, Delaware State University, Wilmington University, the Delaware Department of Education, and — where the State considers it useful — vocational-technical school district leadership and Delaware Center for Life Science Education and Training partners, outlining the marketplace’s open-standards architecture, the at-no-cost foundation, and what a small first cohort could look like. The second is a sector pilot: subject to a State decision to proceed, a focused cohort drawn from one of Delaware’s strategic sectors — life sciences (with Delaware Center for Life Science Education and Training partners), financial services, healthcare, advanced manufacturing, or IT (with Zip Code Wilmington and similar partners) are natural candidates — in which DelTech graduates, SEED scholarship completers, registered apprenticeship completers using the Wilmington University apprenticeship-to-credit pathway, or vocational-technical school district graduates receive a Comprehensive Learner Record made available through the EBSCOed marketplace. The third path would, only at the State’s direction, layer in optional subscription services that integrate the marketplace with Delaware JobLink, the Eligible Training Provider List, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act case management, registered apprenticeship sponsor records, SEED scholarship data, and the apprenticeship-to-college-credit pathway. Any eligibility automation Delaware wished to pursue for Workforce Pell, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, or registered apprenticeship would live in this phase. State funds engage only here, and only to the extent the State chooses to procure subscription services. The first two phases require no new State appropriation.

Several considerations may inform Delaware’s thinking about the partnership. The marketplace’s open-standards foundation ensures the State’s prior investments in the Credential Engine Registry, Delaware JobLink, and the credentialing work of Delaware Technical Community College, the University of Delaware, Delaware State University, Wilmington University, and the vocational-technical school districts continue to operate as they do today; the marketplace exchanges data with those systems rather than displacing them. The no-cost foundation means that the early phases require no new State appropriation; State funding considerations arise only in the third phase, and only for services the State elects to procure. Delaware’s distinctive Raise the Bar framework — explicitly counting apprenticeships, certifications, credentials, and degrees as equal attainment pathways — and the State’s compact geography may make Delaware a particularly natural fit for a Comprehensive Learner Record pilot, where the marketplace can demonstrate credential portability across a complete State workforce ecosystem.

A further consideration may be relevant to the State’s long-term planning. As the marketplace becomes the trusted system of record for skills and credentials across Delaware, states often find that certain point solutions they currently maintain — case management tooling supporting Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants, Eligible Training Provider List eligibility workflows, standalone skills-assessment platforms, district- or institution-level credential wallets that today operate in isolation, and the patchwork of employer-side job-board and applicant-tracking subscriptions that result when many platforms each serve a slice of the same workforce — become candidates for consolidation or retirement, with associated reductions in ongoing licensing and maintenance costs. EBSCOed offers no opinion on which systems Delaware may wish to retain and which it may wish to consolidate; those decisions belong to the State and the relevant agencies, on the State’s own timeline. We mention the possibility only because the cost-of-ownership story is one states have asked us to address, and because we are glad to support evaluations of that kind when the State considers them useful.

We recognize that Delaware has earned the right to be deliberate. The State’s coordination among the Department of Labor, the Delaware Workforce Development Board, Delaware Technical Community College, the University of Delaware, Delaware State University, Wilmington University, the vocational-technical school districts, the Delaware Department of Education, and the Delaware Center for Life Science Education and Training partner community reflects years of careful institution-building. EBSCOed has no interest in disrupting that coordination. Our interest is in offering a free, open-standards layer that makes Delaware’s existing investments — particularly the Raise the Bar framework, the SEED scholarship’s 2021 workforce-credential expansion, the Wilmington University apprenticeship-to-credit pathway, and the Delaware Center for Life Science Education and Training — more useful to the Delawareans they serve.

If any of this is worth a conversation, we would welcome one — at the convenience of whoever the State considers the right convening authority, in whatever form would be most useful, and on whatever timeline the State prefers. The contact information below is the appropriate first point of contact. The QR codes that follow provide direct access to the current EBSCOed ecosystem overview, which is kept current as capabilities evolve, and to LER.me itself, where any Delawarean may today create a free Learning and Employment Record in a few minutes.

With great respect for the work Delaware is already doing, and with hope that the next chapter may be written together,

Florida has built the most policy-elaborated workforce framework in the country. The SAIL to 60 initiative — Strengthening Alignment between Industry and Learning — set a statutory goal that 60 percent of working-age Floridians hold a high-value postsecondary certificate, degree, or training experience by 2030. The 2021 Reimagining Education and Career Help (REACH) Act established the REACH Office within the Executive Office of the Governor and chartered the Florida Talent Development Council. The REACH Act also created the Florida Credentials Review Committee, which defined credentials of value through a Framework of Quality based on demand, wage, and sequencing criteria. The resulting Master Credentials List — now approximately 2,400 state-approved degree and non-degree credentials, governed by a joint review team comprising the Florida Department of Education, FloridaCommerce, and CareerSource Florida — is the most thoroughly codified credentials-of-value framework in the United States and the regulatory engine that directs federal and state funds to workforce education and training programs. Few states have built so much, so deliberately, in service of their workers.

This letter is written in admiration of that work, and with a specific proposition: that the next chapter of Florida’s SAIL to 60 strategy may benefit from a learner-held layer that the State has not yet had occasion to build. EBSCOed is the division of EBSCO Information Services that has spent the last several years constructing that layer — the LER talent marketplace — and offering LER.me to states, learners, educators, and employers at no cost. We write to share what it is, where it complements Florida’s investments, where it bridges systems that today operate in parallel, and how it is designed to extend rather than disturb the credential infrastructure Florida has already built.

LER.me is an open-standards platform that gives each individual a portable digital wallet containing their verified learning and employment records. The marketplace is built on the IEEE Learning and Employment Record standard, Open Badges 3.0, and Comprehensive Learner Record 2.0 — open standards that interoperate cleanly with Credential Engine’s Credential Transparency Description Language. The data Florida agencies already maintain — the Master Credentials List, CAPE Industry Certification Funding List, Apprentice Florida registrations, Florida Ready to Work credentials — remains authoritative and continues to operate exactly as it does today. The marketplace exchanges with those systems; it does not replace them. The platform itself is free to learners, to educators, and to employers, with optional subscription services available to states and large institutions that want deeper integration or custom analytics. The foundation is the foundation, and the foundation is free.

Four capabilities are most relevant to Florida’s context. The first is free credential issuance: any Florida College System institution, State University System institution, Apprentice Florida sponsor, school district, or Florida employer can issue verifiable credentials into learner-held wallets without licensing fees, supporting institutions of every size and budget on equal footing. The second is an open employer marketplace, in which Florida employers post opportunities and discover qualified candidates based on verified skills and credentials, again at no cost. The third is public workforce intelligence — dashboards that aggregate credential issuance and labor demand as linked open data, available to the REACH Office, the Florida Talent Development Council, the Credentials Review Committee, and the Labor Market Statistics Center within FloridaCommerce to inform annual Master Credentials List revisions. The fourth is the contributor framework, which crosswalks issued credentials to the Master Credentials List itself at the point of issuance, so the credentials-of-value framework Florida has invested years in defining is operationalized at the individual learner level, automatically.

There are three lenses through which we have found it useful to discuss this marketplace with state leadership, and we offer them here in the same spirit. The first is complement — where the marketplace adds capability Florida has not yet had reason to build. The Master Credentials List, by design, names what the State approves as credentials of value; the marketplace adds the learner-side artifact, a verifiable record each Floridian carries with them that proves they hold what the list authorizes. CAPE industry certifications, funded through the State Board of Education’s CAPE Industry Certification Funding List, today travel as institution-issued documents; the marketplace gives every school district and Florida College System institution a free way to issue CAPE attainments as verifiable Open Badges directly into learner wallets. Apprentice Florida sponsors face the same opportunity at the milestone level. None of this displaces Florida’s current investments. All of it makes them more visible, more durable, and more useful to the Floridians who earn them.

The second lens is bridge — where the marketplace connects systems that today operate in parallel. A Floridian who earns CAPE industry certifications in high school, completes Florida Ready to Work, enrolls in a Florida College System Career Certificate program, completes an Apprentice Florida apprenticeship, and gains employer-issued microcredentials currently has those attainments living in different places. The marketplace allows them to travel together in one learner-owned record. CareerSource Florida career-center navigators serving Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants across the State’s 24 Local Workforce Development Boards can see a complete skill picture rather than reconstructing it from a paper trail when a participant moves between Boards. The connective tissue exists, but it lives in the learner, where it belongs.

The third lens is interoperability — where existing Florida platforms occupy adjacent space and where it is essential that the State’s investments be respected. The Master Credentials List remains the authoritative state-approved inventory of credentials of value, governed by the Credentials Review Committee under the REACH Act; LER.me operates as a complementary publishing and matching layer that aligns issued credentials to Master Credentials List entries without changing the Committee’s authority. The CAPE Industry Certification Funding List remains the authoritative funding mechanism for secondary CAPE eligibility under the State Board of Education. EmployFlorida.com remains FloridaCommerce’s official labor exchange; the marketplace acts as a complementary skills-and-credentials profile layer that posts to EmployFlorida-style systems through standard application programming interfaces. Florida Ready to Work continues to operate through its own delivery platform; the marketplace makes Florida Ready to Work credentials more visible to employers across the State. The State’s prior investments are preserved and extended, not displaced.

The matrix below — included here as a reference Florida leadership may return to — applies three perspectives to selected initiatives. The Complement column identifies where the marketplace adds capabilities current State investments do not provide. The Bridge column identifies where the marketplace connects presently separate systems. The Interoperability column describes how the marketplace is designed to work alongside existing Florida platforms.

If the State were to find this conversation worth continuing, three paths forward suggest themselves — each with discrete decision points and none requiring the State to commit beyond the step in front of it. The first is a briefing to the REACH Office and the Florida Talent Development Council, with CareerSource Florida and FloridaCommerce participation, presenting how the marketplace operationalizes the Master Credentials List at the individual learner level. The briefing would address technical interoperability with the Credentials Review Committee’s publication workflow, the design of Master Credentials List crosswalks at the point of credential issuance, and the no-cost foundation for learners, institutions, and employers. The second is a sector-focused pilot involving two or three Florida College System institutions in CAPE-funded sectors and a regional cohort of Apprentice Florida sponsors, with employer participants recruited through CareerSource Florida and the relevant Local Workforce Development Boards. The pilot would validate Master Credentials List crosswalk performance and provide outcomes data to inform a Phase Three decision. The third path would, only at the State’s direction, layer in optional subscription services that integrate the marketplace with EmployFlorida.com, the 24 Local Workforce Development Boards’ case management systems, the Labor Market Statistics Center within FloridaCommerce for outcomes reporting, and the Florida Credentials Review Committee’s Master Credentials List application workflow. State funds engage only here, and only to the extent the State chooses to procure subscription services. The first two phases require no new State appropriation.

Several considerations may inform Florida’s thinking about the partnership. The marketplace’s open-standards foundation ensures the State’s prior investments — the Master Credentials List infrastructure, CAPE funding workflows, Apprentice Florida registrations, Florida Ready to Work credentials, and EmployFlorida.com — continue to operate as they do today; the marketplace exchanges data with those systems rather than displacing them. The no-cost foundation means that the early phases require no new State appropriation; State funding considerations arise only in the third phase, and only for services the State elects to procure. The 24 Local Workforce Development Boards operate with significant local autonomy under CareerSource Florida, and the REACH Act–driven LWDB consolidation has produced both opportunity and friction; statewide rollout may benefit from engagement at both the State and Board level, in whatever forum the State considers most useful.

A further consideration may be relevant to the State’s long-term planning. As the marketplace becomes the trusted system of record for skills and credentials across Florida, states often find that certain point solutions they currently maintain — case management tooling supporting Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants, Eligible Training Provider List eligibility workflows, standalone skills-assessment platforms, district- or institution-level credential wallets that today operate in isolation, and the patchwork of employer-side job-board and applicant-tracking subscriptions that result when many platforms each serve a slice of the same workforce — become candidates for consolidation or retirement, with associated reductions in ongoing licensing and maintenance costs. EBSCOed offers no opinion on which systems Florida may wish to retain and which it may wish to consolidate; those decisions belong to the State and the relevant agencies, on the State’s own timeline. We mention the possibility only because the cost-of-ownership story is one states have asked us to address, and because we are glad to support evaluations of that kind when the State considers them useful.

We recognize that Florida has earned the right to be deliberate. The coordination the State has built among the REACH Office, the Florida Talent Development Council, CareerSource Florida, FloridaCommerce, the Florida Department of Education, the Credentials Review Committee, and the Local Workforce Development Boards reflects years of careful institution-building, and the Master Credentials List is, by any reasonable measure, the most thoroughly codified credentials-of-value framework in the United States. EBSCOed has no interest in disrupting that coordination. Our interest is in offering a free, open-standards layer that makes Florida’s existing investments more useful to the Floridians they serve, and that operationalizes the Master Credentials List at the level of each individual learner.

If any of this is worth a conversation, we would welcome one — at the convenience of whoever the State considers the right convening authority, in whatever form would be most useful, and on whatever timeline the State prefers. The contact information below is the appropriate first point of contact. The QR codes that follow provide direct access to the current EBSCOed ecosystem overview, which is kept current as capabilities evolve, and to LER.me itself, where any Floridian may today create a free Learning and Employment Record in a few minutes.

With great respect for the work Florida is already doing, and with hope that the next chapter may be written together,

Few states have built a workforce strategy as deliberately or as visibly as Georgia. The Top State for Talent initiative — launched by Governor Brian P. Kemp as the workforce companion to Georgia’s long-running status as the nation’s top state for business — has done what most state strategies promise and few deliver: it has actually broken down silos between education and workforce systems. The 2026 High Demand Career List, approved by the State Workforce Development Board on October 27, 2025, is the strategic instrument that ties it all together — 18 statewide career categories and 12 regional lists, developed by the Governor’s Education and Workforce Strategy Team across the Technical College System of Georgia and WorkSource Georgia, the Georgia Department of Education, the University System of Georgia, the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement, the Georgia Student Finance Commission, and the Georgia Department of Labor. The High Demand Apprenticeship Program is the State’s first-ever state-funded apprenticeship initiative. GA•AWARDS, governed by the Alliance of Education Agency Heads, gives Georgia one of the most mature longitudinal data systems in the country. Few states have built so much, so deliberately, in service of their workers.

This letter is written in admiration of that work, and with a specific proposition: that the next chapter of Georgia’s Top State for Talent strategy may benefit from a learner-held layer that the State has not yet had occasion to build. EBSCOed is the division of EBSCO Information Services that has spent the last several years constructing that layer — the LER talent marketplace — and offering LER.me to states, learners, educators, and employers at no cost. We write to share what it is, where it complements Georgia’s investments, where it bridges systems that today operate in parallel, and how it is designed to extend rather than disturb the credential infrastructure Georgia has already built.

LER.me is an open-standards platform that gives each individual a portable digital wallet containing their verified learning and employment records. The marketplace is built on the IEEE Learning and Employment Record standard, Open Badges 3.0, and Comprehensive Learner Record 2.0 — open standards that interoperate cleanly with Credential Engine’s Credential Transparency Description Language and with the National Student Clearinghouse data feeds that GA•AWARDS already ingests. The data Georgia agencies already maintain remains authoritative and continues to operate exactly as it does today. The marketplace exchanges with those systems; it does not replace them. The platform itself is free to learners, to educators, and to employers, with optional subscription services available to states and large institutions that want deeper integration or custom analytics. The foundation is the foundation, and the foundation is free.

Four capabilities are most relevant to Georgia’s context. The first is free credential issuance: any TCSG college, USG institution, HDAP-registered apprenticeship sponsor, or Georgia employer can issue verifiable credentials into learner-held wallets without licensing fees, supporting institutions of every size and budget on equal footing. The second is an open employer marketplace, in which Georgia employers — from Quick Start’s major manufacturing partners to small businesses in the 12 regional High Demand Career List geographies — post opportunities and discover qualified candidates based on verified skills and credentials, again at no cost. The third is public workforce intelligence — dashboards that aggregate credential issuance and labor demand data as linked open data, available to the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement, TCSG, the Department of Labor, and the State Workforce Development Board to inform annual High Demand Career List review. The fourth is the contributor framework, which crosswalks issued credentials to occupational standards and to the High Demand Career List itself at the point of issuance, so the demand signal Georgia has invested years in defining is operationalized at the individual learner level, automatically.

There are three lenses through which we have found it useful to discuss this marketplace with state leadership, and we offer them here in the same spirit. The first is complement — where the marketplace adds capability Georgia has not yet had reason to build. The High Demand Career List, by design, names what the State and its employers need; the marketplace adds the learner-side artifact, a verifiable record each Georgian carries with them that proves they hold what the list calls for. The HOPE Career Grant funds tuition in 18 high-demand programs; the marketplace gives each TCSG college a free way to issue HOPE Career Grant program completions as verifiable Open Badges directly into learner wallets. HDAP-registered apprenticeship sponsors face the same opportunity at the milestone level. None of this displaces Georgia’s current investments. All of it makes them more visible, more durable, and more useful to the Georgians who earn them.

The second lens is bridge — where the marketplace connects systems that today operate in parallel. A Georgian who completes a Career, Technical and Agricultural Education pathway in high school, receives a GEORGIA MATCH direct admission letter, enrolls in a TCSG program with HOPE Career Grant support, completes an HDAP apprenticeship, and gains employer-issued microcredentials currently has those attainments living in different places. The marketplace allows them to travel together in one learner-owned record. WorkSource Georgia navigators serving Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants across the State’s 19 Local Workforce Development Boards can see a complete skill picture rather than reconstructing it from a paper trail each time a participant changes Boards. The connective tissue exists, but it lives in the learner, where it belongs.

The third lens is interoperability — where existing Georgia platforms occupy adjacent space and where it is essential that the State’s investments be respected. GA•AWARDS remains Georgia’s authoritative longitudinal data system, governed by the Alliance of Education Agency Heads Data Management Committee; LER.me operates in a different layer, as a learner-controlled credential record, and the two systems may exchange data under appropriate governance without changing either one’s role. GAfutures.org remains Georgia’s student finance and admissions hub through the Georgia Student Finance Commission. Employ Georgia remains the State’s official labor exchange through the Georgia Department of Labor; the marketplace acts as a complementary skills-and-credentials profile layer that posts to Employ Georgia–style systems through standard application programming interfaces. Quick Start remains the nation’s premier customized training program and Georgia’s strategic differentiator; the marketplace can enhance Quick Start outcomes by allowing Quick Start training milestones to be issued as portable, verifiable credentials at the State’s discretion, but it does not change Quick Start’s operating model. The State’s prior investments are preserved and extended, not displaced.

The matrix below — included here as a reference Georgia leadership may return to — applies three perspectives to selected initiatives. The Complement column identifies where the marketplace adds capabilities current State investments do not provide. The Bridge column identifies where the marketplace connects presently separate systems. The Interoperability column describes how the marketplace is designed to work alongside existing Georgia platforms.

If the State were to find this conversation worth continuing, three paths forward suggest themselves — each with discrete decision points and none requiring the State to commit beyond the step in front of it. The first is a briefing to the Governor’s Education and Workforce Strategy Team, convened under the authority of the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement, presenting how the marketplace operationalizes the High Demand Career List at the individual learner level. The briefing would address technical interoperability with GA•AWARDS, the design of High Demand Career List crosswalks at the point of credential issuance, and the no-cost foundation for learners, institutions, and employers. The second is a sector-focused pilot involving two or three TCSG institutions in a High Demand Career List priority area — healthcare, advanced manufacturing, information technology, and skilled construction trades are natural candidates given the 2026 list — with employer participants recruited through the State Workforce Development Board and Quick Start’s employer network. The pilot would validate High Demand Career List crosswalk performance and provide outcomes data to inform a Phase Three decision. The third path would, only at the State’s direction, layer in optional subscription services that integrate the marketplace with Employ Georgia, the 19 Local Workforce Development Boards’ case management systems, GA•AWARDS for outcomes reporting under appropriate governance, and the HOPE family of programs at the Georgia Student Finance Commission for funding-eligibility automation. State funds engage only here, and only to the extent the State chooses to procure subscription services. The first two phases require no new State appropriation.

Several considerations may inform Georgia’s thinking about the partnership. The marketplace’s open-standards foundation ensures the State’s prior investments in GA•AWARDS, the HOPE family of programs, Quick Start, Employ Georgia, and the National Student Clearinghouse–integrated transcript flows continue to operate as they do today; the marketplace exchanges data with those systems rather than displacing them. The no-cost foundation means that the early phases require no new State appropriation; State funding considerations arise only in the third phase, and only for services the State elects to procure. The 19 Local Workforce Development Boards operate with meaningful regional autonomy under the State Workforce Development Board, and statewide rollout may benefit from engagement at both the State and Board level in parallel, in whatever forum the State considers most useful.

A further consideration may be relevant to the State’s long-term planning. As the marketplace becomes the trusted system of record for skills and credentials across Georgia, states often find that certain point solutions they currently maintain — case management tooling supporting Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants, Eligible Training Provider List eligibility workflows, standalone skills-assessment platforms, district- or institution-level credential wallets that today operate in isolation, and the patchwork of employer-side job-board and applicant-tracking subscriptions that result when many platforms each serve a slice of the same workforce — become candidates for consolidation or retirement, with associated reductions in ongoing licensing and maintenance costs. EBSCOed offers no opinion on which systems Georgia may wish to retain and which it may wish to consolidate; those decisions belong to the State and the relevant agencies, on the State’s own timeline. We mention the possibility only because the cost-of-ownership story is one states have asked us to address, and because we are glad to support evaluations of that kind when the State considers them useful.

We recognize that Georgia has earned the right to be deliberate. The coordination the State has built among the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement, the Technical College System of Georgia, the University System of Georgia, the Georgia Department of Labor, the Georgia Student Finance Commission, the Georgia Department of Education, the State Workforce Development Board, and the Local Workforce Development Boards reflects years of careful institution-building, and the Top State for Talent initiative has, in a short time, produced a degree of cross-agency coordination peer states would struggle to replicate. EBSCOed has no interest in disrupting that coordination. Our interest is in offering a free, open-standards layer that makes Georgia’s existing investments more useful to the Georgians they serve, and that operationalizes the High Demand Career List at the level of each individual learner.

If any of this is worth a conversation, we would welcome one — at the convenience of whoever the State considers the right convening authority, in whatever form would be most useful, and on whatever timeline the State prefers. The contact information below is the appropriate first point of contact. The QR codes that follow provide direct access to the current EBSCOed ecosystem overview, which is kept current as capabilities evolve, and to LER.me itself, where any Georgian may today create a free Learning and Employment Record in a few minutes.

With great respect for the work Georgia is already doing, and with hope that the next chapter may be written together,

Hawaiʻi has, with the launch of the Generational Commitment by the Workforce Development Council in 2025, made one of the most aspirational long-horizon workforce commitments any state has made: "By 2045, all people of Hawaiʻi will have a path to a career that enables them to learn, work, and thrive in Hawaiʻi and contribute to a vibrant local economy grounded in community values." The Generational Commitment, formally launched by Governor Green during Workforce Development Month in September 2025, anchors the WDC’s Pillar IV — Creating Workforce Synergy — with a December 2025 Workforce Implementation Report charting the path forward. The Hawaiʻi P-20 Partnerships for Education developed the State’s Hawaiʻi Graduates for Hawaiʻi’s Future attainment goal in 2022, succeeding the prior 55-percent-by-2025 goal. The University of Hawaiʻi Community Colleges — seven campuses with more than 50 years of contributions to the State’s higher education — anchor postsecondary credential delivery through the Hawaiʻi Graduation Initiative. The Hawaiʻi College and Career Navigators program reaches three islands and 11 public high schools, providing individualized advising to nearly 1,000 students annually. The Work-Based Learning Intermediary Network — a HIDOE initiative that has grown from a small pilot to a coordinated statewide system — generated 350 work-based learning experiences, reached more than 22,000 students, and engaged more than 2,000 industry partners during the 2024-25 school year. Good Jobs Hawaiʻi, managed by the UHCC System, leverages the State’s workforce development grants. Sector partnerships in health care, engineering, technology, and creative arts connect employers including Hawaiʻi Pacific Health and Queen’s Health Care System to Hawaiʻi pipelines. Few states have built so much, so deliberately, in service of their workers.

This letter is written in admiration of that work, and with a specific proposition: that the next chapter of Hawaiʻi’s education-to-workforce strategy may benefit from a learner-held layer that the State has not yet had occasion to build. EBSCOed is the division of EBSCO Information Services that has spent the last several years constructing that layer — the LER talent marketplace — and offering LER.me to states, learners, educators, and employers at no cost. We write to share what it is, where it complements Hawaiʻi’s investments, where it bridges systems that today operate in parallel, and how it is designed to extend rather than disturb the credential infrastructure Hawaiʻi has already built.

LER.me is an open-standards platform that gives each individual a portable digital wallet containing their verified learning and employment records. The marketplace is built on the IEEE Learning and Employment Record standard, Open Badges 3.0, and Comprehensive Learner Record 2.0 — the same open standards used across the credentialing field — so the data Hawaiʻi already publishes to the Credential Engine Registry, and the credentials issued by the seven UHCC campuses, the University of Hawaiʻi four-year campuses, HIDOE, and registered apprenticeship sponsors, remain authoritative and continue to operate exactly as they do today. The marketplace exchanges with those systems; it does not replace them. The platform itself is free to learners, to educators, and to employers, with optional subscription services available to states and large institutions that want deeper integration or custom analytics. The foundation is the foundation, and the foundation is free.

Four capabilities are most relevant to Hawaiʻi’s context. The first is free credential issuance: any approved Hawaiʻi institution, apprenticeship sponsor, or employer can issue verifiable credentials into learner-held wallets without licensing fees, supporting institutions of every size and budget on equal footing — a particular benefit in a state where many credential-producing institutions serve communities across geographically dispersed islands. The second is an open employer marketplace, in which Hawaiʻi employers post opportunities and discover qualified candidates based on verified skills and credentials, again at no cost. The third is public workforce intelligence — dashboards that aggregate credential issuance and labor demand data as linked open data, available to State agencies for planning, reporting, and supporting the Generational Commitment Workforce Implementation Report and the Hawaiʻi P-20 annual reporting. The fourth is the contributor framework, which crosswalks issued credentials to occupational standards and to State-defined high-demand designations at the point of issuance, so the demand signal Hawaiʻi has invested years in defining — through WDC, Hawaiʻi P-20, and the Sector Partnerships — is operationalized at the individual level, automatically.

Hawaiʻi’s distinctive achievement is the Generational Commitment itself — a 20-year horizon, named explicitly around the goal that all people of Hawaiʻi have a path to learn, work, and thrive within the State. The 2045 framing recognizes that workforce development is not a program but a generational mission, particularly for Native Hawaiian, rural, and underserved communities that have historically borne the brunt of attainment gaps. The Workforce Implementation Report due in December 2025 commits the State to operationalizing that vision in the near term. What sits underneath every one of those structures is the same need: a verifiable, portable, learner-held record that lets each Hawaiʻi resident carry their UHCC credential, their HIDOE Work-Based Learning experience, their College and Career Navigators-supported attainment, their Hawaiʻi Promise community college credential, their registered apprenticeship milestones, their sector partnership-funded training, and their employer-issued microcredentials in one place, recognized by employers, transferable across institutions, and durable beyond any one platform. That record is what the LER marketplace provides, at no cost, on the open standards the State already uses. EBSCOed is not asking Hawaiʻi to shorten the 2045 horizon — we are offering the learner-side layer that lets the Generational Commitment show up at each Hawaiʻi resident’s hand on a near-term timeline.

There are three lenses through which we have found it useful to discuss this marketplace with state leadership, and we offer them here in the same spirit. The first is complement — where the marketplace adds capability Hawaiʻi has not yet had reason to build. The Generational Commitment frames the long-term destination; the marketplace adds the near-term learner-side artifact, a verifiable record each Hawaiʻi resident carries with them. The Work-Based Learning Intermediary Network — with 350 experiences, 22,000+ students, and 2,000+ industry partners in 2024-25 — produces meaningful credentialing today through HIDOE pathway maps that connect HIDOE programs of study with UH postsecondary programs and local workforce demand; the marketplace gives every participating school, college, industry partner, and intermediary a free way to issue WBL credentials as verifiable Open Badges directly into learner wallets, with HIDOE pathway designation embedded in the badge metadata at issuance. UHCC’s Career Explorer tool, available to students starting in Grade 6, supports learners with labor market information; the marketplace operates as the credential-carrying counterpart. None of this displaces Hawaiʻi’s current investments. All of it makes them more visible, more durable, and more useful to the Hawaiʻi residents who earn them.

The second lens is bridge — where the marketplace connects systems that today operate in parallel. A Hawaiʻi resident who uses Career Explorer in middle school, participates in Work-Based Learning through HIDOE in high school, receives Hawaiʻi College and Career Navigators support, attends a UHCC campus with Hawaiʻi Promise scholarship support, completes a sector partnership-funded program (such as Good Jobs Hawaiʻi or Construct A Career), enters registered apprenticeship, and gains employer-issued microcredentials currently has those attainments living in different places. The marketplace allows them to travel together in one learner-owned record. American Job Centers and WDC delivery partners serving Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants can see a complete skill picture rather than reconstructing it from a paper trail. The connective tissue Hawaiʻi P-20, WDC, and HIDX provide at the State analytic level can be operationalized at the learner level through a credential wallet that travels with each Hawaiʻi resident.

The third lens is interoperability — where existing Hawaiʻi platforms occupy adjacent space and where it is essential that the State’s investments be respected. The Hawaiʻi Workforce Development Council remains the State’s authoritative workforce coordination body and the steward of the Generational Commitment; the marketplace operates as a learner-side complement that supports WDC’s mission. The Hawaiʻi P-20 Partnerships for Education remain the State’s authoritative cross-agency education-to-workforce alignment body; the marketplace receives credentials produced through Hawaiʻi P-20-coordinated work. The University of Hawaiʻi Community Colleges system continues exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives credentials issued by all seven UHCC campuses. HireNet Hawaiʻi remains the State’s official labor exchange; the marketplace acts as a complementary skills-and-credentials profile layer that posts to HireNet Hawaiʻi through standard application programming interfaces. The Hawaiʻi Data eXchange Partnership continues its analytic mission unchanged; the marketplace operates as a complementary, learner-side layer.

The matrix below — included here as a reference Hawaiʻi leadership may return to — applies three perspectives to selected initiatives. The Complement column identifies where the marketplace adds capabilities current State investments do not provide. The Bridge column identifies where the marketplace connects presently separate systems. The Interoperability column describes how the marketplace is designed to work alongside existing Hawaiʻi platforms.

If the State were to find this conversation worth continuing, three paths forward suggest themselves — each with discrete decision points and none requiring the State to commit beyond the step in front of it. The first is a discovery brief: a joint presentation to the Workforce Development Council, the Hawaiʻi P-20 Partnerships for Education, the Hawaiʻi State Department of Labor and Industrial Relations, the Hawaiʻi State Department of Education, the University of Hawaiʻi Community Colleges Office of Workforce Development, the University of Hawaiʻi System leadership, and — where the State considers it useful — the Hawaiʻi Workforce Funders Collaborative, outlining the marketplace’s open-standards architecture, the at-no-cost foundation, and what a small first cohort could look like. The second is a sector pilot: subject to a State decision to proceed, a focused cohort drawn from one of Hawaiʻi’s Sector Partnerships — health care (with employer partners like Hawaiʻi Pacific Health and Queen’s Health Care System), engineering, technology, or creative arts are natural candidates — in which UHCC graduates and Good Jobs Hawaiʻi program completers receive a Comprehensive Learner Record aligned with State high-demand designations and made available through the EBSCOed marketplace. A Work-Based Learning Intermediary Network pilot tied to one or two HIDOE complex areas, or a Hawaiʻi College and Career Navigators pilot tied to the three islands and 11 public high schools the program serves, are other natural starting shapes. The third path would, only at the State’s direction, layer in optional subscription services that integrate the marketplace with HireNet Hawaiʻi, the Eligible Training Provider List, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act case management, registered apprenticeship sponsor records, Hawaiʻi Promise data, and the Hawaiʻi Data eXchange Partnership pipeline. Any eligibility automation Hawaiʻi wished to pursue for Workforce Pell, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, or registered apprenticeship would live in this phase. State funds engage only here, and only to the extent the State chooses to procure subscription services. The first two phases require no new State appropriation.

Several considerations may inform Hawaiʻi’s thinking about the partnership. The marketplace’s open-standards foundation ensures the State’s prior investments in the Credential Engine Registry, HireNet Hawaiʻi, the Hawaiʻi Data eXchange Partnership, and the credentialing work of the seven UHCC campuses, the four-year UH campuses, and HIDOE continue to operate as they do today; the marketplace exchanges data with those systems rather than displacing them. The no-cost foundation means that the early phases require no new State appropriation; State funding considerations arise only in the third phase, and only for services the State elects to procure. Hawaiʻi’s distinctive geography — credential-producing institutions serving communities across the islands — may make a learner-held credential wallet that travels with each resident regardless of island residence a particularly natural fit for the State’s equity mission.

A further consideration may be relevant to the State’s long-term planning. As the marketplace becomes the trusted system of record for skills and credentials across Hawaiʻi, states often find that certain point solutions they currently maintain — case management tooling supporting Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants, Eligible Training Provider List eligibility workflows, standalone skills-assessment platforms, district- or institution-level credential wallets that today operate in isolation, and the patchwork of employer-side job-board and applicant-tracking subscriptions that result when many platforms each serve a slice of the same workforce — become candidates for consolidation or retirement, with associated reductions in ongoing licensing and maintenance costs. EBSCOed offers no opinion on which systems Hawaiʻi may wish to retain and which it may wish to consolidate; those decisions belong to the State and the relevant agencies, on the State’s own timeline. We mention the possibility only because the cost-of-ownership story is one states have asked us to address, and because we are glad to support evaluations of that kind when the State considers them useful.

We recognize that Hawaiʻi has earned the right to be deliberate. The State’s coordination among the Workforce Development Council, the Department of Labor and Industrial Relations, the Department of Education, the University of Hawaiʻi System and its UHCC and four-year campuses, the Hawaiʻi P-20 Partnerships for Education, the Hawaiʻi Data eXchange Partnership, the Hawaiʻi Workforce Funders Collaborative, and the State’s sector partnerships reflects years of careful institution-building — and the launch of the Generational Commitment in September 2025 represents the State’s most ambitious long-horizon workforce commitment. EBSCOed has no interest in disrupting that coordination. Our interest is in offering a free, open-standards layer that makes Hawaiʻi’s existing investments — particularly the Work-Based Learning Intermediary Network, the College and Career Navigators program, Good Jobs Hawaiʻi, and the Generational Commitment’s broader vision — more useful to the people of Hawaiʻi they serve.

If any of this is worth a conversation, we would welcome one — at the convenience of whoever the State considers the right convening authority, in whatever form would be most useful, and on whatever timeline the State prefers. The contact information below is the appropriate first point of contact. The QR codes that follow provide direct access to the current EBSCOed ecosystem overview, which is kept current as capabilities evolve, and to LER.me itself, where any Hawaiʻi resident may today create a free Learning and Employment Record in a few minutes.

With great respect for the work Hawaiʻi is already doing, and with hope that the next chapter may be written together,

Idaho has, under Governor Brad Little, built one of the most distinctive State-level workforce financial aid investments in the Mountain West. Idaho LAUNCH — signed into law in 2023 with approximately $75 to $80 million in annual State appropriation — provides up to $8,000 per student covering 80 percent of tuition costs for in-demand careers, with the Idaho Workforce Development Council (Executive Director Wendi Secrist) approving the annual in-demand careers list. In its first year, Idaho LAUNCH delivered approximately 9,000 to 10,000 awards and contributed to an 11 percent increase in in-state postsecondary enrollment — one of the most measurable single-year workforce-credential impacts in the country. Idaho LAUNCH for Adults extends the same opportunity framework to working-age Idahoans seeking in-demand career credentials. The Workforce Development Training Fund, administered alongside Idaho LAUNCH, supports employer-sponsored training. The Idaho Department of Labor delivers WIOA and the State’s apprenticeship infrastructure. Idaho’s four community colleges — College of Eastern Idaho, College of Southern Idaho, College of Western Idaho, and North Idaho College — anchor postsecondary credential delivery, with North Idaho College’s Workforce Training Center alone serving 5,000 students annually and offering an Associate of Applied Science Degree for apprenticeship completion. The Idaho State Board of Education, coordinating the State’s public higher-education governance, and the State Board for Career Technical Education together shape Idaho’s broader CTE-to-postsecondary pipeline. Boise State University, Idaho State University, and the University of Idaho complete the State’s research and comprehensive university infrastructure. Few states have built so much, so deliberately, in service of their workers.

This letter is written in admiration of that work, and with a specific proposition: that the next chapter of Idaho’s education-to-workforce strategy may benefit from a learner-held layer that the State has not yet had occasion to build. EBSCOed is the division of EBSCO Information Services that has spent the last several years constructing that layer — the LER talent marketplace — and offering LER.me to states, learners, educators, and employers at no cost. We write to share what it is, where it complements Idaho’s investments, where it bridges systems that today operate in parallel, and how it is designed to extend rather than disturb the credential infrastructure Idaho has already built.

LER.me is an open-standards platform that gives each individual a portable digital wallet containing their verified learning and employment records. The marketplace is built on the IEEE Learning and Employment Record standard, Open Badges 3.0, and Comprehensive Learner Record 2.0 — the same open standards used across the credentialing field — so the data Idaho already publishes to the Credential Engine Registry, and the credentials issued by Idaho’s four community colleges, Boise State, Idaho State, the University of Idaho, Lewis-Clark State College, the State’s private nonprofit colleges, K-12 districts, and registered apprenticeship sponsors, remain authoritative and continue to operate exactly as they do today. The marketplace exchanges with those systems; it does not replace them. The platform itself is free to learners, to educators, and to employers, with optional subscription services available to states and large institutions that want deeper integration or custom analytics. The foundation is the foundation, and the foundation is free.

Four capabilities are most relevant to Idaho’s context. The first is free credential issuance: any approved Idaho institution, apprenticeship sponsor, or employer can issue verifiable credentials into learner-held wallets without licensing fees, supporting institutions of every size and budget on equal footing. The second is an open employer marketplace, in which Idaho employers post opportunities and discover qualified candidates based on verified skills and credentials, again at no cost. The third is public workforce intelligence — dashboards that aggregate credential issuance and labor demand data as linked open data, available to State agencies for planning, reporting, and supporting the Idaho Workforce Development Council’s in-demand careers reporting mission. The fourth is the contributor framework, which crosswalks issued credentials to occupational standards and to the Idaho Workforce Development Council’s annually-approved in-demand careers list at the point of issuance, so the demand signal Idaho has invested years in defining is operationalized at the individual level, automatically.

Idaho’s distinctive achievement is Idaho LAUNCH’s measurable enrollment impact at scale. An 11 percent increase in in-state postsecondary enrollment in a single year — the year Idaho LAUNCH took effect — is a measurable outcome that few state workforce-credential investments can demonstrate. Combined with Idaho LAUNCH’s roughly 9,000-10,000 first-year awards, the $75-80 million annual State commitment, and Idaho LAUNCH for Adults extending the framework to working-age Idahoans, the program represents an unusually disciplined alignment of State financial aid with State labor demand. The Idaho Workforce Development Council’s annual in-demand careers list — the gating mechanism that determines which programs are LAUNCH-eligible — operationalizes the State’s commitment to demand-driven credentialing at the program level. What sits underneath every one of those investments is the same need: a verifiable, portable, learner-held record that lets each Idahoan carry their community college credential, their Boise State, Idaho State, or University of Idaho degree, their Lewis-Clark State credential, their LAUNCH-funded attainment, their Workforce Development Training Fund-supported credential, their registered apprenticeship milestones (including North Idaho College’s AAS for apprenticeship completion), and their employer-issued microcredentials in one place, recognized by employers, transferable across institutions, and durable beyond any one platform. That record is what the LER marketplace provides, at no cost, on the open standards the State already uses. EBSCOed is not asking Idaho to alter the LAUNCH framework or the Workforce Development Council’s in-demand careers process — we are offering the learner-side layer that lets the credentials LAUNCH funds travel with each Idahoan in a verifiable wallet.

There are three lenses through which we have found it useful to discuss this marketplace with State leadership, and we offer them here in the same spirit. The first is complement — where the marketplace adds capability Idaho has not yet had reason to build at scale. The Idaho Workforce Development Council tracks LAUNCH award distribution and enrollment outcomes at the State level; the marketplace adds the learner-side artifact, a verifiable record each Idahoan carries with them. Idaho’s four community colleges, the State’s public universities, Lewis-Clark State College, the private nonprofit colleges, and registered apprenticeship sponsors all produce credentials that today travel through institutional transcripts; the marketplace gives each institution a free way to issue those credentials as verifiable Open Badges directly into learner wallets, with Idaho LAUNCH funding designation or in-demand-careers-list designation embedded in the badge metadata at issuance where applicable. None of this displaces Idaho’s current investments. All of it makes them more visible, more durable, and more useful to the Idahoans who earn them.

The second lens is bridge — where the marketplace connects systems that today operate in parallel. An Idahoan who completes career and technical education at an Idaho high school, earns a LAUNCH-funded community college credential, transitions through an apprenticeship registered with the Idaho Department of Labor with North Idaho College’s AAS Degree for apprenticeship completion, transfers to Boise State, Idaho State, or the University of Idaho, completes Idaho LAUNCH for Adults-funded credentials at any career stage, and gains employer-issued microcredentials currently has those attainments living in different places. The marketplace allows them to travel together in one learner-owned record. Idaho Department of Labor career navigators serving WIOA participants can see a complete skill picture rather than reconstructing it from a paper trail. The connective tissue the Idaho Workforce Development Council and Idaho LAUNCH provide at the State level can be operationalized at the learner level through a credential wallet that travels with each Idahoan.

The third lens is interoperability — where existing Idaho platforms occupy adjacent space and where it is essential that the State’s investments be respected. The Idaho Workforce Development Council remains the State’s authoritative workforce coordinating body and the agency operationalizing Idaho LAUNCH and the in-demand careers list; the marketplace operates as a learner-side complement that supports the Council’s mission. The Idaho Department of Labor continues exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives credentials produced through IDOL-overseen programs including registered apprenticeship. The Idaho State Board of Education continues exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives credentials issued by Idaho’s public higher-education institutions. The State Board for Career Technical Education continues exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives K-12 and postsecondary CTE credentials. IdahoWorks remains Idaho’s official labor exchange; the marketplace acts as a complementary skills-and-credentials profile layer that posts to IdahoWorks through standard application programming interfaces.

The matrix below — included here as a reference Idaho leadership may return to — applies three perspectives to selected initiatives. The Complement column identifies where the marketplace adds capabilities current State investments do not provide. The Bridge column identifies where the marketplace connects presently separate systems. The Interoperability column describes how the marketplace is designed to work alongside existing Idaho platforms.

If the State were to find this conversation worth continuing, three paths forward suggest themselves — each with discrete decision points and none requiring the State to commit beyond the step in front of it. The first is a discovery brief: a joint presentation to the Idaho Workforce Development Council, the Idaho Department of Labor, the Idaho State Board of Education, the State Board for Career Technical Education, Idaho’s four community college presidents, Boise State, Idaho State, the University of Idaho, Lewis-Clark State, and — where the State considers it useful — private nonprofit college leadership and Local Workforce Development Board representatives, outlining the marketplace’s open-standards architecture, the at-no-cost foundation, and what a small first cohort could look like. The second is a sector pilot: subject to a State decision to proceed, a focused cohort drawn from one of Idaho’s strategic in-demand career sectors — healthcare, advanced manufacturing, IT, construction trades, or education are natural candidates — in which LAUNCH or LAUNCH for Adults recipients, Workforce Development Training Fund participants, or registered apprenticeship completers (including North Idaho College AAS Degree completers) receive a Comprehensive Learner Record aligned with the Workforce Development Council’s in-demand careers list designations and made available through the EBSCOed marketplace. The third path would, only at the State’s direction, layer in optional subscription services that integrate the marketplace with IdahoWorks, the Eligible Training Provider List, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act case management, registered apprenticeship sponsor records, the Idaho LAUNCH program data pipeline, and the Workforce Development Training Fund reporting infrastructure. Any eligibility automation Idaho wished to pursue for Workforce Pell, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, or registered apprenticeship would live in this phase. State funds engage only here, and only to the extent the State chooses to procure subscription services. The first two phases require no new State appropriation.

Several considerations may inform Idaho’s thinking about the partnership. The marketplace’s open-standards foundation ensures the State’s prior investments in the Credential Engine Registry, IdahoWorks, and the credentialing work of Idaho’s four community colleges, the public universities, Lewis-Clark State, the private nonprofit colleges, and registered apprenticeship sponsors continue to operate as they do today; the marketplace exchanges data with those systems rather than displacing them. The no-cost foundation means that the early phases require no new State appropriation; State funding considerations arise only in the third phase, and only for services the State elects to procure. Idaho’s distinctive operational track record — Idaho LAUNCH’s 11-percent first-year in-state postsecondary enrollment growth — and the Workforce Development Council’s annual in-demand careers list as the State’s demand-signaling mechanism may make Idaho a particularly good State for a learner-side marketplace that preserves in-demand-careers designation at issuance.

A further consideration may be relevant to the State’s long-term planning. As the marketplace becomes the trusted system of record for skills and credentials across Idaho, states often find that certain point solutions they currently maintain — case management tooling supporting Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants, Eligible Training Provider List eligibility workflows, standalone skills-assessment platforms, district- or institution-level credential wallets that today operate in isolation, and the patchwork of employer-side job-board and applicant-tracking subscriptions that result when many platforms each serve a slice of the same workforce — become candidates for consolidation or retirement, with associated reductions in ongoing licensing and maintenance costs. EBSCOed offers no opinion on which systems Idaho may wish to retain and which it may wish to consolidate; those decisions belong to the State and the relevant agencies, on the State’s own timeline. We mention the possibility only because the cost-of-ownership story is one states have asked us to address, and because we are glad to support evaluations of that kind when the State considers them useful.

We recognize that Idaho has earned the right to be deliberate. The State’s coordination among the Workforce Development Council, the Department of Labor, the State Board of Education, the State Board for Career Technical Education, the four community colleges, the public universities, Lewis-Clark State, the private nonprofit colleges, the Local Workforce Development Boards, and the State’s registered apprenticeship sponsor community reflects years of careful institution-building under the Little Administration’s coordinated workforce direction. EBSCOed has no interest in disrupting that coordination. Our interest is in offering a free, open-standards layer that makes Idaho’s existing investments — particularly Idaho LAUNCH, Idaho LAUNCH for Adults, the Workforce Development Training Fund, and the Workforce Development Council’s annually-approved in-demand careers list — more useful to the Idahoans they serve.

If any of this is worth a conversation, we would welcome one — at the convenience of whoever the State considers the right convening authority, in whatever form would be most useful, and on whatever timeline the State prefers. The contact information below is the appropriate first point of contact. The QR codes that follow provide direct access to the current EBSCOed ecosystem overview, which is kept current as capabilities evolve, and to LER.me itself, where any Idahoan may today create a free Learning and Employment Record in a few minutes.

With great respect for the work Idaho is already doing, and with hope that the next chapter may be written together,

Illinois has built one of the most multi-agency-coordinated workforce systems in the country. The Illinois Workforce Innovation Board convenes the State’s workforce strategy across the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, the Department of Employment Security, the Illinois Community College Board, the Illinois Board of Higher Education, and other partner agencies, and oversees the WIOA State Plan for PY 2024-2027. The 48 community colleges of the Illinois Community College Board deliver the State’s workforce credentials. The Illinois Works Pre-Apprenticeship Program, launched in 2021 to expand diversity and access in the construction trades, has graduated more than 3,900 Illinoisans. The Workforce Empowerment Initiative, launched in 2019, has served more than 15,000 adults — expanding access to training and supportive services in healthcare, transportation, IT, construction, and education for individuals pursuing careers paying at least 30 percent above the local living wage. The Career Outcomes Tool — jointly developed by IDES, IWIB, IBHE, ICCB, and ISAC — already provides workforce outcomes for postsecondary graduates by program. In March 2026, Executive Order 2026-03 established a new Illinois State Attainment Working Group, co-chaired by DCEO, ICCB, IBHE, and IDES, to deepen the State’s commitment to credential and degree attainment. Few states have built so much, so deliberately, in service of their workers.

This letter is written in admiration of that work, and with a specific proposition: that the next chapter of Illinois' education-to-workforce strategy may benefit from a learner-held layer that the State has not yet had occasion to build. EBSCOed is the division of EBSCO Information Services that has spent the last several years constructing that layer — the LER talent marketplace — and offering LER.me to states, learners, educators, and employers at no cost. We write to share what it is, where it complements Illinois' investments, where it bridges systems that today operate in parallel, and how it is designed to extend rather than disturb the credential infrastructure Illinois has already built.

LER.me is an open-standards platform that gives each individual a portable digital wallet containing their verified learning and employment records. The marketplace is built on the IEEE Learning and Employment Record standard, Open Badges 3.0, and Comprehensive Learner Record 2.0 — the same open standards used across the credentialing field — so the data Illinois already publishes to the Credential Engine Registry, and the credentials issued by the State’s 48 community colleges, public and independent universities, K-12 districts, and registered apprenticeship sponsors, remain authoritative and continue to operate exactly as they do today. The marketplace exchanges with those systems; it does not replace them. The platform itself is free to learners, to educators, and to employers, with optional subscription services available to states and large institutions that want deeper integration or custom analytics. The foundation is the foundation, and the foundation is free.

Four capabilities are most relevant to Illinois' context. The first is free credential issuance: any approved Illinois institution, apprenticeship sponsor, or employer can issue verifiable credentials into learner-held wallets without licensing fees, supporting institutions of every size and budget on equal footing. The second is an open employer marketplace, in which Illinois employers post opportunities and discover qualified candidates based on verified skills and credentials, again at no cost. The third is public workforce intelligence — dashboards that aggregate credential issuance and labor demand data as linked open data, available to State agencies for planning, reporting, and supporting the work of the Illinois State Attainment Working Group established under Executive Order 2026-03. The fourth is the contributor framework, which crosswalks issued credentials to occupational standards and to State-defined high-demand categories — including the high-demand sectors named in the Workforce Empowerment Initiative — at the point of issuance, so the demand signal Illinois has invested years in defining is operationalized at the individual level, automatically.

Illinois' distinctive strength is the depth of its multi-agency coordination. Few states have built as substantial a cross-agency apparatus around workforce development as Illinois has, with IWIB convening DCEO, IDES, DHS, ICCB, IBHE, ISBE, IDEC, ISAC, and the P-20 Council together with local Workforce Innovation Boards. The Career Outcomes Tool already demonstrates what cross-agency data sharing can produce. Executive Order 2026-03 — issued in March 2026 to create the Illinois State Attainment Working Group — signals an even deeper commitment to credential and degree attainment as a strategic State priority. What sits underneath every one of those structures is the same need: a verifiable, portable, learner-held record that lets each Illinoisan carry their community college credential funded under the Monetary Award Program, their Illinois Works Pre-Apprenticeship completion, their Workforce Empowerment Initiative-funded training, their registered apprenticeship milestones, and their employer-issued microcredentials in one place, recognized by employers, transferable across institutions, and durable beyond any one platform. That record is what the LER marketplace provides, at no cost, on the open standards the State already uses. EBSCOed is not asking Illinois to add another agency — we are offering the learner-side layer that makes the State’s multi-agency coordination visible in each Illinoisan’s hand.

There are three lenses through which we have found it useful to discuss this marketplace with state leadership, and we offer them here in the same spirit. The first is complement — where the marketplace adds capability Illinois has not yet had reason to build. The Illinois State Attainment Working Group will measure attainment at the State level; the marketplace adds the learner-side artifact, a verifiable record each Illinoisan carries with them. The Workforce Empowerment Initiative produces credentials in named high-demand sectors paying at least 30 percent above the living wage; the marketplace gives every participating training provider and employer a free way to issue those credentials as verifiable Open Badges directly into learner wallets, with Workforce Empowerment designation embedded in the badge metadata at issuance. Illinois Works Pre-Apprenticeship completers and graduates of the broader Registered Apprenticeship system face the same opportunity at every milestone. The State’s 48 community colleges, public and independent universities issue credentials that travel today through transcripts; the marketplace lets them also travel as verifiable Open Badges. None of this displaces Illinois' current investments. All of it makes them more visible, more durable, and more useful to the Illinoisans who earn them.

The second lens is bridge — where the marketplace connects systems that today operate in parallel. An Illinoisan who completes adult education through ICCB, receives a Monetary Award Program-funded community college credential, completes Illinois Works Pre-Apprenticeship, enters a Registered Apprenticeship, completes Workforce Empowerment Initiative-funded training, and gains employer-issued microcredentials currently has those attainments living in different places — IWIB’s coordination ties them together strategically, but the learner does not carry a verifiable record they can show an employer. The marketplace allows them to travel together in one learner-owned record. Illinois workNet partner navigators serving Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants can see a complete skill picture rather than reconstructing it from a paper trail. The Career Outcomes Tool already demonstrates that the State can connect supply-side credential data with outcome data at the program level; the marketplace adds individual-level credential portability on top of that.

The third lens is interoperability — where existing Illinois platforms occupy adjacent space and where it is essential that the State’s investments be respected. The Career Outcomes Tool, jointly maintained by IDES, IWIB, IBHE, ICCB, and ISAC, remains the State’s authoritative program-level outcomes platform; the marketplace operates as a learner-side complement, providing each Illinoisan with the credential record while the Career Outcomes Tool continues to serve program-level analytic functions. Illinois workNet remains the State’s authoritative workforce service-delivery website; the marketplace acts as a complementary skills-and-credentials profile layer that integrates with workNet through standard application programming interfaces. The IDES labor exchange remains the State’s official employment channel; the marketplace supplies verified candidate credentials into IDES-style systems where useful. The Monetary Award Program administered by ISAC continues exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives the credentials MAP-funded programs produce.

The matrix below — included here as a reference Illinois leadership may return to — applies three perspectives to selected initiatives. The Complement column identifies where the marketplace adds capabilities current State investments do not provide. The Bridge column identifies where the marketplace connects presently separate systems. The Interoperability column describes how the marketplace is designed to work alongside existing Illinois platforms.

If the State were to find this conversation worth continuing, three paths forward suggest themselves — each with discrete decision points and none requiring the State to commit beyond the step in front of it. The first is a discovery brief: a joint presentation to the Illinois Workforce Innovation Board, the Illinois State Attainment Working Group, the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, the Department of Employment Security, the Illinois Community College Board, the Illinois Board of Higher Education, and — where the State considers it useful — the Illinois P-20 Council outlining the marketplace’s open-standards architecture, the at-no-cost foundation, and what a small first cohort could look like. The second is a sector pilot: subject to a State decision to proceed, a focused cohort drawn from one of the Workforce Empowerment Initiative high-demand sectors — healthcare, transportation, information technology, construction, or education — in which Workforce Empowerment Initiative completers and Illinois Works Pre-Apprenticeship graduates receive a Comprehensive Learner Record aligned with the State’s labor-market designations and made available through the EBSCOed marketplace. The third path would, only at the State’s direction, layer in optional subscription services that integrate the marketplace with Illinois workNet, the IDES labor exchange, the Eligible Training Provider List, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act case management, the Career Outcomes Tool data pipeline, registered apprenticeship sponsor records, and the Illinois State Attainment Working Group’s data infrastructure. Any eligibility automation Illinois wished to pursue for Workforce Pell, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, or registered apprenticeship would live in this phase. State funds engage only here, and only to the extent the State chooses to procure subscription services. The first two phases require no new State appropriation.

Several considerations may inform Illinois' thinking about the partnership. The marketplace’s open-standards foundation ensures the State’s prior investments in the Credential Engine Registry, the Career Outcomes Tool, Illinois workNet, the Monetary Award Program, and the credentialing work of the 48 community colleges, the public universities, and the independent institutions continue to operate as they do today; the marketplace exchanges data with those systems rather than displacing them. The no-cost foundation means that the early phases require no new State appropriation; State funding considerations arise only in the third phase, and only for services the State elects to procure. Illinois' distinctive arrangement — IWIB convening more than nine State agencies and councils in a single workforce strategy — may benefit from engagement at both the State and Local Workforce Innovation Board level during any broader rollout, and EBSCOed welcomes the opportunity to participate in such conversations at the State’s direction, in whatever forum the State considers most useful.

A further consideration may be relevant to the State’s long-term planning. As the marketplace becomes the trusted system of record for skills and credentials across Illinois, states often find that certain point solutions they currently maintain — case management tooling supporting Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants, Eligible Training Provider List eligibility workflows, standalone skills-assessment platforms, district- or institution-level credential wallets that today operate in isolation, and the patchwork of employer-side job-board and applicant-tracking subscriptions that result when many platforms each serve a slice of the same workforce — become candidates for consolidation or retirement, with associated reductions in ongoing licensing and maintenance costs. EBSCOed offers no opinion on which systems Illinois may wish to retain and which it may wish to consolidate; those decisions belong to the State and the relevant agencies, on the State’s own timeline. We mention the possibility only because the cost-of-ownership story is one states have asked us to address, and because we are glad to support evaluations of that kind when the State considers them useful.

We recognize that Illinois has earned the right to be deliberate. The State’s coordination among the Illinois Workforce Innovation Board, the Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, the Department of Employment Security, the Department of Human Services, the Illinois Community College Board, the Illinois Board of Higher Education, the Illinois State Board of Education, the Illinois Department of Early Childhood Education, the Illinois Student Assistance Commission, the Illinois P-20 Council, and the Local Workforce Innovation Boards reflects years of careful institution-building — and the recent Executive Order 2026-03 establishing the Illinois State Attainment Working Group represents a renewed commitment to credential and degree attainment at the strategic State level. EBSCOed has no interest in disrupting that coordination. Our interest is in offering a free, open-standards layer that makes Illinois' existing investments — particularly Illinois Works Pre-Apprenticeship, the Workforce Empowerment Initiative, MAP, and the credentialing work of the 48 community colleges — more useful to the Illinoisans they serve.

If any of this is worth a conversation, we would welcome one — at the convenience of whoever the State considers the right convening authority, in whatever form would be most useful, and on whatever timeline the State prefers. The contact information below is the appropriate first point of contact. The QR codes that follow provide direct access to the current EBSCOed ecosystem overview, which is kept current as capabilities evolve, and to LER.me itself, where any Illinoisan may today create a free Learning and Employment Record in a few minutes.

With great respect for the work Illinois is already doing, and with hope that the next chapter may be written together,

Indiana has built one of the most employer-engaged workforce systems in the Midwest, anchored by Next Level Jobs and the deliberate alignment of three institutions — the Governor’s Workforce Cabinet, the Indiana Commission for Higher Education, and the Indiana Department of Workforce Development. The Workforce Ready Grant has delivered tuition-free training for more than 33,000 Hoosiers in 125+ high-value certificate programs across Indiana’s high-demand sectors, with recipients earning nearly $7,000 more after completion. The Employer Training Grant, the companion program, reimburses Indiana employers up to $50,000 to train workers in middle-skill, high-demand, high-wage occupations. Ivy Tech Community College operates across 40+ locations as the primary statewide delivery system, with Vincennes University and Indiana Tech also serving as approved providers. The INDemand Jobs methodology — a rigorous occupation-ranking framework combining future demand, wage level, and current postings — anchors program eligibility. The Hoosier Talent Network connects job seekers to high-demand, high-wage opportunities, and WorkOne Career Centers serve as Indiana’s American Job Center front door. Beyond the State system, Ascend Indiana — operating under the CEOs of Indiana Corporate Partnership — runs the Ascend Network connecting more than 735 employers with Hoosier talent, and TechPoint, the CICP’s tech-sector initiative, recently expanded its statewide tech job board through Ascend to more than 1,000 listings. Modern Apprenticeship for Indianapolis high school students continues to demonstrate what skills-based apprenticeship can produce. Few states have built so much, so deliberately, in service of their workers.

This letter is written in admiration of that work, and with a specific proposition: that the next chapter of Indiana’s education-to-workforce strategy may benefit from a learner-held layer that the State has not yet had occasion to build. EBSCOed is the division of EBSCO Information Services that has spent the last several years constructing that layer — the LER talent marketplace — and offering LER.me to states, learners, educators, and employers at no cost. We write to share what it is, where it complements Indiana’s investments, where it bridges systems that today operate in parallel, and how it is designed to extend rather than disturb the credential infrastructure Indiana has already built.

LER.me is an open-standards platform that gives each individual a portable digital wallet containing their verified learning and employment records. The marketplace is built on the IEEE Learning and Employment Record standard, Open Badges 3.0, and Comprehensive Learner Record 2.0 — the same open standards used across the credentialing field — so the data Indiana already publishes to the Credential Engine Registry, and the credentials issued by Ivy Tech, the State’s public universities, K-12 districts, and registered apprenticeship sponsors, remain authoritative and continue to operate exactly as they do today. The marketplace exchanges with those systems; it does not replace them. The platform itself is free to learners, to educators, and to employers, with optional subscription services available to states and large institutions that want deeper integration or custom analytics. The foundation is the foundation, and the foundation is free.

Four capabilities are most relevant to Indiana’s context. The first is free credential issuance: any approved Indiana institution, apprenticeship sponsor, or employer can issue verifiable credentials into learner-held wallets without licensing fees, supporting institutions of every size and budget on equal footing. The second is an open employer marketplace, in which Indiana employers post opportunities and discover qualified candidates based on verified skills and credentials, again at no cost. The third is public workforce intelligence — dashboards that aggregate credential issuance and labor demand data as linked open data, available to State agencies for planning, reporting, and informing future iterations of the INDemand Jobs methodology. The fourth is the contributor framework, which crosswalks issued credentials to occupational standards and to Indiana’s INDemand-classified high-demand categories at the point of issuance, so the demand signal Indiana has invested years in defining is operationalized at the individual level, automatically.

Indiana’s distinctive strength is the marriage of State-funded grant programs with private-sector talent infrastructure. Next Level Jobs and the Workforce Ready Grant deliver no-cost credential pathways at scale through Ivy Tech, with the INDemand Jobs methodology ensuring that programs lead to genuinely high-demand jobs. The Employer Training Grant brings employers into the same framework. Meanwhile, Ascend Indiana and TechPoint demonstrate that the State’s employers are willing to invest in shared talent infrastructure — the Ascend Network already serves as a working employer-side complement to the State’s training investments. What sits underneath both sides of that arrangement is the same need: a verifiable, portable, learner-held record that lets each Hoosier carry their Workforce Ready Grant-funded credential, their Ivy Tech certificate, their registered apprenticeship milestones, their Modern Apprenticeship experience, and their employer-issued microcredentials in one place, recognized by employers, transferable across institutions, and durable beyond any one platform. That record is what the LER marketplace provides, at no cost, on the open standards the State already uses. EBSCOed is not asking Indiana to choose between its public and private workforce assets — we are offering the learner-side layer that makes both sets of investments visible at the individual level.

There are three lenses through which we have found it useful to discuss this marketplace with state leadership, and we offer them here in the same spirit. The first is complement — where the marketplace adds capability Indiana has not yet had reason to build. The Workforce Ready Grant produces certificates in INDemand-classified high-demand sectors; the marketplace adds the learner-side artifact, a verifiable record each Hoosier carries with them. The Employer Training Grant produces incumbent-worker training credentials; the marketplace gives every approved provider and participating employer a free way to issue those credentials as verifiable Open Badges directly into learner wallets, with INDemand classification embedded in the badge metadata. Ivy Tech’s continuing education and credit certificates face the same opportunity at every campus. The Modern Apprenticeship initiative produces work-based learning hours and milestones for high school students that today travel in transcript form; verifiable issuance makes them durable. None of this displaces Indiana’s current investments. All of it makes them more visible, more durable, and more useful to the Hoosiers who earn them.

The second lens is bridge — where the marketplace connects systems that today operate in parallel. A Hoosier who earns an Ivy Tech certificate through the Workforce Ready Grant, completes employer-funded training through an Employer Training Grant, participates in Modern Apprenticeship or another registered apprenticeship program, and gains employer-issued microcredentials through an Ascend Network employer currently has those attainments living in different places. The marketplace allows them to travel together in one learner-owned record. WorkOne Career Center navigators serving Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants can see a complete skill picture rather than reconstructing it from a paper trail. The Hoosier Talent Network and the Ascend Network can both surface candidates with verified, marketplace-issued credentials. The connective tissue exists in different places across Indiana’s workforce system; the marketplace places it in the learner, where it belongs.

The third lens is interoperability — where existing Indiana platforms occupy adjacent space and where it is essential that the State’s investments be respected. The INDemand Jobs methodology and the Workforce Ready Grant eligible program list, jointly maintained by the Commission for Higher Education and the Department of Workforce Development, remain authoritative; the marketplace operates alongside by inviting approved providers to issue Workforce Ready-eligible credentials as marketplace contributors with INDemand classification preserved at issuance. INTraining, Indiana’s Eligible Training Provider list, remains the authoritative WIOA training-provider list; the marketplace receives credentials issued by INTraining-approved providers. The Hoosier Talent Network and the Ascend Network remain Indiana’s working job-matching platforms; the marketplace acts as a complementary skills-and-credentials profile layer that posts to both through standard application programming interfaces, and that, where the State or CICP wishes, supplies verified candidate credentials into either platform. NextLevelJobs.org remains the State’s authoritative front door for Workforce Ready Grant and Employer Training Grant enrollment; the marketplace receives the credentials those programs produce.

The matrix below — included here as a reference Indiana leadership may return to — applies three perspectives to selected initiatives. The Complement column identifies where the marketplace adds capabilities current State investments do not provide. The Bridge column identifies where the marketplace connects presently separate systems. The Interoperability column describes how the marketplace is designed to work alongside existing Indiana platforms.

If the State were to find this conversation worth continuing, three paths forward suggest themselves — each with discrete decision points and none requiring the State to commit beyond the step in front of it. The first is a discovery brief: a joint presentation to the Governor’s Workforce Cabinet, the Indiana Commission for Higher Education, the Department of Workforce Development, Ivy Tech leadership, and — should the State and CICP find it useful — Ascend Indiana and TechPoint leadership, outlining the marketplace’s open-standards architecture, the at-no-cost foundation, and what a small first cohort could look like. The second is a sector pilot: subject to a State decision to proceed, a focused cohort drawn from one of the Workforce Ready Grant’s high-demand sectors — advanced manufacturing, health sciences, IT, business, transportation and logistics, or building and construction — in which Workforce Ready Grant completers receive a Comprehensive Learner Record aligned with INDemand classification and made available through the EBSCOed marketplace. A Modern Apprenticeship cohort is another natural starting shape. The third path would, only at the State’s direction, layer in optional subscription services that integrate the marketplace with the Hoosier Talent Network, INTraining, WorkOne case management, NextLevelJobs.org enrollment data, and the Employer Training Grant reimbursement pipeline. Any eligibility automation Indiana wished to pursue for Workforce Pell, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, or registered apprenticeship would live in this phase. State funds engage only here, and only to the extent the State chooses to procure subscription services. The first two phases require no new State appropriation.

Several considerations may inform Indiana’s thinking about the partnership. The marketplace’s open-standards foundation ensures the State’s prior investments in the Credential Engine Registry, the INDemand Jobs methodology, the Workforce Ready Grant infrastructure, INTraining, and the credentialing work of Ivy Tech, Vincennes University, and the State’s public and independent universities continue to operate as they do today; the marketplace exchanges data with those systems rather than displacing them. The no-cost foundation means that the early phases require no new State appropriation; State funding considerations arise only in the third phase, and only for services the State elects to procure. Indiana’s distinctive arrangement — a State workforce system tightly coordinated with a CICP-anchored private-sector talent infrastructure through Ascend Indiana, TechPoint, and the sector initiatives — may benefit from engagement with both the State and CICP during any broader rollout, and EBSCOed welcomes the opportunity to participate in such conversations at the State’s direction, in whatever forum the State considers most useful.

A further consideration may be relevant to the State’s long-term planning. As the marketplace becomes the trusted system of record for skills and credentials across Indiana, states often find that certain point solutions they currently maintain — case management tooling supporting Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants, Eligible Training Provider List eligibility workflows, standalone skills-assessment platforms, district- or institution-level credential wallets that today operate in isolation, and the patchwork of employer-side job-board and applicant-tracking subscriptions that result when many platforms each serve a slice of the same workforce — become candidates for consolidation or retirement, with associated reductions in ongoing licensing and maintenance costs. EBSCOed offers no opinion on which systems Indiana may wish to retain and which it may wish to consolidate; those decisions belong to the State and the relevant agencies, on the State’s own timeline. We mention the possibility only because the cost-of-ownership story is one states have asked us to address, and because we are glad to support evaluations of that kind when the State considers them useful.

We recognize that Indiana has earned the right to be deliberate. The State’s coordination among the Governor’s Workforce Cabinet, the Commission for Higher Education, the Department of Workforce Development, the Department of Education, Ivy Tech and Vincennes University, the local Workforce Development Boards, and Indiana’s Office of Career and Technical Education — alongside the private-sector contributions of Ascend Indiana, TechPoint, Conexus, AgriNovus, BioCrossroads, and other CICP initiatives — reflects years of careful institution-building. EBSCOed has no interest in disrupting that coordination. Our interest is in offering a free, open-standards layer that makes Indiana’s existing investments — particularly Next Level Jobs and the credential-production machinery the State has built around Ivy Tech and the INDemand framework — more useful to the Hoosiers they serve.

If any of this is worth a conversation, we would welcome one — at the convenience of whoever the State considers the right convening authority, in whatever form would be most useful, and on whatever timeline the State prefers. The contact information below is the appropriate first point of contact. The QR codes that follow provide direct access to the current EBSCOed ecosystem overview, which is kept current as capabilities evolve, and to LER.me itself, where any Hoosier may today create a free Learning and Employment Record in a few minutes.

With great respect for the work Indiana is already doing, and with hope that the next chapter may be written together,

Iowa has, through Future Ready Iowa, achieved one of the most successful State-level workforce attainment commitments in the country. Future Ready Iowa — first established under Governor Branstad’s Executive Order 88 in August 2016 and signed into law by Governor Reynolds in 2018 — set a goal that 70 percent of Iowans in the workforce would have education or training beyond high school by 2025. Governor Reynolds announced in her 2024 Condition of the State that Iowa achieved that goal two years ahead of schedule. The path involved strategic investments in scholarship programs, registered apprenticeships, child care, and employer-engaged credentialing. The Future Ready Iowa Last-Dollar Scholarship covers gaps in tuition not addressed by other federal or state aid for high-demand programs at Iowa’s 15 community colleges. The Employer Innovation Fund supports collaborative employer-led initiatives that accelerate credential attainment, with matched grants for innovative regional workforce projects. Iowa Workforce Development, under Director Beth Townsend, coordinates the State’s workforce delivery infrastructure, with the Iowa Apprenticeship Act (15B) and the Iowa Registered Apprenticeship Development Fund (15C) providing dedicated State support for Registered Apprenticeship Programs, particularly those with 20 or fewer apprentices in high-demand occupations. Governor Reynolds' Vision for Iowa next-gen workforce priorities — articulated in 2025 — propose a $30 million Workforce Opportunity Fund to sustain work-based learning programs, alongside updates to the Last Dollar Scholarship to prioritize work-based learning and high-demand industries, and Teacher and Paraeducator Registered Apprenticeship student-teaching hour reform. Few states have built so much, so deliberately, in service of their workers.

This letter is written in admiration of that work, and with a specific proposition: that the next chapter of Iowa’s education-to-workforce strategy may benefit from a learner-held layer that the State has not yet had occasion to build. EBSCOed is the division of EBSCO Information Services that has spent the last several years constructing that layer — the LER talent marketplace — and offering LER.me to states, learners, educators, and employers at no cost. We write to share what it is, where it complements Iowa’s investments, where it bridges systems that today operate in parallel, and how it is designed to extend rather than disturb the credential infrastructure Iowa has already built.

LER.me is an open-standards platform that gives each individual a portable digital wallet containing their verified learning and employment records. The marketplace is built on the IEEE Learning and Employment Record standard, Open Badges 3.0, and Comprehensive Learner Record 2.0 — the same open standards used across the credentialing field — so the data Iowa already publishes to the Credential Engine Registry, and the credentials issued by Iowa’s 15 community colleges, the three Regents universities (University of Iowa, Iowa State, UNI), the State’s private nonprofit colleges, K-12 districts, and registered apprenticeship sponsors, remain authoritative and continue to operate exactly as they do today. The marketplace exchanges with those systems; it does not replace them. The platform itself is free to learners, to educators, and to employers, with optional subscription services available to states and large institutions that want deeper integration or custom analytics. The foundation is the foundation, and the foundation is free.

Four capabilities are most relevant to Iowa’s context. The first is free credential issuance: any approved Iowa institution, apprenticeship sponsor, or employer can issue verifiable credentials into learner-held wallets without licensing fees, supporting institutions of every size and budget on equal footing. The second is an open employer marketplace, in which Iowa employers post opportunities and discover qualified candidates based on verified skills and credentials, again at no cost. The third is public workforce intelligence — dashboards that aggregate credential issuance and labor demand data as linked open data, available to State agencies for planning, reporting, and supporting Iowa Workforce Development and the Future Ready Iowa Alliance’s continuing reporting mission. The fourth is the contributor framework, which crosswalks issued credentials to occupational standards and to Iowa’s Last Dollar Scholarship-eligible high-demand designations at the point of issuance, so the demand signal Iowa has invested years in defining is operationalized at the individual level, automatically.

Iowa’s distinctive achievement is finishing what the State set out to do. Few states have, in roughly seven years from Executive Order 88’s signing in 2016 to attainment of the goal in 2023-24, organized a coordinated workforce strategy, executed it, and exceeded it. The fact that Iowa met the 70-percent goal two years early signals operational discipline that few states can claim. Vision for Iowa — Governor Reynolds' next-generation workforce framework — turns attention from adult attainment to the high-school-to-workforce pipeline, with a proposed $30 million Workforce Opportunity Fund, updated Last Dollar Scholarship rewards for work-based learning, and Teacher and Paraeducator Registered Apprenticeship reform. What sits underneath every one of those structures is the same need: a verifiable, portable, learner-held record that lets each Iowan carry their community college credential, their Regents university degree, their Last Dollar Scholarship-funded attainment, their Employer Innovation Fund-supported credential, their 15B or 15C apprenticeship milestones, their Teacher Registered Apprenticeship attainment, their high-school work-based learning credential, and their employer-issued microcredentials in one place, recognized by employers, transferable across institutions, and durable beyond any one platform. That record is what the LER marketplace provides, at no cost, on the open standards the State already uses. EBSCOed is not asking Iowa to alter the Future Ready Iowa framework or the Vision for Iowa direction — we are offering the learner-side layer that lets the credentials the State has built infrastructure to produce travel with each Iowan in a verifiable wallet.

There are three lenses through which we have found it useful to discuss this marketplace with State leadership, and we offer them here in the same spirit. The first is complement — where the marketplace adds capability Iowa has not yet had reason to build. Iowa Workforce Development tracks workforce credential attainment at the State level through the Future Ready Iowa reporting framework; the marketplace adds the learner-side artifact, a verifiable record each Iowan carries with them. The 15 community colleges, the three Regents universities, the State’s private nonprofit colleges, and registered apprenticeship sponsors all produce credentials that today travel through institutional transcripts; the marketplace gives each institution a free way to issue those credentials as verifiable Open Badges directly into learner wallets, with Last Dollar Scholarship, 15B/15C, or Employer Innovation Fund designation embedded in the badge metadata at issuance where applicable. None of this displaces Iowa’s current investments. All of it makes them more visible, more durable, and more useful to the Iowans who earn them.

The second lens is bridge — where the marketplace connects systems that today operate in parallel. An Iowan who completes high-school CTE and work-based learning, earns a Last Dollar Scholarship-funded community college credential, transfers to a Regents university or a private nonprofit college, participates in a 15B or 15C Registered Apprenticeship, completes Teacher or Paraeducator Registered Apprenticeship and enters the classroom, completes Employer Innovation Fund-supported regional training, and gains employer-issued microcredentials currently has those attainments living in different places. The marketplace allows them to travel together in one learner-owned record. IowaWORKS career navigators serving Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants can see a complete skill picture rather than reconstructing it from a paper trail. The connective tissue Iowa Workforce Development and the Future Ready Iowa Alliance provide at the State level can be operationalized at the learner level through a credential wallet that travels with each Iowan.

The third lens is interoperability — where existing Iowa platforms occupy adjacent space and where it is essential that the State’s investments be respected. Iowa Workforce Development remains the State’s authoritative workforce agency; the marketplace operates as a learner-side complement that supports IWD’s Future Ready Iowa mission. The Future Ready Iowa Alliance continues exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives credentials produced through Future Ready Iowa-funded programs. Iowa’s 15 community colleges, coordinated through Community Colleges for Iowa, continue exactly as they operate today; the marketplace receives credentials issued by Iowa community colleges, with Last Dollar Scholarship designation preserved where applicable. The Iowa Board of Regents continues exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives credentials issued by University of Iowa, Iowa State University, and the University of Northern Iowa. IowaWORKS remains Iowa’s official labor exchange; the marketplace acts as a complementary skills-and-credentials profile layer that posts to IowaWORKS through standard application programming interfaces.

The matrix below — included here as a reference Iowa leadership may return to — applies three perspectives to selected initiatives. The Complement column identifies where the marketplace adds capabilities current State investments do not provide. The Bridge column identifies where the marketplace connects presently separate systems. The Interoperability column describes how the marketplace is designed to work alongside existing Iowa platforms.

If the State were to find this conversation worth continuing, three paths forward suggest themselves — each with discrete decision points and none requiring the State to commit beyond the step in front of it. The first is a discovery brief: a joint presentation to Iowa Workforce Development, the Future Ready Iowa Alliance, Community Colleges for Iowa, the Iowa Board of Regents, the Iowa Department of Education, and — where the State considers it useful — Iowa community college presidents, private nonprofit college representatives, and Local Workforce Development Board leadership, outlining the marketplace’s open-standards architecture, the at-no-cost foundation, and what a small first cohort could look like. The second is a sector pilot: subject to a State decision to proceed, a focused cohort drawn from one of Iowa’s strategic sectors — advanced manufacturing (with employer partners like Pella Corporation and Vermeer), healthcare, education (with Teacher and Paraeducator Registered Apprenticeship cohorts), IT, or construction trades are natural candidates — in which Last Dollar Scholarship recipients, 15B/15C Registered Apprenticeship completers, Employer Innovation Fund participants, or Teacher Registered Apprentices receive a Comprehensive Learner Record made available through the EBSCOed marketplace. The third path would, only at the State’s direction, layer in optional subscription services that integrate the marketplace with IowaWORKS, the Eligible Training Provider List, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act case management, registered apprenticeship sponsor records, the Last Dollar Scholarship data pipeline, and the Future Ready Iowa Alliance reporting infrastructure. Any eligibility automation Iowa wished to pursue for Workforce Pell, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, or registered apprenticeship would live in this phase. State funds engage only here, and only to the extent the State chooses to procure subscription services. The first two phases require no new State appropriation.

Several considerations may inform Iowa’s thinking about the partnership. The marketplace’s open-standards foundation ensures the State’s prior investments in the Credential Engine Registry, IowaWORKS, and the credentialing work of Iowa’s 15 community colleges, the three Regents universities, the State’s private nonprofit colleges, and registered apprenticeship sponsors continue to operate as they do today; the marketplace exchanges data with those systems rather than displacing them. The no-cost foundation means that the early phases require no new State appropriation; State funding considerations arise only in the third phase, and only for services the State elects to procure. Iowa’s distinctive operational track record — having achieved the Future Ready Iowa 70-percent goal two years ahead of schedule — and the Vision for Iowa framework’s pivot toward the next-generation high-school-to-workforce pipeline may make Iowa a particularly good State for a learner-side marketplace that supports both adult attainment continuation and youth pathway development.

A further consideration may be relevant to the State’s long-term planning. As the marketplace becomes the trusted system of record for skills and credentials across Iowa, states often find that certain point solutions they currently maintain — case management tooling supporting Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants, Eligible Training Provider List eligibility workflows, standalone skills-assessment platforms, district- or institution-level credential wallets that today operate in isolation, and the patchwork of employer-side job-board and applicant-tracking subscriptions that result when many platforms each serve a slice of the same workforce — become candidates for consolidation or retirement, with associated reductions in ongoing licensing and maintenance costs. EBSCOed offers no opinion on which systems Iowa may wish to retain and which it may wish to consolidate; those decisions belong to the State and the relevant agencies, on the State’s own timeline. We mention the possibility only because the cost-of-ownership story is one states have asked us to address, and because we are glad to support evaluations of that kind when the State considers them useful.

We recognize that Iowa has earned the right to be deliberate. The State’s coordination among Iowa Workforce Development, the Future Ready Iowa Alliance, Community Colleges for Iowa, the Iowa Board of Regents, the Iowa Department of Education, the State’s 15 community colleges, the private nonprofit colleges, the Iowa Economic Development Authority, and the Local Workforce Development Boards reflects years of careful institution-building — and the demonstrated execution capacity that delivered the Future Ready Iowa 70-percent goal ahead of schedule. EBSCOed has no interest in disrupting that coordination. Our interest is in offering a free, open-standards layer that makes Iowa’s existing investments — particularly Future Ready Iowa, the Last Dollar Scholarship, the Employer Innovation Fund, the 15B and 15C apprenticeship programs, Teacher and Paraeducator Registered Apprenticeship, and the Vision for Iowa work-based learning expansion — more useful to the Iowans they serve.

If any of this is worth a conversation, we would welcome one — at the convenience of whoever the State considers the right convening authority, in whatever form would be most useful, and on whatever timeline the State prefers. The contact information below is the appropriate first point of contact. The QR codes that follow provide direct access to the current EBSCOed ecosystem overview, which is kept current as capabilities evolve, and to LER.me itself, where any Iowan may today create a free Learning and Employment Record in a few minutes.

With great respect for the work Iowa is already doing, and with hope that the next chapter may be written together,

Kansas has built one of the most coherent two- and four-year coordination systems in the Plains. The Kansas Board of Regents — a nine-member governing board for the State’s six universities and statewide coordinating board for all 32 public higher education institutions (six state universities, one municipal university, 19 community colleges, and six technical colleges) — adopted Building a Future in June 2020 as the strategic plan succeeding Foresight 2020. Building a Future organizes the system around three pillars: serving Kansas families through affordability and access, supporting Kansas businesses through a robust talent pipeline and innovation, and advancing Kansas' economic prosperity. The Kansas Promise Act Scholarship — a last-dollar service scholarship enacted by the Kansas Legislature — covers tuition, fees, books, and required materials at participating community and technical colleges for students pursuing high-wage, high-demand, and critical-need fields, up to a $20,000 or 68-credit-hour lifetime maximum, in exchange for a two-year Kansas service commitment. The Kansas Career Technical Workforce Grant provides additional financial support for CTE program enrollment. The Kansas Postsecondary Technical Education Authority coordinates the State’s technical college system. KansasWorks delivers workforce services through American Job Centers across the State. Excel in Career Technical Education continues to extend dual-credit CTE opportunities to Kansas high school students. Few states have built so much, so deliberately, in service of their workers.

This letter is written in admiration of that work, and with a specific proposition: that the next chapter of Kansas' education-to-workforce strategy may benefit from a learner-held layer that the State has not yet had occasion to build. EBSCOed is the division of EBSCO Information Services that has spent the last several years constructing that layer — the LER talent marketplace — and offering LER.me to states, learners, educators, and employers at no cost. We write to share what it is, where it complements Kansas' investments, where it bridges systems that today operate in parallel, and how it is designed to extend rather than disturb the credential infrastructure Kansas has already built.

LER.me is an open-standards platform that gives each individual a portable digital wallet containing their verified learning and employment records. The marketplace is built on the IEEE Learning and Employment Record standard, Open Badges 3.0, and Comprehensive Learner Record 2.0 — the same open standards used across the credentialing field — so the data Kansas already publishes to the Credential Engine Registry, and the credentials issued by the 32 Kansas Board of Regents institutions, K-12 districts, and registered apprenticeship sponsors, remain authoritative and continue to operate exactly as they do today. The marketplace exchanges with those systems; it does not replace them. The platform itself is free to learners, to educators, and to employers, with optional subscription services available to states and large institutions that want deeper integration or custom analytics. The foundation is the foundation, and the foundation is free.

Four capabilities are most relevant to Kansas' context. The first is free credential issuance: any approved Kansas institution, apprenticeship sponsor, or employer can issue verifiable credentials into learner-held wallets without licensing fees, supporting institutions of every size and budget on equal footing. The second is an open employer marketplace, in which Kansas employers post opportunities and discover qualified candidates based on verified skills and credentials, again at no cost. The third is public workforce intelligence — dashboards that aggregate credential issuance and labor demand data as linked open data, available to State agencies for planning, reporting, and supporting Building a Future’s Pillar III economic prosperity reporting. The fourth is the contributor framework, which crosswalks issued credentials to occupational standards and to State-defined Promise-eligible high-demand fields at the point of issuance, so the demand signal Kansas has invested years in defining is operationalized at the individual level, automatically.

Kansas' distinctive strength is the structural coherence of the Board of Regents system. A single governing board for six universities and a coordinating board for 32 institutions is an unusual structural advantage — it means that decisions made at the system level land consistently across community colleges, technical colleges, and state universities. The Kansas Promise Act Scholarship, the Career Technical Workforce Grant, the Postsecondary Technical Education Authority’s technical college coordination, and Building a Future’s three-pillar strategy all benefit from that system coherence. What sits underneath every one of those structures is the same need: a verifiable, portable, learner-held record that lets each Kansan carry their Promise-eligible credential, their community college certificate, their technical college credential, their university degree, their registered apprenticeship milestones, and their employer-issued microcredentials in one place, recognized by employers, transferable across institutions, and durable beyond any one platform. That record is what the LER marketplace provides, at no cost, on the open standards the State already uses. EBSCOed is not asking Kansas to alter the Board of Regents' coordinating role — we are offering the learner-side layer that makes the credentials Kansas' coordinated system produces visible and portable for each Kansan.

There are three lenses through which we have found it useful to discuss this marketplace with state leadership, and we offer them here in the same spirit. The first is complement — where the marketplace adds capability Kansas has not yet had reason to build. Building a Future measures attainment, affordability, and economic alignment at the State and system level; the marketplace adds the learner-side artifact, a verifiable record each Kansan carries with them. The Kansas Promise Act Scholarship produces credentials in high-wage, high-demand, and critical-need fields at participating community and technical colleges; the marketplace gives every participating institution a free way to issue Promise-funded credentials as verifiable Open Badges directly into learner wallets, with Promise designation embedded in the badge metadata at issuance. The 32 Board of Regents institutions, the six technical colleges, the Excel in CTE program, the Career Technical Workforce Grant programs, and registered apprenticeship sponsors face the same opportunity. None of this displaces Kansas' current investments. All of it makes them more visible, more durable, and more useful to the Kansans who earn them.

The second lens is bridge — where the marketplace connects systems that today operate in parallel. A Kansan who completes Excel in CTE coursework in high school, earns a Kansas Promise Act Scholarship to attend a community or technical college, completes a credential in a Promise-eligible high-demand field, fulfills the two-year service commitment, returns to pursue a bachelor’s degree through Adult Learner Grant support, completes a registered apprenticeship, and gains employer-issued microcredentials currently has those attainments living in different places. The marketplace allows them to travel together in one learner-owned record. KansasWorks navigators serving Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants can see a complete skill picture rather than reconstructing it from a paper trail. The Board of Regents' system-wide coordination at the institutional level can be operationalized at the learner level through a credential wallet that travels with each Kansan.

The third lens is interoperability — where existing Kansas platforms occupy adjacent space and where it is essential that the State’s investments be respected. The Kansas Board of Regents remains the State’s authoritative governing and coordinating body; the marketplace operates as a learner-side complement that supports Building a Future’s mission while leaving the Board’s institutional coordination unchanged. The Kansas Promise Act Scholarship administration, run through KBOR with the Vice President for Workforce Development identifying Promise-eligible stand-alone programs, remains exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives credentials issued through Promise-eligible programs. The Postsecondary Technical Education Authority remains the State’s authoritative coordinator for technical colleges; the marketplace receives credentials issued through TEA-overseen institutions. KansasWorks remains Kansas' official labor exchange operated by the Kansas Department of Commerce; the marketplace acts as a complementary skills-and-credentials profile layer that posts to KansasWorks through standard application programming interfaces.

The matrix below — included here as a reference Kansas leadership may return to — applies three perspectives to selected initiatives. The Complement column identifies where the marketplace adds capabilities current State investments do not provide. The Bridge column identifies where the marketplace connects presently separate systems. The Interoperability column describes how the marketplace is designed to work alongside existing Kansas platforms.

If the State were to find this conversation worth continuing, three paths forward suggest themselves — each with discrete decision points and none requiring the State to commit beyond the step in front of it. The first is a discovery brief: a joint presentation to the Kansas Board of Regents, the Postsecondary Technical Education Authority, the Kansas Department of Commerce, the Kansas State Board of Education, and — where the State considers it useful — KansasWorks leadership and the Kansas Community College Association, outlining the marketplace’s open-standards architecture, the at-no-cost foundation, and what a small first cohort could look like. The second is a sector pilot: subject to a State decision to proceed, a focused cohort drawn from one of the Promise-eligible high-demand fields — healthcare (nursing, allied health), advanced manufacturing, IT, construction trades, or early childhood education are natural candidates — in which Kansas Promise Act Scholarship recipients receive a Comprehensive Learner Record aligned with Promise-eligible field designations and made available through the EBSCOed marketplace. The third path would, only at the State’s direction, layer in optional subscription services that integrate the marketplace with KansasWorks, the Eligible Training Provider List, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act case management, registered apprenticeship sponsor records, Kansas Promise Act Scholarship administration data, and Building a Future Pillar III reporting infrastructure. Any eligibility automation Kansas wished to pursue for Workforce Pell, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, or registered apprenticeship would live in this phase. State funds engage only here, and only to the extent the State chooses to procure subscription services. The first two phases require no new State appropriation.

Several considerations may inform Kansas' thinking about the partnership. The marketplace’s open-standards foundation ensures the State’s prior investments in the Credential Engine Registry, KansasWorks, and the credentialing work of the 32 Kansas Board of Regents institutions continue to operate as they do today; the marketplace exchanges data with those systems rather than displacing them. The no-cost foundation means that the early phases require no new State appropriation; State funding considerations arise only in the third phase, and only for services the State elects to procure. Kansas' distinctive structural advantage — a single Board governing six universities and coordinating all 32 public institutions, with a dedicated Postsecondary Technical Education Authority for technical colleges — may benefit from engagement at the system level, where Building a Future decisions are made.

A further consideration may be relevant to the State’s long-term planning. As the marketplace becomes the trusted system of record for skills and credentials across Kansas, states often find that certain point solutions they currently maintain — case management tooling supporting Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants, Eligible Training Provider List eligibility workflows, standalone skills-assessment platforms, district- or institution-level credential wallets that today operate in isolation, and the patchwork of employer-side job-board and applicant-tracking subscriptions that result when many platforms each serve a slice of the same workforce — become candidates for consolidation or retirement, with associated reductions in ongoing licensing and maintenance costs. EBSCOed offers no opinion on which systems Kansas may wish to retain and which it may wish to consolidate; those decisions belong to the State and the relevant agencies, on the State’s own timeline. We mention the possibility only because the cost-of-ownership story is one states have asked us to address, and because we are glad to support evaluations of that kind when the State considers them useful.

We recognize that Kansas has earned the right to be deliberate. The State’s coordination among the Kansas Board of Regents, the Postsecondary Technical Education Authority, the Kansas Department of Commerce, the Kansas State Board of Education, the local Workforce Development Boards, and the State’s six universities, 19 community colleges, six technical colleges, Washburn University, and the independent colleges reflects decades of careful institution-building under the Board’s unique system-coordinating structure. EBSCOed has no interest in disrupting that coordination. Our interest is in offering a free, open-standards layer that makes Kansas' existing investments — particularly the Kansas Promise Act Scholarship, the Career Technical Workforce Grant, Excel in CTE, and Building a Future’s three-pillar strategy — more useful to the Kansans they serve.

If any of this is worth a conversation, we would welcome one — at the convenience of whoever the State considers the right convening authority, in whatever form would be most useful, and on whatever timeline the State prefers. The contact information below is the appropriate first point of contact. The QR codes that follow provide direct access to the current EBSCOed ecosystem overview, which is kept current as capabilities evolve, and to LER.me itself, where any Kansan may today create a free Learning and Employment Record in a few minutes.

With great respect for the work Kansas is already doing, and with hope that the next chapter may be written together,

Kentucky has, for more than a decade, built one of the most coordinated education-to-workforce systems in the country. The 60 by 30 attainment goal — raising Kentucky’s educational attainment from roughly 45 percent to 60 percent by 2030 — anchors the Council on Postsecondary Education’s strategic plan and the Commonwealth’s performance funding model for both KCTCS and the public universities. The Kentucky Community and Technical College System reaches every region with 16 colleges across 70 locations. The Work Ready Kentucky Scholarship covers tuition for industry-recognized credentials in high-demand sectors for Kentuckians without a college degree, regardless of income, and the Kentucky Educational Excellence Scholarship can now be applied to registered apprenticeship and approved KCTCS Workforce Solutions programs through the KEES Workforce Related Pathway. Work Ready Communities — described nationally as the most rigorous community workforce certification program in the country — has certified nearly 75 percent of Kentucky counties as Work Ready or Work Ready in Progress. KY FAME, the Kentucky Federation for Advanced Manufacturing Education, has become a national model for employer-led work-study apprenticeship. The Kentucky Skills Network coordinates the Cabinet for Economic Development, the Education and Workforce Development Cabinet, the Labor Cabinet, and KCTCS in a single front door for employer training services, with KCTCS TRAINS able to offset up to 75 percent of incumbent worker training costs. Few states have built so much, so deliberately, in service of their workers.

This letter is written in admiration of that work, and with a specific proposition: that the next chapter of Kentucky’s education-to-workforce strategy may benefit from a learner-held layer that the Commonwealth has not yet had occasion to build. EBSCOed is the division of EBSCO Information Services that has spent the last several years constructing that layer — the LER talent marketplace — and offering LER.me to states, learners, educators, and employers at no cost. We write to share what it is, where it complements Kentucky’s investments, where it bridges systems that today operate in parallel, and how it is designed to extend rather than disturb the credential infrastructure Kentucky has already built.

LER.me is an open-standards platform that gives each individual a portable digital wallet containing their verified learning and employment records. The marketplace is built on the IEEE Learning and Employment Record standard, Open Badges 3.0, and Comprehensive Learner Record 2.0 — the same open standards used across the credentialing field — so the data Kentucky already publishes to the Credential Engine Registry, and the credentials issued by KCTCS colleges, four-year universities, KY FAME partnerships, and registered apprenticeship sponsors approved through the Education and Workforce Development Cabinet, remain authoritative and continue to operate exactly as they do today. The marketplace exchanges with those systems; it does not replace them. The platform itself is free to learners, to educators, and to employers, with optional subscription services available to states and large institutions that want deeper integration or custom analytics. The foundation is the foundation, and the foundation is free.

Four capabilities are most relevant to Kentucky’s context. The first is free credential issuance: any approved Kentucky institution, apprenticeship sponsor, or employer can issue verifiable credentials into learner-held wallets without licensing fees, supporting institutions of every size and budget on equal footing. The second is an open employer marketplace, in which Kentucky employers post opportunities and discover qualified candidates based on verified skills and credentials, again at no cost. The third is public workforce intelligence — dashboards that aggregate credential issuance and labor demand data as linked open data, available to Commonwealth agencies for planning, reporting, and supporting the 60 by 30 attainment dashboard. The fourth is the contributor framework, which crosswalks issued credentials to occupational standards and to Commonwealth-defined high-demand categories — including Kentucky’s named high-demand work sectors: Advanced Manufacturing, Agriculture, Business and Information Technology, Construction, Healthcare, and Transportation and Logistics — at the point of issuance, so the demand signal Kentucky has invested years in defining is operationalized at the individual level, automatically.

Kentucky’s distinctive strength is coordination. The Kentucky Skills Network exists because the Commonwealth chose, deliberately, to make four cabinets and KCTCS speak to employers with one voice. Work Ready Communities exists because the Commonwealth chose, deliberately, to make workforce quality measurable at the county level. KY FAME exists because employers and KCTCS chose to build a national-model work-study apprenticeship together. The 60 by 30 attainment goal and the performance funding model that supports it exist because the General Assembly chose to fund what works. What sits underneath every one of those choices is the same need: a verifiable, portable, learner-held record that lets each Kentuckian carry their KEES award, their Work Ready Kentucky Scholarship-funded credential, their KCTCS certificate, their National Career Readiness Certificate and Kentucky Essential Skills Certificate, their KY FAME experience, their registered apprenticeship milestones, and their employer-issued microcredentials in one place, recognized by employers, transferable across institutions, and durable beyond any one platform. That record is what the LER marketplace provides, at no cost, on the open standards the Commonwealth already uses. EBSCOed is not asking Kentucky to add another layer of coordination — we are offering to operate the learner-side layer that lets Kentucky’s existing coordination show up in each Kentuckian’s hand.

There are three lenses through which we have found it useful to discuss this marketplace with state leadership, and we offer them here in the same spirit. The first is complement — where the marketplace adds capability Kentucky has not yet had reason to build. The 60 by 30 attainment goal measures progress at the Commonwealth level; the marketplace adds the learner-side artifact, a verifiable record each Kentuckian carries with them. The Work Ready Kentucky Scholarship and KEES Workforce Related Pathway produce credentials in Kentucky’s six high-demand sectors; the marketplace gives every KCTCS college, registered apprenticeship sponsor, KY FAME chapter, and employer partner a free way to issue those credentials as verifiable Open Badges directly into learner wallets, with the high-demand sector designation embedded in the badge metadata. KY FAME’s Advanced Manufacturing Technician program produces a credential, an associate degree, and 1,800 hours of paid work-based learning — all of which today travels in transcript and resume form; the marketplace lets it travel as verifiable, employer-readable evidence. None of this displaces Kentucky’s current investments. All of it makes them more visible, more durable, and more useful to the Kentuckians who earn them.

The second lens is bridge — where the marketplace connects systems that today operate in parallel. A Kentuckian who earns a KEES award in high school, completes Kentucky Adult Education and earns a National Career Readiness Certificate and Kentucky Essential Skills Certificate, uses the Work Ready Kentucky Scholarship for a KCTCS credential, participates in KY FAME or another KCTCS Workforce Solutions program, completes a registered apprenticeship approved through the Education and Workforce Development Cabinet, and gains employer-issued microcredentials currently has those attainments living in different places. The marketplace allows them to travel together in one learner-owned record. Kentucky Career Center navigators serving Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants can see a complete skill picture rather than reconstructing it from a paper trail. The Kentucky Skills Network is the institutional bridge between agencies; the marketplace is the learner-side bridge that completes the loop.

The third lens is interoperability — where existing Kentucky platforms occupy adjacent space and where it is essential that the Commonwealth’s investments be respected. KCTCS Workforce Solutions remains KCTCS’s authoritative employer-facing front door for incumbent worker training, KCTCS TRAINS funding, Learn and Earn, and the Workforce Sector Strategy work; the marketplace operates alongside KCTCS Workforce Solutions by receiving credentials at issuance without altering KCTCS’s customer journey for employers. Work Ready Communities certification remains the Cabinet for Economic Development’s authoritative county-level signal; the marketplace operates as a complementary individual-level signal, with credentials issued in Work Ready and Work Ready in Progress counties identifiable as such if the Commonwealth wishes. KEES administration remains with KHEAA exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives the credentials KEES-funded programs produce. Kentucky Career Center labor exchange functions remain Kentucky’s official channel; the marketplace acts as a complementary skills-and-credentials profile layer that posts to those systems through standard application programming interfaces.

The matrix below — included here as a reference Kentucky leadership may return to — applies three perspectives to selected initiatives. The Complement column identifies where the marketplace adds capabilities current Commonwealth investments do not provide. The Bridge column identifies where the marketplace connects presently separate systems. The Interoperability column describes how the marketplace is designed to work alongside existing Kentucky platforms.

If the Commonwealth were to find this conversation worth continuing, three paths forward suggest themselves — each with discrete decision points and none requiring the Commonwealth to commit beyond the step in front of it. The first is a discovery brief: a joint presentation to the Council on Postsecondary Education, the Education and Workforce Development Cabinet, the Cabinet for Economic Development, the Labor Cabinet, KCTCS, KHEAA, and the Kentucky Workforce Innovation Board outlining the marketplace’s open-standards architecture, the at-no-cost foundation, and what a small first cohort could look like. The second is a sector pilot: subject to a Commonwealth decision to proceed, a focused cohort drawn from one of Kentucky’s six high-demand work sectors — Advanced Manufacturing through a KY FAME partnership is a natural starting point given the program’s national reputation and existing employer engagement — in which graduates receive a Comprehensive Learner Record aligned with the high-demand sector designation and made available through the EBSCOed marketplace. The third path would, only at the Commonwealth’s direction, layer in optional subscription services that integrate the marketplace with Kentucky Career Center labor exchange systems, the State’s Eligible Training Provider List, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act case management, the registered apprenticeship sponsor records administered by the Education and Workforce Development Cabinet, and KCTCS Workforce Solutions data. Any eligibility automation Kentucky wished to pursue for Workforce Pell, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, or registered apprenticeship would live in this phase. Commonwealth funds engage only here, and only to the extent the Commonwealth chooses to procure subscription services. The first two phases require no new Commonwealth appropriation.

Several considerations may inform Kentucky’s thinking about the partnership. The marketplace’s open-standards foundation ensures the Commonwealth’s prior investments in the Credential Engine Registry, KCTCS Workforce Solutions, KY FAME, Work Ready Communities, and the credentialing work of the public universities and the independent colleges continue to operate as they do today; the marketplace exchanges data with those systems rather than displacing them. The no-cost foundation means that the early phases require no new Commonwealth appropriation; Commonwealth funding considerations arise only in the third phase, and only for services the Commonwealth elects to procure. Kentucky’s distinctive coordination — the Kentucky Skills Network’s deliberate alignment of four cabinets and KCTCS in a single front door for employers — may benefit from engagement with the Network as a whole during any broader rollout, and EBSCOed welcomes the opportunity to participate in such conversations at the Commonwealth’s direction, in whatever forum the Commonwealth considers most useful.

A further consideration may be relevant to the Commonwealth’s long-term planning. As the marketplace becomes the trusted system of record for skills and credentials across Kentucky, states often find that certain point solutions they currently maintain — case management tooling supporting Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants, Eligible Training Provider List eligibility workflows, standalone skills-assessment platforms, district- or institution-level credential wallets that today operate in isolation, and the patchwork of employer-side job-board and applicant-tracking subscriptions that result when many platforms each serve a slice of the same workforce — become candidates for consolidation or retirement, with associated reductions in ongoing licensing and maintenance costs. EBSCOed offers no opinion on which systems Kentucky may wish to retain and which it may wish to consolidate; those decisions belong to the Commonwealth and the relevant agencies, on the Commonwealth’s own timeline. We mention the possibility only because the cost-of-ownership story is one states have asked us to address, and because we are glad to support evaluations of that kind when the Commonwealth considers them useful.

We recognize that Kentucky has earned the right to be deliberate. The Commonwealth’s coordination among the Kentucky Skills Network’s member agencies — the Cabinet for Economic Development, the Education and Workforce Development Cabinet, the Labor Cabinet, and KCTCS — together with the Council on Postsecondary Education, KHEAA, the Kentucky Workforce Innovation Board, the local Workforce Development Boards, and the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities of Kentucky reflects years of careful institution-building. EBSCOed has no interest in disrupting that coordination. Our interest is in offering a free, open-standards layer that makes Kentucky’s existing investments — particularly the Work Ready Kentucky Scholarship, KY FAME, KCTCS Workforce Solutions, and the registered apprenticeship system the Education and Workforce Development Cabinet has built — more useful to the Kentuckians they serve.

If any of this is worth a conversation, we would welcome one — at the convenience of whoever the Commonwealth considers the right convening authority, in whatever form would be most useful, and on whatever timeline the Commonwealth prefers. The contact information below is the appropriate first point of contact. The QR codes that follow provide direct access to the current EBSCOed ecosystem overview, which is kept current as capabilities evolve, and to LER.me itself, where any Kentuckian may today create a free Learning and Employment Record in a few minutes.

With great respect for the work Kentucky is already doing, and with hope that the next chapter may be written together,

Louisiana has, under Governor Jeff Landry, built one of the most consequential State workforce coordination architectures in the South. The Workforce Cabinet — coordinating the Board of Regents, the Louisiana Community and Technical College System (LCTCS), the Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) under State Superintendent Dr. Cade Brumley, Louisiana Economic Development (LED) under Secretary Susan Bourgeois, and Louisiana Works (formerly the Louisiana Workforce Commission) under Secretary Susana Schowen — anchors the State’s coordinated approach to workforce education. LCTCS, with 13 institutions across the State and more than $500 million in State investment since 2007, has expanded to meet demand that has quadrupled on some campuses. The State’s Workforce Outcomes & Reimbursement for Key Sectors Training Fund (WORKS), launched by Louisiana Works in partnership with the Louisiana Construction Education Foundation, is a $7 million federally funded initiative aiming to train more than 6,000 workers across 59 businesses to support approximately $98.1 billion in industrial projects under construction. The Fast Forward Program — beginning with the freshman class of 2025 — sets the joint goal of the Board of Regents and Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) that all Louisiana public high school graduates will complete high school with college credit, a postsecondary credential of value, or both, with associate degrees available on the high school campus through dual enrollment, satellite campuses, or registered apprenticeship participation earning a Jump Start TOPS Tech Career Diploma. LED FastStart provides customized employee recruitment, screening, training development, and training delivery for eligible new or expanding companies at no cost. The Dow U.S. Apprenticeship Program, the Associated Builders and Contractors Pelican Chapter partnership (President David Helveston), TOPS Tech and Jump Start TOPS Tech Career Diploma, PRO Louisiana, and the Louisiana State Apprenticeship Council together extend the system across the State’s industrial corridors and growing service economy. Few states have built so much, so deliberately, in service of their workers.

This letter is written in admiration of that work, and with a specific proposition: that the next chapter of Louisiana’s education-to-workforce strategy may benefit from a learner-held layer that the State has not yet had occasion to build. EBSCOed is the division of EBSCO Information Services that has spent the last several years constructing that layer — the LER talent marketplace — and offering LER.me to states, learners, educators, and employers at no cost. We write to share what it is, where it complements Louisiana’s investments, where it bridges systems that today operate in parallel, and how it is designed to extend rather than disturb the credential infrastructure Louisiana has already built.

LER.me is an open-standards platform that gives each individual a portable digital wallet containing their verified learning and employment records. The marketplace is built on the IEEE Learning and Employment Record standard, Open Badges 3.0, and Comprehensive Learner Record 2.0 — the same open standards used across the credentialing field — so the credentials issued by LCTCS’s 13 community and technical colleges, the Louisiana State University System, the University of Louisiana System, the Southern University System, Louisiana’s private nonprofit colleges, K-12 districts, and registered apprenticeship sponsors, remain authoritative and continue to operate exactly as they do today. The marketplace exchanges with those systems; it does not replace them. The platform itself is free to learners, to educators, and to employers, with optional subscription services available to states and large institutions that want deeper integration or custom analytics. The foundation is the foundation, and the foundation is free.

Four capabilities are most relevant to Louisiana’s context. The first is free credential issuance: any approved Louisiana institution, apprenticeship sponsor, or employer can issue verifiable credentials into learner-held wallets without licensing fees, supporting institutions of every size and budget on equal footing. The second is an open employer marketplace, in which Louisiana employers post opportunities and discover qualified candidates based on verified skills and credentials, again at no cost. The third is public workforce intelligence — dashboards that aggregate credential issuance and labor demand data as linked open data, available to State agencies for planning, reporting, and supporting Louisiana Works, LCTCS, the Board of Regents, and Workforce Cabinet reporting missions. The fourth is the contributor framework, which crosswalks issued credentials to occupational standards and to Louisiana Works-defined high-demand sectors and certificates-of-value designations at the point of issuance, so the demand signal Louisiana has invested years in defining is operationalized at the individual level, automatically.

Louisiana’s distinctive achievement is operationalizing $98.1 billion in concurrent industrial construction with a coordinated State workforce response. Few states must reconcile so much industrial investment with so much skill demand at once. The WORKS Training Fund, the Workforce Cabinet structure coordinating across five State agencies, LED FastStart’s no-cost employer-customized training model, and the Fast Forward Program’s commitment that the freshman class of 2025 will graduate with a postsecondary credential or college credit together represent an extraordinary level of system coordination. Louisiana also faces clear-eyed challenges: the State currently ranks 49th in educational attainment, with only 30.7 percent of working-age residents holding an associate’s degree or higher, and 182,495 additional credentials would be needed to reach the Southern-states average attainment rate. What sits underneath every one of those structures — and underneath the State’s attainment challenge — is the same need: a verifiable, portable, learner-held record that lets each Louisianan carry their high school Jump Start TOPS Tech Career Diploma or TOPS University Diploma, their LCTCS community or technical college credential, their LSU System or University of Louisiana System or Southern University System degree, their LED FastStart-funded training credential, their WORKS Training Fund-supported attainment, their Dow Apprenticeship or Associated Builders and Contractors Pelican Chapter milestone, their PRO Louisiana flood-resilience credential, and their employer-issued microcredentials in one place, recognized by employers, transferable across institutions, and durable beyond any one platform. That record is what the LER marketplace provides, at no cost, on the open standards the field has converged on. EBSCOed is not asking Louisiana to alter the Workforce Cabinet structure or the Fast Forward Program direction — we are offering the learner-side layer that lets the credentials Louisiana is producing across its industrial buildout travel with each Louisianan in a verifiable wallet.

There are three lenses through which we have found it useful to discuss this marketplace with State leadership, and we offer them here in the same spirit. The first is complement — where the marketplace adds capability Louisiana has not yet had reason to build at scale. The Board of Regents maintains data on enrollments and completers across the postsecondary system; LCTCS maintains data on enrollments and completers in credentials below the certificate level; Louisiana Works maintains employment outcome data through data-sharing agreements. These systems track attainment at the State level. The marketplace adds the learner-side artifact — a verifiable record each Louisianan carries with them. LCTCS, the Louisiana State University System, the University of Louisiana System, the Southern University System, K-12 districts implementing Fast Forward, LED FastStart partners, WORKS Training Fund grantees, and registered apprenticeship sponsors all produce credentials that today travel through institutional transcripts; the marketplace gives each institution a free way to issue those credentials as verifiable Open Badges directly into learner wallets, with Fast Forward, WORKS, LED FastStart, or Jump Start TOPS Tech designation embedded in the badge metadata at issuance where applicable. None of this displaces Louisiana’s current investments. All of it makes them more visible, more durable, and more useful to the Louisianans who earn them.

The second lens is bridge — where the marketplace connects systems that today operate in parallel. A Louisianan who completes a Jump Start TOPS Tech Career Diploma through Fast Forward at an LCTCS satellite campus, earns an LCTCS associate degree or technical credential, completes a Dow Apprenticeship through the LCTCS partnership, enters a WORKS Training Fund-supported construction or industrial program, transfers to the LSU System or University of Louisiana System or Southern University System, gains LED FastStart-funded employer-customized training, and accumulates employer-issued microcredentials currently has those attainments living in different places. The marketplace allows them to travel together in one learner-owned record. Louisiana Works American Job Center navigators serving Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants can see a complete skill picture rather than reconstructing it from a paper trail. The connective tissue the Workforce Cabinet provides at the State level can be operationalized at the learner level through a credential wallet that travels with each Louisianan.

The third lens is interoperability — where existing Louisiana platforms occupy adjacent space and where it is essential that the State’s investments be respected. Louisiana Works remains the State’s authoritative workforce agency under Secretary Susana Schowen; the marketplace operates as a learner-side complement that supports Louisiana Works’s mission. The Louisiana Community and Technical College System continues exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives credentials issued by LCTCS institutions with State investment designation preserved at issuance. The Board of Regents continues exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives credentials issued by Louisiana’s four-year institutions with attainment goal alignment preserved. LED FastStart continues exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives credentials produced through FastStart-supported training with employer designation preserved. Louisiana Works' job exchange remains Louisiana’s official labor exchange; the marketplace acts as a complementary skills-and-credentials profile layer that posts to it through standard application programming interfaces.

The matrix below — included here as a reference Louisiana leadership may return to — applies three perspectives to selected initiatives. The Complement column identifies where the marketplace adds capabilities current State investments do not provide. The Bridge column identifies where the marketplace connects presently separate systems. The Interoperability column describes how the marketplace is designed to work alongside existing Louisiana platforms.

If the State were to find this conversation worth continuing, three paths forward suggest themselves — each with discrete decision points and none requiring the State to commit beyond the step in front of it. The first is a discovery brief: a joint presentation to Louisiana Works, the Louisiana Community and Technical College System, the Board of Regents, the Louisiana Department of Education, Louisiana Economic Development, the Workforce Cabinet, and — where the State considers it useful — LSU System, University of Louisiana System, and Southern University System leadership, the Louisiana Construction Education Foundation, Associated Builders and Contractors Pelican Chapter, Dow U.S. Apprenticeship Program partners, and Fast Forward-participating school systems, outlining the marketplace’s open-standards architecture, the at-no-cost foundation, and what a small first cohort could look like. The second is a sector pilot: subject to a State decision to proceed, a focused cohort drawn from one of Louisiana’s strategic sectors — chemical and petrochemical (with Dow Apprenticeship cohorts), construction (with WORKS Training Fund and Associated Builders and Contractors Pelican Chapter cohorts), advanced manufacturing, healthcare, or AI and data center operations are natural candidates — in which WORKS Training Fund participants, Fast Forward graduates, Dow Apprenticeship completers, or LED FastStart-trained employees receive a Comprehensive Learner Record made available through the EBSCOed marketplace. The third path would, only at the State’s direction, layer in optional subscription services that integrate the marketplace with Louisiana Works’s labor exchange, the Eligible Training Provider List, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act case management, registered apprenticeship sponsor records, the WORKS Training Fund administration pipeline, and the Fast Forward Program data infrastructure. Any eligibility automation Louisiana wished to pursue for Workforce Pell, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, or registered apprenticeship would live in this phase. State funds engage only here, and only to the extent the State chooses to procure subscription services. The first two phases require no new State appropriation.

Several considerations may inform Louisiana’s thinking about the partnership. The marketplace’s open-standards foundation ensures the State’s prior investments in Louisiana Works’s labor exchange, the credentialing work of LCTCS’s 13 institutions, the LSU System, the University of Louisiana System, the Southern University System, and the State’s private nonprofit colleges continue to operate as they do today; the marketplace exchanges data with those systems rather than displacing them. The no-cost foundation means that the early phases require no new State appropriation; State funding considerations arise only in the third phase, and only for services the State elects to procure. Louisiana’s distinctive operational moment — $98.1 billion in industrial projects under construction concentrated in particular regions of the State, the WORKS Training Fund’s mandate to train 6,000+ workers, and the clearly-identified gap of 182,495 credentials to reach Southern-states average attainment — may make Louisiana a particularly natural fit for a learner-side marketplace that supports both attainment growth and demonstrable credential portability to employers building in the State.

A further consideration may be relevant to the State’s long-term planning. As the marketplace becomes the trusted system of record for skills and credentials across Louisiana, states often find that certain point solutions they currently maintain — case management tooling supporting Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants, Eligible Training Provider List eligibility workflows, standalone skills-assessment platforms, district- or institution-level credential wallets that today operate in isolation, and the patchwork of employer-side job-board and applicant-tracking subscriptions that result when many platforms each serve a slice of the same workforce — become candidates for consolidation or retirement, with associated reductions in ongoing licensing and maintenance costs. EBSCOed offers no opinion on which systems Louisiana may wish to retain and which it may wish to consolidate; those decisions belong to the State and the relevant agencies, on the State’s own timeline. We mention the possibility only because the cost-of-ownership story is one states have asked us to address, and because we are glad to support evaluations of that kind when the State considers them useful.

We recognize that Louisiana has earned the right to be deliberate. The State’s coordination among Louisiana Works, the Louisiana Community and Technical College System, the Board of Regents, the Louisiana Department of Education, Louisiana Economic Development, the LSU System, the University of Louisiana System, the Southern University System, the Louisiana State Apprenticeship Council, Associated Builders and Contractors Pelican Chapter, the Louisiana Construction Education Foundation, and the Dow U.S. Apprenticeship Program reflects years of careful institution-building under the Workforce Cabinet framework. EBSCOed has no interest in disrupting that coordination. Our interest is in offering a free, open-standards layer that makes Louisiana’s existing investments — particularly the Workforce Cabinet, the WORKS Training Fund, the Fast Forward Program, LED FastStart, the LCTCS Facilities with a Purpose investment, and the Dow Apprenticeship — more useful to the Louisianans they serve, and to support the State as it addresses its 182,495-credential attainment gap.

If any of this is worth a conversation, we would welcome one — at the convenience of whoever the State considers the right convening authority, in whatever form would be most useful, and on whatever timeline the State prefers. The contact information below is the appropriate first point of contact. The QR codes that follow provide direct access to the current EBSCOed ecosystem overview, which is kept current as capabilities evolve, and to LER.me itself, where any Louisianan may today create a free Learning and Employment Record in a few minutes.

With great respect for the work Louisiana is already doing, and with hope that the next chapter may be written together,

Maine has, through the unprecedented partnership between the Harold Alfond Foundation and the Maine Community College System, built one of the most consequential State-and-philanthropy workforce coordination architectures in the country. The Harold Alfond Center for the Advancement of Maine’s Workforce — launched in 2021 with an initial $15.5 million grant from the Harold Alfond Foundation combined with $35 million from Governor Mills' Maine Jobs & Recovery Plan and approximately $10 million in matched and supplementary support — coordinates all short-term workforce training programs for Maine’s seven community colleges and served more than 27,000 Mainers in its first 30 months. A historic $75.5 million additional gift from the Harold Alfond Foundation in June 2024 will enable the Center to train an additional 70,505 Mainers by 2030, with the new grant cycle beginning January 2025. The Maine Workforce Development Compact, comprised of more than 1,800 Maine businesses, associations, nonprofits, and municipalities, partners directly with MCCS through the Compact’s grant management system, with up to $1,200 matching per frontline worker available to Compact members. The Maine Community College System — under President David Daigler and Chief Workforce Development Officer Dan Belyea, coordinating seven community colleges including Central Maine, Northern Maine, Kennebec Valley, Eastern Maine, Southern Maine, Washington County, and York County Community Colleges — anchors postsecondary credential delivery. The Maine Apprenticeship Program, administered through the Maine Department of Labor under Director of Apprenticeship & Strategic Partnerships Joan Dolan, supports registered apprenticeship statewide, alongside the Maine Construction Academy Immersion Program launching across five community colleges starting March 2026. Few states have built so much, so deliberately, in service of their workers.

This letter is written in admiration of that work, and with a specific proposition: that the next chapter of Maine’s education-to-workforce strategy may benefit from a learner-held layer that the State has not yet had occasion to build. EBSCOed is the division of EBSCO Information Services that has spent the last several years constructing that layer — the LER talent marketplace — and offering LER.me to states, learners, educators, and employers at no cost. We write to share what it is, where it complements Maine’s investments, where it bridges systems that today operate in parallel, and how it is designed to extend rather than disturb the credential infrastructure Maine has already built.

LER.me is an open-standards platform that gives each individual a portable digital wallet containing their verified learning and employment records. The marketplace is built on the IEEE Learning and Employment Record standard, Open Badges 3.0, and Comprehensive Learner Record 2.0 — the same open standards used across the credentialing field — so the data Maine already publishes to the Credential Engine Registry, and the credentials issued by the seven MCCS community colleges, the University of Maine System, K-12 districts, Career and Technical Education centers, and registered apprenticeship sponsors, remain authoritative and continue to operate exactly as they do today. The marketplace exchanges with those systems; it does not replace them. The platform itself is free to learners, to educators, and to employers, with optional subscription services available to states and large institutions that want deeper integration or custom analytics. The foundation is the foundation, and the foundation is free.

Four capabilities are most relevant to Maine’s context. The first is free credential issuance: any approved Maine institution, Career and Technical Education center, apprenticeship sponsor, or employer can issue verifiable credentials into learner-held wallets without licensing fees, supporting institutions of every size and budget on equal footing. The second is an open employer marketplace, in which Maine employers post opportunities and discover qualified candidates based on verified skills and credentials, again at no cost. The third is public workforce intelligence — dashboards that aggregate credential issuance and labor demand data as linked open data, available to State agencies for planning, reporting, and supporting Harold Alfond Center for the Advancement of Maine’s Workforce and Maine State Workforce Board reporting missions. The fourth is the contributor framework, which crosswalks issued credentials to occupational standards and to MaineSpark and State-defined high-demand designations at the point of issuance, so the demand signal Maine has invested years in defining is operationalized at the individual level, automatically.

Maine’s distinctive achievement is the scale and durability of the Harold Alfond Foundation partnership. $15.5 million in 2021, $35 million in matching State funds, an additional $75.5 million in 2024 — a public-private investment commitment that few states can match in absolute terms or in proportional impact for a state of Maine’s size. The Alfond Center’s goal of training 70,505 Mainers by 2030 — on top of the 27,000+ already served in the Center’s first 30 months — operationalizes the State’s broader MaineSpark goal of helping more Mainers earn credentials of value. The Construction Industry Workforce Partnership launched March 2025, the Maine Construction Academy Immersion Program launching in 2026 at five community colleges, the partnership with Associated General Contractors of Maine, and the deepening Maine Apprenticeship Program work led by Joan Dolan together represent active credential production at scale. What sits underneath every one of those investments is the same need: a verifiable, portable, learner-held record that lets each Mainer carry their MCCS credential, their University of Maine System degree, their Alfond Center-funded training credential, their Maine Construction Academy attainment, their Maine Apprenticeship Program milestones, their CTE center credential, and their employer-issued microcredentials in one place, recognized by employers, transferable across institutions, and durable beyond any one platform. That record is what the LER marketplace provides, at no cost, on the open standards the State already uses. EBSCOed is not asking Maine to alter the Alfond Center model — we are offering the learner-side layer that lets the credentials the Center funds travel with each Mainer in a verifiable wallet.

There are three lenses through which we have found it useful to discuss this marketplace with State leadership, and we offer them here in the same spirit. The first is complement — where the marketplace adds capability Maine has not yet had reason to build. The Alfond Center’s Upskill Maine grant management system tracks training enrollment and completion for Compact-funded participants; the marketplace adds the learner-side artifact, a verifiable record each Mainer carries with them. MCCS’s seven community colleges issue credentials through Alfond Center-funded programs and the broader credential offerings of the system; the marketplace gives each college, the University of Maine System, CTE centers, the Maine Construction Academy partner colleges, registered apprenticeship sponsors, and Compact employer partners a free way to issue credentials as verifiable Open Badges directly into learner wallets, with Alfond Center or State funding designation preserved at issuance where applicable. None of this displaces Maine’s current investments. All of it makes them more visible, more durable, and more useful to the Mainers who earn them.

The second lens is bridge — where the marketplace connects systems that today operate in parallel. A Mainer who completes career and technical education at a CTE center, earns an MCCS credential through Alfond Center-funded training, transitions through the Maine Construction Academy Immersion Program at one of five community colleges, enters a Maine Apprenticeship Program, transfers to the University of Maine System, and gains employer-issued microcredentials through the Workforce Development Compact currently has those attainments living in different places. The marketplace allows them to travel together in one learner-owned record. Maine Department of Labor CareerCenter navigators serving Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants can see a complete skill picture rather than reconstructing it from a paper trail. The connective tissue MCCS and the Alfond Center provide at the State level can be operationalized at the learner level through a credential wallet that travels with each Mainer.

The third lens is interoperability — where existing Maine platforms occupy adjacent space and where it is essential that the State’s investments be respected. The Maine Community College System remains the State’s authoritative coordinating body for the seven community colleges and the Harold Alfond Center for the Advancement of Maine’s Workforce; the marketplace operates as a learner-side complement that supports MCCS’s mission. The Maine Department of Labor continues exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives credentials produced through MDOL-overseen programs including the Maine Apprenticeship Program. The University of Maine System continues exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives credentials issued by University of Maine System institutions. Maine JobLink remains Maine’s official labor exchange; the marketplace acts as a complementary skills-and-credentials profile layer that posts to Maine JobLink through standard application programming interfaces. The Upskill Maine grant management system continues unchanged; the marketplace operates alongside, with Compact participation and Alfond Center funding designation preserved at issuance.

The matrix below — included here as a reference Maine leadership may return to — applies three perspectives to selected initiatives. The Complement column identifies where the marketplace adds capabilities current State investments do not provide. The Bridge column identifies where the marketplace connects presently separate systems. The Interoperability column describes how the marketplace is designed to work alongside existing Maine platforms.

If the State were to find this conversation worth continuing, three paths forward suggest themselves — each with discrete decision points and none requiring the State to commit beyond the step in front of it. The first is a discovery brief: a joint presentation to the Maine Community College System, the Harold Alfond Center for the Advancement of Maine’s Workforce, the Maine Department of Labor, the University of Maine System, the Maine Department of Education, and — where the State considers it useful — Maine Workforce Development Compact employer partners, MaineSpark coalition members, and Maine State Workforce Board representatives, outlining the marketplace’s open-standards architecture, the at-no-cost foundation, and what a small first cohort could look like. The second is a sector pilot: subject to a State decision to proceed, a focused cohort drawn from one of Maine’s strategic sectors — construction trades (with Maine Construction Academy partners and Associated General Contractors of Maine), healthcare, advanced manufacturing, clean energy, or hospitality are natural candidates — in which Alfond Center training participants, Maine Construction Academy graduates, registered apprenticeship completers, or MCCS credential recipients receive a Comprehensive Learner Record made available through the EBSCOed marketplace. The third path would, only at the State’s direction, layer in optional subscription services that integrate the marketplace with Maine JobLink, the Eligible Training Provider List, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act case management, registered apprenticeship sponsor records, the Upskill Maine grant management system, and the broader Alfond Center program data pipeline. Any eligibility automation Maine wished to pursue for Workforce Pell, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, or registered apprenticeship would live in this phase. State funds engage only here, and only to the extent the State chooses to procure subscription services. The first two phases require no new State appropriation.

Several considerations may inform Maine’s thinking about the partnership. The marketplace’s open-standards foundation ensures the State’s prior investments in the Credential Engine Registry, Maine JobLink, the Upskill Maine grant management system, and the credentialing work of the seven MCCS colleges, the University of Maine System, the CTE centers, and the State’s independent institutions continue to operate as they do today; the marketplace exchanges data with those systems rather than displacing them. The no-cost foundation means that the early phases require no new State appropriation; State funding considerations arise only in the third phase, and only for services the State elects to procure. Maine’s distinctive public-philanthropic architecture — the $135.5+ million Alfond Center investment combining Harold Alfond Foundation generosity with State matching — may make a learner-side marketplace that preserves Alfond Center funding designation at issuance a particularly natural complement to existing credential infrastructure.

A further consideration may be relevant to the State’s long-term planning. As the marketplace becomes the trusted system of record for skills and credentials across Maine, states often find that certain point solutions they currently maintain — case management tooling supporting Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants, Eligible Training Provider List eligibility workflows, standalone skills-assessment platforms, district- or institution-level credential wallets that today operate in isolation, and the patchwork of employer-side job-board and applicant-tracking subscriptions that result when many platforms each serve a slice of the same workforce — become candidates for consolidation or retirement, with associated reductions in ongoing licensing and maintenance costs. EBSCOed offers no opinion on which systems Maine may wish to retain and which it may wish to consolidate; those decisions belong to the State and the relevant agencies, on the State’s own timeline. We mention the possibility only because the cost-of-ownership story is one states have asked us to address, and because we are glad to support evaluations of that kind when the State considers them useful.

We recognize that Maine has earned the right to be deliberate. The State’s coordination among the Maine Community College System, the Harold Alfond Center for the Advancement of Maine’s Workforce, the Maine Department of Labor, the University of Maine System, the Maine Department of Education, the CTE centers, the MaineSpark coalition, and the 1,800+ Maine Workforce Development Compact members reflects years of careful institution-building, particularly through the public-philanthropic partnership with the Harold Alfond Foundation. EBSCOed has no interest in disrupting that coordination. Our interest is in offering a free, open-standards layer that makes Maine’s existing investments — particularly the Alfond Center for the Advancement of Maine’s Workforce, the Maine Workforce Development Compact, the Maine Apprenticeship Program, and the Maine Construction Academy Immersion Program — more useful to the Mainers they serve.

If any of this is worth a conversation, we would welcome one — at the convenience of whoever the State considers the right convening authority, in whatever form would be most useful, and on whatever timeline the State prefers. The contact information below is the appropriate first point of contact. The QR codes that follow provide direct access to the current EBSCOed ecosystem overview, which is kept current as capabilities evolve, and to LER.me itself, where any Mainer may today create a free Learning and Employment Record in a few minutes.

With great respect for the work Maine is already doing, and with hope that the next chapter may be written together,

Maryland has, through the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, made the most ambitious K-through-careers commitment in the country — and is in the middle of implementing it. Pillar 3 of the Blueprint codifies a college and career readiness standard, designed so that students can meet it by the end of 10th grade and then enter Post-CCR Pathways that lead to college credit, an industry-recognized credential, or both. The Blueprint sets an explicit goal that by the 2030-31 school year, 45 percent of public high school graduates will complete the high school level of a Registered Apprenticeship or another industry-recognized credential each year — and the law specifies that, to the extent practicable, the largest number of students reaching that goal will do so through Registered Apprenticeship. The 16 colleges of the Maryland Association of Community Colleges anchor the postsecondary credential layer. The Maryland Higher Education Commission stewards the 55 percent attainment goal for adults 25 to 64. EARN Maryland — Employment Advancement Right Now — funds industry-led partnerships to advance the skills of the State’s workforce. The Office of Apprenticeship, created through the RAISE Act of 2025 and housed within the Department of Labor’s Division of Workforce Development and Adult Learning, oversees Registered Apprenticeship statewide and runs Apprenticeship Maryland as a graduation pathway for high school juniors and seniors. The Maryland Longitudinal Data System Center ties K-12, postsecondary, and workforce data together. The Maryland Workforce Exchange (MWE) connects more than 75,000 job listings with job seekers across the State. Few states have built so much, so deliberately, in service of their workers.

This letter is written in admiration of that work, and with a specific proposition: that the next chapter of Maryland’s education-to-workforce strategy may benefit from a learner-held layer that the State has not yet had occasion to build. EBSCOed is the division of EBSCO Information Services that has spent the last several years constructing that layer — the LER talent marketplace — and offering LER.me to states, learners, educators, and employers at no cost. We write to share what it is, where it complements Maryland’s investments, where it bridges systems that today operate in parallel, and how it is designed to extend rather than disturb the credential infrastructure Maryland has already built.

LER.me is an open-standards platform that gives each individual a portable digital wallet containing their verified learning and employment records. The marketplace is built on the IEEE Learning and Employment Record standard, Open Badges 3.0, and Comprehensive Learner Record 2.0 — the same open standards used across the credentialing field — so the data Maryland already publishes to the Credential Engine Registry, and the credentials issued by community colleges, four-year institutions, K-12 districts, registered apprenticeship sponsors, and EARN-funded partnerships, remain authoritative and continue to operate exactly as they do today. The marketplace exchanges with those systems; it does not replace them. The platform itself is free to learners, to educators, and to employers, with optional subscription services available to states and large institutions that want deeper integration or custom analytics. The foundation is the foundation, and the foundation is free.

Four capabilities are most relevant to Maryland’s context. The first is free credential issuance: any approved Maryland institution, apprenticeship sponsor, EARN partnership, or employer can issue verifiable credentials into learner-held wallets without licensing fees, supporting institutions of every size and budget on equal footing. The second is an open employer marketplace, in which Maryland employers post opportunities and discover qualified candidates based on verified skills and credentials, again at no cost. The third is public workforce intelligence — dashboards that aggregate credential issuance and labor demand data as linked open data, available to State agencies for planning, reporting, and contributing to the Maryland Longitudinal Data System Center’s analytic mission. The fourth is the contributor framework, which crosswalks issued credentials to occupational standards and to State-defined high-demand categories — including the Governor’s Workforce Development Board’s industry-recognized credential policy — at the point of issuance, so the demand signal Maryland has invested years in defining is operationalized at the individual level, automatically.

Maryland’s circumstance is distinctive: the Blueprint’s 45 percent industry-recognized credential and Registered Apprenticeship goal for high school graduates, beginning in 2030-31, is one of the most specific credential-attainment commitments any state has made in law. The Blueprint also commits Maryland to expanding Registered Apprenticeship opportunities for high school juniors and seniors at scale — the original Blueprint analysis pointed to a goal of 60,000 apprenticeships in seven years. Apprenticeship Maryland and the Career Research and Development program already provide the pathway structures. The Maryland Longitudinal Data System Center already provides the cross-agency data infrastructure. The Governor’s Workforce Development Board CTE Committee has issued the industry-recognized credential policy that defines what counts. What sits underneath every one of those structures is the same need: a verifiable, portable, learner-held record that lets each Marylander carry their Apprenticeship Maryland completions, their Blueprint Post-CCR Pathway attainments, their community college credentials, their EARN-funded skills training, and their employer-issued microcredentials in one place, recognized by employers, transferable across institutions, and durable beyond high school graduation. That record is what the LER marketplace provides, at no cost, on the open standards the State already uses. EBSCOed is not asking Maryland to alter the Blueprint — we are offering to operate the learner-side layer that makes the Blueprint’s credential goals visible and durable as students earn them.

There are three lenses through which we have found it useful to discuss this marketplace with state leadership, and we offer them here in the same spirit. The first is complement — where the marketplace adds capability Maryland has not yet had reason to build. The Blueprint’s 45 percent industry-recognized credential and Registered Apprenticeship goal measures attainment at the cohort level; the marketplace adds the learner-side artifact, a verifiable record each Marylander carries with them from high school through postsecondary and into employment. Apprenticeship Maryland and the Career Research and Development program produce work-based learning hours and milestones that today travel in many different forms; the marketplace gives every participating school, community college, registered apprenticeship sponsor, and employer partner a free way to issue those experiences as verifiable Open Badges directly into learner wallets. EARN Maryland industry-led partnerships produce skill credentials aligned with strategic industry partnership plans; the marketplace makes those credentials carry the State’s mark from the moment of issuance. None of this displaces Maryland’s current investments. All of it makes them more visible, more durable, and more useful to the Marylanders who earn them.

The second lens is bridge — where the marketplace connects systems that today operate in parallel. A Marylander who meets the Blueprint’s CCR standard, enters a Post-CCR Pathway, completes Apprenticeship Maryland or the Career Research and Development program, earns a State Skill Certificate from the Maryland Department of Labor, attends a community college through Maryland Promise or the Workforce Development Sequence Scholarship, completes an EARN-funded training, and gains employer-issued microcredentials currently has those attainments living in different places — the Maryland Longitudinal Data System Center links some of them analytically, but the learner does not carry a verifiable record they can show an employer. The marketplace allows all of those attainments to travel together in one learner-owned record. American Job Center navigators serving Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants can see a complete skill picture rather than reconstructing it from a paper trail. The connective tissue exists at the analytic level in MLDS; the marketplace puts it in the learner.

The third lens is interoperability — where existing Maryland platforms occupy adjacent space and where it is essential that the State’s investments be respected. The Maryland Longitudinal Data System Center remains the State’s authoritative cross-agency data infrastructure; the marketplace operates alongside MLDS by providing the learner-side record while MLDS continues to serve State analytic and accountability functions. The Maryland Workforce Exchange remains the State’s official labor exchange and Virtual One-Stop Career Center; the marketplace acts as a complementary skills-and-credentials profile layer that posts to MWE through standard application programming interfaces. The Maryland Apprenticeship Locator remains the Office of Apprenticeship’s authoritative tool for connecting apprentices with programs; the marketplace operates alongside the Locator by receiving credentials at apprenticeship milestone completion. State Skill Certificates issued by the Department of Labor through Apprenticeship Maryland and other youth apprenticeship pathways continue to be issued exactly as they are today; the marketplace receives them as verifiable Open Badges in the learner’s wallet.

The matrix below — included here as a reference Maryland leadership may return to — applies three perspectives to selected initiatives. The Complement column identifies where the marketplace adds capabilities current State investments do not provide. The Bridge column identifies where the marketplace connects presently separate systems. The Interoperability column describes how the marketplace is designed to work alongside existing Maryland platforms.

If the State were to find this conversation worth continuing, three paths forward suggest themselves — each with discrete decision points and none requiring the State to commit beyond the step in front of it. The first is a discovery brief: a joint presentation to the Maryland Department of Labor, the Maryland State Department of Education, the Maryland Higher Education Commission, the Governor’s Workforce Development Board, the Accountability and Implementation Board, the Office of Apprenticeship, and MLDS leadership outlining the marketplace’s open-standards architecture, the at-no-cost foundation, and what a small first cohort could look like. The second is a sector pilot: subject to a State decision to proceed, a focused cohort drawn from one of Maryland’s Blueprint Post-CCR Pathway priority sectors or one of the EARN industry partnerships in which graduates receive a Comprehensive Learner Record aligned with the Governor’s Workforce Development Board’s industry-recognized credential policy and made available through the EBSCOed marketplace. Health care, advanced manufacturing, IT, and construction trades are natural candidates given Maryland’s economy. The third path would, only at the State’s direction, layer in optional subscription services that integrate the marketplace with the Maryland Workforce Exchange, the State’s Eligible Training Provider system, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act case management, the Maryland Apprenticeship Locator and Office of Apprenticeship records, and the MLDS data pipeline. Any eligibility automation Maryland wished to pursue for Workforce Pell, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, or registered apprenticeship would live in this phase. State funds engage only here, and only to the extent the State chooses to procure subscription services. The first two phases require no new State appropriation.

Several considerations may inform Maryland’s thinking about the partnership. The marketplace’s open-standards foundation ensures the State’s prior investments in the Maryland Longitudinal Data System Center, the Credential Engine Registry, the Maryland Workforce Exchange, the Maryland Apprenticeship Locator, and the credentialing work of the 16 community colleges, the University System of Maryland, and Morgan State, St. Mary’s, and the independent colleges continue to operate as they do today; the marketplace exchanges data with those systems rather than displacing them. The no-cost foundation means that the early phases require no new State appropriation; State funding considerations arise only in the third phase, and only for services the State elects to procure. Maryland’s distinctive feature — a Blueprint that ties K-12, postsecondary, and workforce investments together in statute under the oversight of the Accountability and Implementation Board — may benefit from engagement at both the State and Local Education Agency level during any broader rollout, and EBSCOed welcomes the opportunity to participate in such conversations at the State’s direction, in whatever forum the State considers most useful.

A further consideration may be relevant to the State’s long-term planning. As the marketplace becomes the trusted system of record for skills and credentials across Maryland, states often find that certain point solutions they currently maintain — case management tooling supporting Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants, Eligible Training Provider List eligibility workflows, standalone skills-assessment platforms, district- or institution-level credential wallets that today operate in isolation, and the patchwork of employer-side job-board and applicant-tracking subscriptions that result when many platforms each serve a slice of the same workforce — become candidates for consolidation or retirement, with associated reductions in ongoing licensing and maintenance costs. EBSCOed offers no opinion on which systems Maryland may wish to retain and which it may wish to consolidate; those decisions belong to the State and the relevant agencies, on the State’s own timeline. We mention the possibility only because the cost-of-ownership story is one states have asked us to address, and because we are glad to support evaluations of that kind when the State considers them useful.

We recognize that Maryland has earned the right to be deliberate. The State’s coordination among the Department of Labor and its Division of Workforce Development and Adult Learning, the Office of Apprenticeship, the Maryland State Department of Education, the Maryland Higher Education Commission, the Governor’s Workforce Development Board, the Accountability and Implementation Board overseeing the Blueprint, MLDS, the Maryland Association of Community Colleges, the University System of Maryland, and the State’s American Job Center network reflects years of careful institution-building — and the Blueprint represents a generational legislative commitment that demands respect from any new layer added alongside it. EBSCOed has no interest in disrupting that coordination. Our interest is in offering a free, open-standards layer that makes Maryland’s existing investments — especially the Blueprint’s credential and apprenticeship goals — more useful to the Marylanders they serve.

If any of this is worth a conversation, we would welcome one — at the convenience of whoever the State considers the right convening authority, in whatever form would be most useful, and on whatever timeline the State prefers. The contact information below is the appropriate first point of contact. The QR codes that follow provide direct access to the current EBSCOed ecosystem overview, which is kept current as capabilities evolve, and to LER.me itself, where any Marylander may today create a free Learning and Employment Record in a few minutes.

With great respect for the work Maryland is already doing, and with hope that the next chapter may be written together,

Massachusetts has, under Governor Healey and Lieutenant Governor Driscoll, built one of the most coherent State-level workforce-and-postsecondary investment portfolios in the country. MassReconnect — established in the FY24 budget with $20 million in first-year funding — provides free community college for Massachusetts residents aged 25 and older without an equivalent credential at each of the Commonwealth’s 15 community colleges. MassEducate, the successor program, extends free community college tuition more broadly. The Workforce Skills Cabinet aligns the Executive Offices of Education (Secretary Patrick Tutwiler), Labor and Workforce Development (Secretary Lauren Jones), and Economic Development around a comprehensive economic growth agenda, coordinating across the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education and the 15 community colleges. The Workforce Skills Capital Grant Program — established by the 2016 Economic Development Bill — funds vocational and technical equipment for credential production. The MassHire State Workforce Board develops Massachusetts' WIOA State Plan and coordinates the MassHire regional and local workforce delivery network. GROW (Grants for Registered Apprenticeship Opportunities in Workforce), administered by the Division of Apprentice Standards, has invested $2.1 million in FY26, training and placing 300+ apprentices in healthcare, manufacturing, clean energy, life sciences, and IT. The TRAIN grants further extend community college responsiveness to regional workforce need. Few states have built so much, so deliberately, in service of their workers.

This letter is written in admiration of that work, and with a specific proposition: that the next chapter of Massachusetts' education-to-workforce strategy may benefit from a learner-held layer that the Commonwealth has not yet had occasion to build. EBSCOed is the division of EBSCO Information Services that has spent the last several years constructing that layer — the LER talent marketplace — and offering LER.me to states, learners, educators, and employers at no cost. We write to share what it is, where it complements Massachusetts' investments, where it bridges systems that today operate in parallel, and how it is designed to extend rather than disturb the credential infrastructure Massachusetts has already built.

LER.me is an open-standards platform that gives each individual a portable digital wallet containing their verified learning and employment records. The marketplace is built on the IEEE Learning and Employment Record standard, Open Badges 3.0, and Comprehensive Learner Record 2.0 — the same open standards used across the credentialing field — so the data Massachusetts already publishes to the Credential Engine Registry, and the credentials issued by the Commonwealth’s 15 community colleges, the State universities, the UMass system, the State’s vocational and technical high schools, and registered apprenticeship sponsors, remain authoritative and continue to operate exactly as they do today. The marketplace exchanges with those systems; it does not replace them. The platform itself is free to learners, to educators, and to employers, with optional subscription services available to states and large institutions that want deeper integration or custom analytics. The foundation is the foundation, and the foundation is free.

Four capabilities are most relevant to Massachusetts' context. The first is free credential issuance: any approved Massachusetts institution, vocational and technical high school, apprenticeship sponsor, or employer can issue verifiable credentials into learner-held wallets without licensing fees, supporting institutions of every size and budget on equal footing. The second is an open employer marketplace, in which Massachusetts employers post opportunities and discover qualified candidates based on verified skills and credentials, again at no cost. The third is public workforce intelligence — dashboards that aggregate credential issuance and labor demand data as linked open data, available to State agencies for planning, reporting, and supporting Workforce Skills Cabinet and MassHire State Workforce Board reporting missions. The fourth is the contributor framework, which crosswalks issued credentials to occupational standards and to State-defined high-demand designations — including Workforce Skills Capital Grant priority sectors — at the point of issuance, so the demand signal Massachusetts has invested years in defining is operationalized at the individual level, automatically.

Massachusetts' distinctive strength is the Workforce Skills Cabinet’s three-Executive-Office alignment. Few states have institutionalized the coordination of Education, Labor and Workforce Development, and Economic Development inside a single cross-Cabinet structure. That structure is the reason MassReconnect could move quickly from FY24 budget enactment to community college implementation in a single year, the reason the Workforce Skills Capital Grant Program funds equipment that produces credentials aligned to MassHire-identified labor demand, and the reason GROW apprenticeship investments connect directly to the State’s healthcare, manufacturing, clean energy, and life sciences priority sectors. What sits underneath every one of those moves is the same need: a verifiable, portable, learner-held record that lets each Massachusetts resident carry their community college credential, their UMass or State university degree, their MassReconnect-funded attainment, their MassEducate completion, their vocational high school CTE credential, their GROW-funded apprenticeship milestones, their TRAIN-funded community college training, and their employer-issued microcredentials in one place, recognized by employers, transferable across institutions, and durable beyond any one platform. That record is what the LER marketplace provides, at no cost, on the open standards the Commonwealth already uses. EBSCOed is not asking Massachusetts to reorganize the Workforce Skills Cabinet — we are offering the learner-side layer that operationalizes the Cabinet’s three-Office alignment at the credential level for each Massachusetts resident.

There are three lenses through which we have found it useful to discuss this marketplace with Commonwealth leadership, and we offer them here in the same spirit. The first is complement — where the marketplace adds capability Massachusetts has not yet had reason to build. The Workforce Skills Cabinet measures cross-Office alignment at the State level; the marketplace adds the learner-side artifact, a verifiable record each Massachusetts resident carries with them. MassReconnect and MassEducate produce free community college attainment; the marketplace gives each of the 15 community colleges, the State universities, the UMass system, vocational and technical high schools, and registered apprenticeship sponsors a free way to issue credentials as verifiable Open Badges directly into learner wallets. GROW apprenticeship grantees, TRAIN community college recipients, Workforce Skills Capital Grant beneficiaries, Innovation Pathway participants, and Early College students face the same opportunity. None of this displaces Massachusetts' current investments. All of it makes them more visible, more durable, and more useful to the Massachusetts residents who earn them.

The second lens is bridge — where the marketplace connects systems that today operate in parallel. A Massachusetts resident who completes vocational technical CTE in high school, participates in an Innovation Pathway or Early College program, earns a MassReconnect-funded associate degree at one of the 15 community colleges, transfers to a State university or UMass campus, completes a GROW-funded registered apprenticeship in healthcare, manufacturing, clean energy, or life sciences, and gains employer-issued microcredentials currently has those attainments living in different places. The marketplace allows them to travel together in one learner-owned record. MassHire Career Center navigators serving Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants can see a complete skill picture rather than reconstructing it from a paper trail. The connective tissue the Workforce Skills Cabinet provides at the Commonwealth level can be operationalized at the learner level through a credential wallet that travels with each Massachusetts resident.

The third lens is interoperability — where existing Massachusetts platforms occupy adjacent space and where it is essential that the Commonwealth’s investments be respected. The Workforce Skills Cabinet remains the Commonwealth’s authoritative cross-Executive-Office workforce coordination body; the marketplace operates as a learner-side complement that supports the Cabinet’s mission. The MassHire State Workforce Board continues exactly as it operates today; the marketplace supports MassHire’s WIOA State Plan reporting. The Massachusetts Department of Higher Education continues exactly as it operates today under Commissioner Ortega; the marketplace receives credentials produced by the 15 community colleges, the State universities, and the UMass system. The Division of Apprentice Standards within EOLWD continues exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives credentials produced through DAS-registered apprenticeship programs. MassHire JobQuest remains Massachusetts' official labor exchange; the marketplace acts as a complementary skills-and-credentials profile layer that posts to those systems through standard application programming interfaces.

The matrix below — included here as a reference Massachusetts leadership may return to — applies three perspectives to selected initiatives. The Complement column identifies where the marketplace adds capabilities current Commonwealth investments do not provide. The Bridge column identifies where the marketplace connects presently separate systems. The Interoperability column describes how the marketplace is designed to work alongside existing Massachusetts platforms.

If the Commonwealth were to find this conversation worth continuing, three paths forward suggest themselves — each with discrete decision points and none requiring the Commonwealth to commit beyond the step in front of it. The first is a discovery brief: a joint presentation to the Executive Office of Education, the Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development, the Executive Office of Economic Development, the Workforce Skills Cabinet, the MassHire State Workforce Board, the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education, and — where the Commonwealth considers it useful — the Massachusetts Community Colleges Council of Presidents and the MassHire Workforce Board leadership, outlining the marketplace’s open-standards architecture, the at-no-cost foundation, and what a small first cohort could look like. The second is a sector pilot: subject to a Commonwealth decision to proceed, a focused cohort drawn from one of the GROW-funded sectors — healthcare, advanced manufacturing, clean energy, life sciences, or IT are natural candidates — in which MassReconnect graduates, GROW apprentices, TRAIN program completers, or Workforce Skills Capital Grant beneficiaries receive a Comprehensive Learner Record aligned with Workforce Skills Cabinet high-demand designations and made available through the EBSCOed marketplace. The third path would, only at the Commonwealth’s direction, layer in optional subscription services that integrate the marketplace with MassHire JobQuest, the Eligible Training Provider List, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act case management, DAS-registered apprenticeship sponsor records, MassReconnect and MassEducate enrollment data, and Workforce Skills Capital Regional Planning Blueprint reporting infrastructure. Any eligibility automation Massachusetts wished to pursue for Workforce Pell, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, or registered apprenticeship would live in this phase. Commonwealth funds engage only here, and only to the extent the Commonwealth chooses to procure subscription services. The first two phases require no new Commonwealth appropriation.

Several considerations may inform Massachusetts' thinking about the partnership. The marketplace’s open-standards foundation ensures the Commonwealth’s prior investments in the Credential Engine Registry, MassHire JobQuest, and the credentialing work of the 15 community colleges, the State universities, the UMass system, the State’s vocational and technical high schools, and the independent colleges and universities continue to operate as they do today; the marketplace exchanges data with those systems rather than displacing them. The no-cost foundation means that the early phases require no new Commonwealth appropriation; State funding considerations arise only in the third phase, and only for services the Commonwealth elects to procure. Massachusetts' distinctive structural advantage — the Workforce Skills Cabinet’s three-Executive-Office alignment — may make the Commonwealth a natural fit for engagement at the Cabinet level, where Education, Labor and Workforce Development, and Economic Development priorities converge.

A further consideration may be relevant to the Commonwealth’s long-term planning. As the marketplace becomes the trusted system of record for skills and credentials across Massachusetts, states often find that certain point solutions they currently maintain — case management tooling supporting Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants, Eligible Training Provider List eligibility workflows, standalone skills-assessment platforms, district- or institution-level credential wallets that today operate in isolation, and the patchwork of employer-side job-board and applicant-tracking subscriptions that result when many platforms each serve a slice of the same workforce — become candidates for consolidation or retirement, with associated reductions in ongoing licensing and maintenance costs. EBSCOed offers no opinion on which systems Massachusetts may wish to retain and which it may wish to consolidate; those decisions belong to the Commonwealth and the relevant agencies, on the Commonwealth’s own timeline. We mention the possibility only because the cost-of-ownership story is one states have asked us to address, and because we are glad to support evaluations of that kind when the Commonwealth considers them useful.

We recognize that Massachusetts has earned the right to be deliberate. The Commonwealth’s coordination through the Workforce Skills Cabinet (aligning the Executive Offices of Education, Labor and Workforce Development, and Economic Development), the MassHire State Workforce Board, the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education, the 15 community colleges, the State universities, the UMass system, the vocational and technical high schools, the Division of Apprentice Standards, and the 16 MassHire Workforce Boards reflects years of careful institution-building — and the Healey-Driscoll Administration’s MassReconnect, MassEducate, GROW, and TRAIN investments together represent one of the most coherent Commonwealth-level workforce commitments in recent memory. EBSCOed has no interest in disrupting that coordination. Our interest is in offering a free, open-standards layer that makes Massachusetts' existing investments — particularly MassReconnect, MassEducate, the Workforce Skills Capital Grant Program, GROW apprenticeship grants, and the Workforce Skills Cabinet’s cross-Office alignment — more useful to the Massachusetts residents they serve.

If any of this is worth a conversation, we would welcome one — at the convenience of whoever the Commonwealth considers the right convening authority, in whatever form would be most useful, and on whatever timeline the Commonwealth prefers. The contact information below is the appropriate first point of contact. The QR codes that follow provide direct access to the current EBSCOed ecosystem overview, which is kept current as capabilities evolve, and to LER.me itself, where any Massachusetts resident may today create a free Learning and Employment Record in a few minutes.

With great respect for the work Massachusetts is already doing, and with hope that the next chapter may be written together,

Michigan has, over the past several years, built one of the most coordinated education-to-workforce systems in the country — and is currently the national leader in adult credential attainment. The Sixty by 30 goal — ensuring that 60 percent of working-age Michiganders hold a postsecondary credential by 2030, up from a current 51.8 percent — anchors the strategic mission of the Michigan Department of Lifelong Education, Advancement, and Potential (MiLEAP), the cabinet-level agency Governor Whitmer established in 2023. Michigan Reconnect, the State’s tuition-free community college program for adults, has accepted more than 200,000 applications since launch and is now in its fifth year — making it the largest program of its kind in State history. Reconnect Community Action Grants, part of the broader Sixty by 30 grant suite that totaled more than $45 million in 2024, fund regional adult-learner navigation and wraparound support through MiLEAP. The Going PRO Talent Fund, administered by the Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity through Michigan Works! Agencies, has awarded more than $309 million to nearly 8,500 businesses since 2014, training more than 241,600 Michigan workers — and Michigan now ranks fourth nationally in active Registered Apprentices, with more than 22,000 participants across 850 unique programs. The Statewide Workforce Plan, Michigan’s first, ties these investments together under the All-Access Michigan banner, and the State now ranks number one in the nation for adult credential attainment and third for helping adults get employed. Few states have built so much, so deliberately, in service of their workers.

This letter is written in admiration of that work, and with a specific proposition: that the next chapter of Michigan’s education-to-workforce strategy may benefit from a learner-held layer that the State has not yet had occasion to build. EBSCOed is the division of EBSCO Information Services that has spent the last several years constructing that layer — the LER talent marketplace — and offering LER.me to states, learners, educators, and employers at no cost. We write to share what it is, where it complements Michigan’s investments, where it bridges systems that today operate in parallel, and how it is designed to extend rather than disturb the credential infrastructure Michigan has already built.

LER.me is an open-standards platform that gives each individual a portable digital wallet containing their verified learning and employment records. The marketplace is built on the IEEE Learning and Employment Record standard, Open Badges 3.0, and Comprehensive Learner Record 2.0 — the same open standards used across the credentialing field — so the data Michigan already publishes to the Credential Engine Registry, and the credentials issued by Michigan’s community and Tribal colleges, public and independent universities, K-12 districts, and registered apprenticeship sponsors, remain authoritative and continue to operate exactly as they do today. The marketplace exchanges with those systems; it does not replace them. The platform itself is free to learners, to educators, and to employers, with optional subscription services available to states and large institutions that want deeper integration or custom analytics. The foundation is the foundation, and the foundation is free.

Four capabilities are most relevant to Michigan’s context. The first is free credential issuance: any approved Michigan institution, apprenticeship sponsor, or employer can issue verifiable credentials into learner-held wallets without licensing fees, supporting institutions of every size and budget on equal footing. The second is an open employer marketplace, in which Michigan employers post opportunities and discover qualified candidates based on verified skills and credentials, again at no cost. The third is public workforce intelligence — dashboards that aggregate credential issuance and labor demand data as linked open data, available to State agencies for planning, reporting, and supporting the Sixty by 30 progress dashboard. The fourth is the contributor framework, which crosswalks issued credentials to occupational standards and to State-defined high-demand categories — including the priority sectors named in the Statewide Workforce Plan and Going PRO Talent Fund — at the point of issuance, so the demand signal Michigan has invested years in defining is operationalized at the individual level, automatically.

Michigan’s position is, in important respects, ahead of most states. The State is already the national leader in adult credential attainment, and Sixty by 30 codifies the trajectory at the policy level. MiLEAP exists, by design, as a single cabinet-level agency responsible for outcomes from birth through postsecondary — a structural commitment few states have made. The Going PRO Talent Fund proves that employer-driven training at scale can produce industry-recognized credentials. Michigan Reconnect proves that removing tuition cost for adult learners moves the credential-attainment needle. What sits underneath every one of those investments is the same need: a verifiable, portable, learner-held record that lets each Michigander carry their Reconnect-funded community college credential, their Going PRO-funded employer training, their Registered Apprenticeship milestones, their CTE pathway completions, and their employer-issued microcredentials in one place, recognized by employers, transferable across institutions, and durable beyond any one platform. That record is what the LER marketplace provides, at no cost, on the open standards the State already uses. EBSCOed is not asking Michigan to alter its workforce strategy — we are offering the learner-side layer that lets Michigan’s national leadership in adult credential attainment show up in each Michigander’s pocket.

There are three lenses through which we have found it useful to discuss this marketplace with state leadership, and we offer them here in the same spirit. The first is complement — where the marketplace adds capability Michigan has not yet had reason to build. Sixty by 30 measures attainment at the State level; the marketplace adds the learner-side artifact, a verifiable record each Michigander carries with them. Michigan Reconnect produces community and Tribal college credentials at scale; the marketplace gives every Reconnect-participating institution a free way to issue those credentials as verifiable Open Badges directly into learner wallets, with Reconnect designation embedded in the badge metadata. The Going PRO Talent Fund produces industry-recognized credentials through employer-led training; the marketplace makes those credentials visible at the individual level in real time. Apprenticeship completions across Michigan’s 850-plus Registered Apprenticeship programs face the same opportunity at every milestone. None of this displaces Michigan’s current investments. All of it makes them more visible, more durable, and more useful to the Michiganders who earn them.

The second lens is bridge — where the marketplace connects systems that today operate in parallel. A Michigander who completes Michigan Reconnect at a community college, earns a Going PRO-supported credential through an employer, completes a Registered Apprenticeship through a Michigan Works! partner, and gains employer-issued microcredentials currently has those attainments living in different places — the State’s analytic infrastructure links some of them, but the learner does not carry a verifiable record they can show an employer. The marketplace allows them to travel together in one learner-owned record. Michigan Works! Service Center navigators serving Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants across the State’s 16 Michigan Works! Agencies can see a complete skill picture rather than reconstructing it from a paper trail. Reconnect Navigators and Oakland80 Navigators and the navigators funded under the Reconnect Community Action Grants can all work from the same learner-held record. The connective tissue exists in the State’s coordination; the marketplace puts it in the learner, where it belongs.

The third lens is interoperability — where existing Michigan platforms occupy adjacent space and where it is essential that the State’s investments be respected. Michigan Reconnect remains MiLEAP’s authoritative tuition-free pathway for adult learners; the marketplace operates alongside Reconnect by receiving the credentials Reconnect funds without altering the program. The Going PRO Talent Fund’s employer reimbursement process, administered by LEO through Michigan Works! Agencies, remains exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives credentials issued through Going PRO-funded training and presents them in learner wallets. MiTalent.org remains Michigan’s official labor exchange; the marketplace acts as a complementary skills-and-credentials profile layer that posts to MiTalent and similar systems through standard application programming interfaces. The MiLEAP Office of Sixty by 30 remains the State’s authoritative coordination body for attainment work; the marketplace operates as a complementary, learner-side layer that supports the Office’s strategic mission.

The matrix below — included here as a reference Michigan leadership may return to — applies three perspectives to selected initiatives. The Complement column identifies where the marketplace adds capabilities current State investments do not provide. The Bridge column identifies where the marketplace connects presently separate systems. The Interoperability column describes how the marketplace is designed to work alongside existing Michigan platforms.

If the State were to find this conversation worth continuing, three paths forward suggest themselves — each with discrete decision points and none requiring the State to commit beyond the step in front of it. The first is a discovery brief: a joint presentation to MiLEAP, the Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity, the Office of Sixty by 30, the Michigan Community College Association, the Michigan Works! Association, and — where the State considers it useful — Michigan’s public universities outlining the marketplace’s open-standards architecture, the at-no-cost foundation, and what a small first cohort could look like. The second is a sector pilot: subject to a State decision to proceed, a focused cohort drawn from one of Going PRO’s priority sectors — advanced manufacturing, healthcare, construction, clean energy, or information technology are natural candidates — in which Going PRO-funded credential earners receive a Comprehensive Learner Record aligned with Statewide Workforce Plan high-demand designations and made available through the EBSCOed marketplace. A Reconnect cohort in a specific region — coordinated with one of the Reconnect Community Action Grant collaboratives like NoMI Attainment, Oakland80, or Detroit Reconnect — is another natural starting shape. The third path would, only at the State’s direction, layer in optional subscription services that integrate the marketplace with MiTalent.org, the Eligible Training Provider List, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act case management, Registered Apprenticeship sponsor records, Reconnect data, and the Going PRO Talent Fund reimbursement pipeline. Any eligibility automation Michigan wished to pursue for Workforce Pell, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, or Registered Apprenticeship would live in this phase. State funds engage only here, and only to the extent the State chooses to procure subscription services. The first two phases require no new State appropriation.

Several considerations may inform Michigan’s thinking about the partnership. The marketplace’s open-standards foundation ensures the State’s prior investments in the Credential Engine Registry, the Going PRO Talent Fund infrastructure, Michigan Reconnect, MiTalent.org, and the credentialing work of Michigan’s community and Tribal colleges, public universities, and independent institutions continue to operate as they do today; the marketplace exchanges data with those systems rather than displacing them. The no-cost foundation means that the early phases require no new State appropriation; State funding considerations arise only in the third phase, and only for services the State elects to procure. Michigan’s distinctive arrangement — a single cabinet-level agency (MiLEAP) coordinating birth-through-postsecondary outcomes alongside LEO’s workforce mission, delivered regionally through 16 Michigan Works! Agencies — may benefit from engagement at both the State and regional MWA level during any broader rollout, and EBSCOed welcomes the opportunity to participate in such conversations at the State’s direction, in whatever forum the State considers most useful.

A further consideration may be relevant to the State’s long-term planning. As the marketplace becomes the trusted system of record for skills and credentials across Michigan, states often find that certain point solutions they currently maintain — case management tooling supporting Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants, Eligible Training Provider List eligibility workflows, standalone skills-assessment platforms, district- or institution-level credential wallets that today operate in isolation, and the patchwork of employer-side job-board and applicant-tracking subscriptions that result when many platforms each serve a slice of the same workforce — become candidates for consolidation or retirement, with associated reductions in ongoing licensing and maintenance costs. EBSCOed offers no opinion on which systems Michigan may wish to retain and which it may wish to consolidate; those decisions belong to the State and the relevant agencies, on the State’s own timeline. We mention the possibility only because the cost-of-ownership story is one states have asked us to address, and because we are glad to support evaluations of that kind when the State considers them useful.

We recognize that Michigan has earned the right to be deliberate. The State’s coordination among MiLEAP, the Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity, the Michigan Department of Education, the Michigan Community College Association, the Michigan Association of State Universities, the 16 Michigan Works! Agencies, the State’s Tribal colleges, and the independent colleges and universities — together with the bipartisan legislative support behind Michigan Reconnect and Going PRO — reflects years of careful institution-building, and Michigan’s national-number-one position in adult credential attainment is the visible result. EBSCOed has no interest in disrupting that coordination. Our interest is in offering a free, open-standards layer that makes Michigan’s existing investments — particularly Michigan Reconnect, the Going PRO Talent Fund, and the State’s Registered Apprenticeship system — more useful to the Michiganders they serve.

If any of this is worth a conversation, we would welcome one — at the convenience of whoever the State considers the right convening authority, in whatever form would be most useful, and on whatever timeline the State prefers. The contact information below is the appropriate first point of contact. The QR codes that follow provide direct access to the current EBSCOed ecosystem overview, which is kept current as capabilities evolve, and to LER.me itself, where any Michigander may today create a free Learning and Employment Record in a few minutes.

With great respect for the work Michigan is already doing, and with hope that the next chapter may be written together,

Minnesota has, under Governor Walz and Lieutenant Governor Flanagan, built one of the most significant State-level workforce investment portfolios in the Upper Midwest. The Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development — under Commissioner Matt Varilek and Deputy Commissioner of Workforce Development Marc Majors — coordinates more than $216 million in Employment and Training Programs through June 2025, including the Drive for 5 Workforce initiative ($20 million initial plus $8.8 million additional rounds), the Targeted Populations Workforce Programs ($50 million from the 2023 legislative session), and the Clean Economy Equitable Workforce program ($2.7 million). Drive for 5 prepares Minnesotans for high-demand jobs in five occupational categories — the caring professions, education, manufacturing, technology, and the trades. The Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system, with technical and community colleges plus state universities, anchors postsecondary credential delivery. Apprenticeship Minnesota, administered through the Department of Labor and Industry under Commissioner Nicole Blissenbach, supports registered apprenticeship through the Dual-Training Pipeline and the Youth Skills Training program. The Minnesota Job Skills Partnership Program supports Minnesota businesses partnering with accredited educational institutions on custom training. The Job Training Incentive Program supports training for new employees at companies located outside the seven-county metro area. The Growing Careers Program ($2.4 million in 2025) supports agriculture-focused workforce training. The Workforce Development Scholarship at Minnesota State supports students in high-demand fields. CareerForceMN provides Minnesota’s labor exchange infrastructure. Few states have built so much, so deliberately, in service of their workers.

This letter is written in admiration of that work, and with a specific proposition: that the next chapter of Minnesota’s education-to-workforce strategy may benefit from a learner-held layer that the State has not yet had occasion to build. EBSCOed is the division of EBSCO Information Services that has spent the last several years constructing that layer — the LER talent marketplace — and offering LER.me to states, learners, educators, and employers at no cost. We write to share what it is, where it complements Minnesota’s investments, where it bridges systems that today operate in parallel, and how it is designed to extend rather than disturb the credential infrastructure Minnesota has already built.

LER.me is an open-standards platform that gives each individual a portable digital wallet containing their verified learning and employment records. The marketplace is built on the IEEE Learning and Employment Record standard, Open Badges 3.0, and Comprehensive Learner Record 2.0 — the same open standards used across the credentialing field — so the data Minnesota already publishes to the Credential Engine Registry, and the credentials issued by the 33 Minnesota State Colleges and Universities institutions, the University of Minnesota system, the State’s private colleges, K-12 districts, and registered apprenticeship sponsors, remain authoritative and continue to operate exactly as they do today. The marketplace exchanges with those systems; it does not replace them. The platform itself is free to learners, to educators, and to employers, with optional subscription services available to states and large institutions that want deeper integration or custom analytics. The foundation is the foundation, and the foundation is free.

Four capabilities are most relevant to Minnesota’s context. The first is free credential issuance: any approved Minnesota institution, apprenticeship sponsor, or employer can issue verifiable credentials into learner-held wallets without licensing fees, supporting institutions of every size and budget on equal footing. The second is an open employer marketplace, in which Minnesota employers post opportunities and discover qualified candidates based on verified skills and credentials, again at no cost. The third is public workforce intelligence — dashboards that aggregate credential issuance and labor demand data as linked open data, available to State agencies for planning, reporting, and supporting DEED’s Labor Market Information Office and the Governor’s Workforce Development Board reporting missions. The fourth is the contributor framework, which crosswalks issued credentials to occupational standards and to Drive for 5 occupational categories — the caring professions, education, manufacturing, technology, and the trades — at the point of issuance, so the demand signal Minnesota has invested years in defining is operationalized at the individual level, automatically.

Minnesota’s distinctive achievement is the coordinated structure of the Drive for 5 framework. Few states have organized workforce training, employer engagement, job placement, and diversity/inclusion/retention services around a defined set of five priority occupational categories the way DEED has. The $216+ million in coordinated workforce investment through June 2025 — Drive for 5, Targeted Populations, Clean Economy Equitable Workforce, Growing Careers, and the broader portfolio — represents a level of State commitment few states match in absolute dollar terms. Apprenticeship Minnesota’s Dual-Training Pipeline and Youth Skills Training programs together create a credentialing infrastructure that spans high-school work-based learning through Registered Apprenticeship completion. What sits underneath every one of those structures is the same need: a verifiable, portable, learner-held record that lets each Minnesotan carry their Minnesota State community or technical college credential, their state university or University of Minnesota degree, their Drive for 5-funded training credential, their Targeted Populations program attainment, their Apprenticeship Minnesota milestones (including Dual-Training Pipeline completions), their Youth Skills Training attainment, their Workforce Development Scholarship-funded credential, and their employer-issued microcredentials in one place, recognized by employers, transferable across institutions, and durable beyond any one platform. That record is what the LER marketplace provides, at no cost, on the open standards the State already uses. EBSCOed is not asking Minnesota to alter the Drive for 5 framework — we are offering the learner-side layer that lets the credentials Drive for 5, Targeted Populations, and Apprenticeship Minnesota produce travel with each Minnesotan in a verifiable wallet.

There are three lenses through which we have found it useful to discuss this marketplace with State leadership, and we offer them here in the same spirit. The first is complement — where the marketplace adds capability Minnesota has not yet had reason to build at scale. DEED tracks Drive for 5 training enrollment and outcomes at the State level; the marketplace adds the learner-side artifact, a verifiable record each Minnesotan carries with them. The 33 Minnesota State institutions, the University of Minnesota system, the State’s private colleges, registered apprenticeship sponsors, and Drive for 5 training providers all produce credentials that today travel through institutional transcripts; the marketplace gives each institution a free way to issue those credentials as verifiable Open Badges directly into learner wallets, with Drive for 5 occupational-category designation embedded in the badge metadata at issuance where applicable. None of this displaces Minnesota’s current investments. All of it makes them more visible, more durable, and more useful to the Minnesotans who earn them.

The second lens is bridge — where the marketplace connects systems that today operate in parallel. A Minnesotan who completes K-12 CTE through Youth Skills Training, earns a Minnesota State community or technical college credential, participates in an Apprenticeship Minnesota Dual-Training Pipeline program, completes Drive for 5 training in caring professions, education, manufacturing, technology, or the trades, transfers to a state university or University of Minnesota campus, completes Targeted Populations Workforce Programs supports, and gains employer-issued microcredentials currently has those attainments living in different places. The marketplace allows them to travel together in one learner-owned record. CareerForceMN navigators serving Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants can see a complete skill picture rather than reconstructing it from a paper trail. The connective tissue DEED provides at the State level can be operationalized at the learner level through a credential wallet that travels with each Minnesotan.

The third lens is interoperability — where existing Minnesota platforms occupy adjacent space and where it is essential that the State’s investments be respected. The Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development remains the State’s authoritative workforce agency; the marketplace operates as a learner-side complement that supports DEED’s coordinated workforce investment mission. The Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry, under Commissioner Blissenbach, continues exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives credentials produced through Apprenticeship Minnesota-supported programs and YST grants. The Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system continues exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives credentials issued by Minnesota State institutions. The Office of Higher Education continues exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives credentials produced through OHE-coordinated programs including the Workforce Development Scholarship. CareerForceMN remains Minnesota’s official labor exchange; the marketplace acts as a complementary skills-and-credentials profile layer that posts to CareerForceMN through standard application programming interfaces.

The matrix below — included here as a reference Minnesota leadership may return to — applies three perspectives to selected initiatives. The Complement column identifies where the marketplace adds capabilities current State investments do not provide. The Bridge column identifies where the marketplace connects presently separate systems. The Interoperability column describes how the marketplace is designed to work alongside existing Minnesota platforms.

If the State were to find this conversation worth continuing, three paths forward suggest themselves — each with discrete decision points and none requiring the State to commit beyond the step in front of it. The first is a discovery brief: a joint presentation to the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development, the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry, Minnesota State Colleges and Universities, the University of Minnesota system, the Minnesota Office of Higher Education, the Governor’s Workforce Development Board, and — where the State considers it useful — Minnesota State community college presidents, Targeted Populations grantee community organizations, and Local Workforce Development Board leadership, outlining the marketplace’s open-standards architecture, the at-no-cost foundation, and what a small first cohort could look like. The second is a sector pilot: subject to a State decision to proceed, a focused cohort drawn from one of the Drive for 5 occupational categories — the caring professions, education (with Teacher Apprenticeship cohorts), manufacturing (with Semiconductor Career Pathways and similar partners), technology, or the trades are natural candidates — in which Drive for 5 training completers, Apprenticeship Minnesota Dual-Training Pipeline participants, YST attainees, or Targeted Populations program completers receive a Comprehensive Learner Record made available through the EBSCOed marketplace. The third path would, only at the State’s direction, layer in optional subscription services that integrate the marketplace with CareerForceMN, the Eligible Training Provider List, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act case management, registered apprenticeship sponsor records, Drive for 5 program data, Targeted Populations grant data, and the Workforce Development Scholarship pipeline. Any eligibility automation Minnesota wished to pursue for Workforce Pell, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, or registered apprenticeship would live in this phase. State funds engage only here, and only to the extent the State chooses to procure subscription services. The first two phases require no new State appropriation.

Several considerations may inform Minnesota’s thinking about the partnership. The marketplace’s open-standards foundation ensures the State’s prior investments in the Credential Engine Registry, CareerForceMN, and the credentialing work of the Minnesota State institutions, the University of Minnesota system, the State’s private colleges, and registered apprenticeship sponsors continue to operate as they do today; the marketplace exchanges data with those systems rather than displacing them. The no-cost foundation means that the early phases require no new State appropriation; State funding considerations arise only in the third phase, and only for services the State elects to procure. Minnesota’s distinctive scale of coordinated workforce investment — $216+ million through June 2025 organized around Drive for 5, Targeted Populations, Clean Economy Equitable Workforce, and the broader portfolio — may benefit from engagement that operationalizes at the credential level the substantial investment already committed at the program level.

A further consideration may be relevant to the State’s long-term planning. As the marketplace becomes the trusted system of record for skills and credentials across Minnesota, states often find that certain point solutions they currently maintain — case management tooling supporting Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants, Eligible Training Provider List eligibility workflows, standalone skills-assessment platforms, district- or institution-level credential wallets that today operate in isolation, and the patchwork of employer-side job-board and applicant-tracking subscriptions that result when many platforms each serve a slice of the same workforce — become candidates for consolidation or retirement, with associated reductions in ongoing licensing and maintenance costs. EBSCOed offers no opinion on which systems Minnesota may wish to retain and which it may wish to consolidate; those decisions belong to the State and the relevant agencies, on the State’s own timeline. We mention the possibility only because the cost-of-ownership story is one states have asked us to address, and because we are glad to support evaluations of that kind when the State considers them useful.

We recognize that Minnesota has earned the right to be deliberate. The State’s coordination among the Department of Employment and Economic Development, the Department of Labor and Industry, Minnesota State Colleges and Universities, the University of Minnesota system, the Office of Higher Education, the Department of Education, the Governor’s Workforce Development Board, and the Local Workforce Development Boards reflects years of careful institution-building under the Walz-Flanagan Administration’s coordinated workforce investment direction. EBSCOed has no interest in disrupting that coordination. Our interest is in offering a free, open-standards layer that makes Minnesota’s existing investments — particularly Drive for 5, Targeted Populations Workforce Programs, Apprenticeship Minnesota’s Dual-Training Pipeline and Youth Skills Training, and the Workforce Development Scholarship — more useful to the Minnesotans they serve.

If any of this is worth a conversation, we would welcome one — at the convenience of whoever the State considers the right convening authority, in whatever form would be most useful, and on whatever timeline the State prefers. The contact information below is the appropriate first point of contact. The QR codes that follow provide direct access to the current EBSCOed ecosystem overview, which is kept current as capabilities evolve, and to LER.me itself, where any Minnesotan may today create a free Learning and Employment Record in a few minutes.

With great respect for the work Minnesota is already doing, and with hope that the next chapter may be written together,

Mississippi has, since 2020, deliberately consolidated what was previously a fragmented workforce system into a clear central authority. State law established the Office of Workforce Development — known as AccelerateMS — as Mississippi’s lead workforce development office, with the State Workforce Investment Board as its advisory board under Section 37-153-7 of the Mississippi Code and the federal Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act. AccelerateMS now coordinates strategy across the Mississippi Department of Employment Security, which administers WIOA Title I and operates unemployment insurance; the Mississippi Community College Board, which oversees the State’s 15 community colleges; the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning, with eight public universities; and the Mississippi Department of Education. The SWIB Approved Credential List, developed in collaboration with employers and educators, identifies industry-recognized certifications, licenses, certificates, and degrees aligned with Mississippi’s high-demand occupations. The Mississippi Apprenticeship Accelerator has committed $2 million to support 600 new apprentices through the Mississippi Apprenticeship Program. Mississippi Reconnect supports working-age adults pursuing short-term training, and MIBEST — Mississippi Integrated Basic Education and Skills Training — has, for years, moved low-skilled, non-credentialed Mississippians into family-sustaining careers. Few states have built so coherent a structure in so short a time.

This letter is written in admiration of that work, and with a specific proposition: that the next chapter of Mississippi’s workforce strategy may benefit from a learner-held layer that the State has not yet had occasion to build. EBSCOed is the division of EBSCO Information Services that has spent the last several years constructing that layer — the LER talent marketplace — and offering LER.me to states, learners, educators, and employers at no cost. We write to share what it is, where it complements Mississippi’s investments, where it bridges systems that today operate in parallel, and how it is designed to extend rather than disturb the workforce infrastructure Mississippi has already built.

LER.me is an open-standards platform that gives each individual a portable digital wallet containing their verified learning and employment records. The marketplace is built on the IEEE Learning and Employment Record standard, Open Badges 3.0, and Comprehensive Learner Record 2.0 — open standards that interoperate cleanly with the data flows Mississippi’s institutions already use. The credentials Mississippi’s community colleges, IHL institutions, school districts, and MAP sponsors already issue remain authoritative and continue to operate exactly as they do today. The marketplace exchanges with those systems; it does not replace them. The platform itself is free to learners, to educators, and to employers, with optional subscription services available to states and large institutions that want deeper integration or custom analytics. The foundation is the foundation, and the foundation is free.

Four capabilities are most relevant to Mississippi’s context. The first is free credential issuance: any MCCB college, IHL institution, MAP apprenticeship sponsor, Mississippi school district, MIBEST partner, or Mississippi employer can issue verifiable credentials into learner-held wallets without licensing fees, supporting institutions of every size and budget on equal footing — particularly important for rural Mississippi, where the capacity to license issuance platforms is unevenly distributed. The second is an open employer marketplace, in which Mississippi employers post opportunities and discover qualified candidates based on verified skills and credentials, again at no cost. The third is public workforce intelligence — dashboards that aggregate credential issuance and labor demand data as linked open data, available to AccelerateMS, the State Workforce Investment Board, MDES, and MCCB for planning and reporting. The fourth is the contributor framework, which crosswalks issued credentials to the SWIB Approved Credential List at the point of issuance, so the credentials-of-value framework Mississippi has developed is operationalized at the individual learner level, automatically.

There are three lenses through which we have found it useful to discuss this marketplace with state leadership, and we offer them here in the same spirit. The first is complement — where the marketplace adds capability Mississippi has not yet had reason to build. The SWIB Approved Credential List names credentials of value; the marketplace adds the learner-side artifact, a verifiable record each Mississippian carries with them that proves they hold what the list authorizes. MAP and the Mississippi Apprenticeship Accelerator face a common challenge — scaling registered apprenticeship requires making completion credentials portable and visible to other Mississippi employers; the marketplace gives every MAP sponsor a free way to issue Open Badges credentials at apprenticeship milestones. The 15 MCCB community colleges, Mississippi Reconnect, MIBEST, and Skill UP Mississippi face the same opportunity. None of this displaces Mississippi’s current investments. All of it makes them more visible, more durable, and more useful to the Mississippians who earn them.

The second lens is bridge — where the marketplace connects systems that today operate in parallel. A Mississippian who completes high school CTE, enrolls in an MCCB community college through Mississippi Reconnect or MIBEST, completes a MAP apprenticeship, and gains employer-issued microcredentials currently has those attainments living in different places. The marketplace allows them to travel together in one learner-owned record. WIN Job Center navigators serving WIOA participants can see a complete skill picture rather than reconstructing it from a paper trail when a participant moves between Centers. The connective tissue exists, but it lives in the learner, where it belongs.

The third lens is interoperability — where existing Mississippi platforms occupy adjacent space and where it is essential that the State’s investments be respected. The SWIB Approved Credential List remains the authoritative state policy on credentials of value, owned and updated by the State Workforce Investment Board; LER.me operates as the technology layer that operationalizes the list at no cost to the State. MyWayMS.org remains MDES’s career-exploration portal and continues to operate as Mississippi’s discovery front door for career information; LER.me operates in a different layer — a verifiable, learner-owned credential record rather than an exploration portal. msapprenticeship.works remains MAP’s sponsor and employer interface. The MDES Eligible Training Provider List remains authoritative. The State’s prior investments are preserved and extended, not displaced.

The matrix below — included here as a reference Mississippi leadership may return to — applies three perspectives to selected initiatives. The Complement column identifies where the marketplace adds capabilities current State investments do not provide. The Bridge column identifies where the marketplace connects presently separate systems. The Interoperability column describes how the marketplace is designed to work alongside existing Mississippi platforms.

If the State were to find this conversation worth continuing, three paths forward suggest themselves — each with discrete decision points and none requiring the State to commit beyond the step in front of it. The first is a briefing to the Executive Director of AccelerateMS, with State Workforce Investment Board participation, presenting how the marketplace operationalizes the SWIB Approved Credential List at the individual learner level. The briefing would address technical interoperability with MDES, MCCB, and MAP systems, the design of SWIB Approved Credential List crosswalks at the point of issuance, and the no-cost foundation for learners, institutions, and employers. The second is an apprenticeship-led pilot tied to the Mississippi Apprenticeship Accelerator’s 600-apprentice target — stand up free credential issuance for MAP sponsors at apprenticeship milestones, with two anchor community colleges participating (one Delta, one Gulf Coast for regional balance), and a regional employer cohort recruited through AccelerateMS. The pilot would validate the operating model and provide outcomes data to inform a Phase Three decision. The third path would, only at the State’s direction, layer in optional subscription services that integrate the marketplace with MDES WIN Job Center case management, ETPL eligibility workflows, MCCB student information systems, and the State Workforce Investment Board’s reporting infrastructure. State funds engage only here, and only to the extent the State chooses to procure subscription services. The first two phases require no new State appropriation.

Several considerations may inform Mississippi’s thinking about the partnership. The marketplace’s open-standards foundation ensures the State’s prior investments — the SWIB Approved Credential List infrastructure, msapprenticeship.works, MyWayMS.org, the MDES Eligible Training Provider List, and the MCCB and IHL student information systems — continue to operate as they do today; the marketplace exchanges data with those systems rather than displacing them. The no-cost foundation means that the early phases require no new State appropriation; State funding considerations arise only in the third phase, and only for services the State elects to procure. AccelerateMS’s centralized convening authority is, by design, an unusual asset among state workforce systems, and it shortens the engagement path considerably; EBSCOed welcomes the opportunity to work through AccelerateMS as the single point of coordination at the State’s direction. The user-experience design must explicitly accommodate first-time digital wallet users, including those served by MIBEST and Mississippi Reconnect, and LER.me is built with that population in mind.

A further consideration may be relevant to the State’s long-term planning. As the marketplace becomes the trusted system of record for skills and credentials across Mississippi, states often find that certain point solutions they currently maintain — case management tooling supporting Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants, Eligible Training Provider List eligibility workflows, standalone skills-assessment platforms, district- or institution-level credential wallets that today operate in isolation, and the patchwork of employer-side job-board and applicant-tracking subscriptions that result when many platforms each serve a slice of the same workforce — become candidates for consolidation or retirement, with associated reductions in ongoing licensing and maintenance costs. EBSCOed offers no opinion on which systems Mississippi may wish to retain and which it may wish to consolidate; those decisions belong to the State and the relevant agencies, on the State’s own timeline. We mention the possibility only because the cost-of-ownership story is one states have asked us to address, and because we are glad to support evaluations of that kind when the State considers them useful.

We recognize that Mississippi has earned the right to be deliberate. The consolidation the State has achieved under AccelerateMS — bringing strategy across MDES, MCCB, IHL, the Mississippi Department of Education, and the State Workforce Investment Board into a coherent statewide approach — reflects a degree of institutional discipline peer states would struggle to replicate. EBSCOed has no interest in disrupting that coordination. Our interest is in offering a free, open-standards layer that makes Mississippi’s existing investments more useful to the Mississippians they serve, and that operationalizes the SWIB Approved Credential List at the level of each individual learner.

If any of this is worth a conversation, we would welcome one — at the convenience of whoever the State considers the right convening authority, in whatever form would be most useful, and on whatever timeline the State prefers. The contact information below is the appropriate first point of contact. The QR codes that follow provide direct access to the current EBSCOed ecosystem overview, which is kept current as capabilities evolve, and to LER.me itself, where any Mississippian may today create a free Learning and Employment Record in a few minutes.

With great respect for the work Mississippi is already doing, and with hope that the next chapter may be written together,

Missouri has, through Apprenticeship Missouri, built one of the most distinguished State registered apprenticeship infrastructures in the country. As of January 2026, Missouri ranks among the top States for registered apprenticeship activity — including 22,410 active apprentices across 335 registered programs (including 65 registered youth apprenticeship programs), 22,944 completed apprenticeships, ranking 2nd in the nation for new apprentices, 3rd in completions, and — distinctively — 1st in the nation for serving apprentices with disabilities. Apprenticeship Missouri is administered through the Office of Apprenticeship & Work-Based Learning (OAWBL) within the Missouri Department of Higher Education and Workforce Development (DHEWD), launched in October 2019, which met its goal of serving 65,000 new apprentices in January 2026. Governor Mike Kehoe’s Executive Order 25-16, issued January 28, 2025, established the Governor’s Workforce of the Future Challenge, charging the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) — with DHEWD as a principal partner — with improving Missouri’s CTE delivery systems and increasing program participation. The CTE Perceptions Survey, conducted with the University of Central Missouri from January to February 2025, received 5,650 responses (including 2,600 students, 766 parents, 1,124 educators, 311 business leaders) with 92.3 percent expressing positive views of CTE. DESE Career Pathways Manager Dr. Linda Stinson leads statewide efforts to align education with workforce needs through Career Pathways Teacher Grants, Pathways for Teachers Grants, Registered Youth Apprenticeship development, and DESE-Approved Industry-Recognized Credentials (IRC) and Stackable Credentials. Missouri Job Centers, the State Technical College of Missouri, the 12 community colleges of the Missouri Community College Association, the four-year University of Missouri System, the State’s regional universities, and the State’s significant private nonprofit college sector together extend the system from K-12 through post-secondary, apprenticeship, and employment. Few states have built so much, so deliberately, in service of their workers.

This letter is written in admiration of that work, and with a specific proposition: that the next chapter of Missouri’s education-to-workforce strategy may benefit from a learner-held layer that the State has not yet had occasion to build. EBSCOed is the division of EBSCO Information Services that has spent the last several years constructing that layer — the LER talent marketplace — and offering LER.me to states, learners, educators, and employers at no cost. We write to share what it is, where it complements Missouri’s investments, where it bridges systems that today operate in parallel, and how it is designed to extend rather than disturb the credential infrastructure Missouri has already built.

LER.me is an open-standards platform that gives each individual a portable digital wallet containing their verified learning and employment records. The marketplace is built on the IEEE Learning and Employment Record standard, Open Badges 3.0, and Comprehensive Learner Record 2.0 — the same open standards used across the credentialing field — so the credentials issued by Missouri’s 12 community colleges, State Technical College of Missouri, the University of Missouri System, the State’s regional public universities, Missouri’s significant private nonprofit college sector, K-12 districts, regional CTE Area Career Centers, and registered apprenticeship sponsors, remain authoritative and continue to operate exactly as they do today. The marketplace exchanges with those systems; it does not replace them. The platform itself is free to learners, to educators, and to employers, with optional subscription services available to states and large institutions that want deeper integration or custom analytics. The foundation is the foundation, and the foundation is free.

Four capabilities are most relevant to Missouri’s context. The first is free credential issuance: any approved Missouri institution, apprenticeship sponsor, or employer can issue verifiable credentials into learner-held wallets without licensing fees, supporting institutions of every size and budget on equal footing. The second is an open employer marketplace, in which Missouri employers post opportunities and discover qualified candidates based on verified skills and credentials, again at no cost. The third is public workforce intelligence — dashboards that aggregate credential issuance and labor demand data as linked open data, available to State agencies for planning, reporting, and supporting Apprenticeship Missouri, DHEWD, DESE, and Governor’s Workforce of the Future Challenge reporting missions. The fourth is the contributor framework, which crosswalks issued credentials to occupational standards and to DESE-Approved IRC and Stackable Credential designations at the point of issuance, so the demand signal Missouri has invested years in defining is operationalized at the individual level, automatically.

Missouri’s distinctive achievement is becoming first in the nation for serving apprentices with disabilities while ranking second in new apprentices and third in completed apprentices. Few states can claim that combination of scale and inclusion. Apprenticeship Missouri’s growth from 6,227 new apprentices when OAWBL launched in October 2019 to 22,410 active apprentices and 22,944 completed apprenticeships today reflects systematic State investment over six years. Meeting the 65,000 new apprentices goal in January 2026 represents the kind of operational discipline few states can demonstrate. Governor Kehoe’s Executive Order 25-16 turns this apprenticeship leadership outward to the broader CTE delivery system, with DESE and DHEWD jointly developing recommendations for improving CTE in collaboration with the 5,650 survey respondents. What sits underneath every one of those structures is the same need: a verifiable, portable, learner-held record that lets each Missourian carry their high school CTE attainment with DESE-Approved Industry-Recognized Credentials, their Apprenticeship Missouri Registered Apprenticeship or Registered Youth Apprenticeship milestones, their Pathways for Teachers Grant-supported credential, their community college or State Technical College of Missouri credential, their University of Missouri System or regional university degree, their Stackable Credential or Technical Skill Attainment (TSA), and their employer-issued microcredentials in one place, recognized by employers, transferable across institutions, and durable beyond any one platform. That record is what the LER marketplace provides, at no cost, on the open standards the field has converged on. EBSCOed is not asking Missouri to alter the Apprenticeship Missouri model or the Workforce of the Future Challenge direction — we are offering the learner-side layer that lets the credentials Missouri’s apprenticeship leadership and CTE infrastructure produce travel with each Missourian in a verifiable wallet.

There are three lenses through which we have found it useful to discuss this marketplace with State leadership, and we offer them here in the same spirit. The first is complement — where the marketplace adds capability Missouri has not yet had reason to build at the individual level. OAWBL tracks Apprenticeship Missouri data at the State level including the State’s distinctive first-in-the-nation position serving apprentices with disabilities; the marketplace adds the learner-side artifact, a verifiable record each apprentice carries with them, particularly meaningful for apprentices whose employment journeys may benefit from portable, employer-friendly credential evidence. The 12 community colleges, State Technical College of Missouri, the University of Missouri System, regional public universities, the State’s private nonprofit colleges, registered apprenticeship sponsors, and Apprenticeship Missouri’s 335 registered programs all produce credentials that today travel through institutional transcripts; the marketplace gives each institution a free way to issue those credentials as verifiable Open Badges directly into learner wallets, with Apprenticeship Missouri or DESE-Approved IRC designation embedded in the badge metadata at issuance where applicable. None of this displaces Missouri’s current investments. All of it makes them more visible, more durable, and more useful to the Missourians who earn them.

The second lens is bridge — where the marketplace connects systems that today operate in parallel. A Missourian who completes high school CTE earning DESE-Approved IRC or Stackable Credentials at an Area Career Center, enters an Apprenticeship Missouri Registered Youth Apprenticeship, transitions to a Registered Apprenticeship at one of the 335 programs (with particular attention to Missouri’s leadership in serving apprentices with disabilities), earns a community college or State Technical College of Missouri credential through related instruction, transfers to the University of Missouri System or a regional public university, completes Pathways for Teachers Grant-supported educator credentials, and gains employer-issued microcredentials currently has those attainments living in different places. The marketplace allows them to travel together in one learner-owned record. Missouri Job Center navigators serving Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants can see a complete skill picture rather than reconstructing it from a paper trail. The connective tissue Apprenticeship Missouri and DHEWD provide at the State level can be operationalized at the learner level through a credential wallet that travels with each Missourian.

The third lens is interoperability — where existing Missouri platforms occupy adjacent space and where it is essential that the State’s investments be respected. The Missouri Department of Higher Education and Workforce Development remains the State’s authoritative coordinating body for postsecondary and workforce strategy; the marketplace operates as a learner-side complement that supports DHEWD’s mission. The Office of Apprenticeship & Work-Based Learning continues exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives credentials produced through Apprenticeship Missouri-registered programs with State designation preserved at issuance. The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education continues exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives credentials produced through DESE-overseen K-12 CTE with DESE-Approved IRC and Stackable Credential designation preserved. The State’s Missouri Job Center network continues exactly as it operates today; the marketplace acts as a complementary skills-and-credentials profile layer that posts to MoJobs and similar State systems through standard application programming interfaces.

The matrix below — included here as a reference Missouri leadership may return to — applies three perspectives to selected initiatives. The Complement column identifies where the marketplace adds capabilities current State investments do not provide. The Bridge column identifies where the marketplace connects presently separate systems. The Interoperability column describes how the marketplace is designed to work alongside existing Missouri platforms.

If the State were to find this conversation worth continuing, three paths forward suggest themselves — each with discrete decision points and none requiring the State to commit beyond the step in front of it. The first is a discovery brief: a joint presentation to the Missouri Department of Higher Education and Workforce Development, the Office of Apprenticeship & Work-Based Learning, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, the University of Missouri System, the State’s regional public universities, the Missouri Community College Association, State Technical College of Missouri, and — where the State considers it useful — Deputy Commissioner of Learning Services Kelli Jones, Career Pathways Manager Dr. Linda Stinson, the Coordinating Board for Higher Education, Apprenticeship Missouri sponsor representatives, and the private nonprofit college community, outlining the marketplace’s open-standards architecture, the at-no-cost foundation, and what a small first cohort could look like. The second is a sector pilot: subject to a State decision to proceed, a focused cohort drawn from one of Apprenticeship Missouri’s strategic sectors or programs — the State’s distinctive apprentices-with-disabilities programming (extending Missouri’s first-in-the-nation leadership), construction trades, manufacturing, healthcare, IT, or education (with Pathways for Teachers Grant cohorts and Registered Youth Apprenticeship) are natural candidates — in which Apprenticeship Missouri completers, Registered Youth Apprentices, DESE-Approved IRC earners, or community college graduates receive a Comprehensive Learner Record made available through the EBSCOed marketplace. The third path would, only at the State’s direction, layer in optional subscription services that integrate the marketplace with MoJobs, the Eligible Training Provider List, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act case management, Apprenticeship Missouri sponsor records, DESE-Approved IRC and Stackable Credential approval workflows, and the OAWBL program data pipeline. Any eligibility automation Missouri wished to pursue for Workforce Pell, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, or registered apprenticeship would live in this phase. State funds engage only here, and only to the extent the State chooses to procure subscription services. The first two phases require no new State appropriation.

Several considerations may inform Missouri’s thinking about the partnership. The marketplace’s open-standards foundation ensures the State’s prior investments in the credentialing work of Missouri’s 12 community colleges, State Technical College of Missouri, the University of Missouri System, the regional public universities, and the State’s private nonprofit colleges continue to operate as they do today; the marketplace exchanges data with those systems rather than displacing them. The no-cost foundation means that the early phases require no new State appropriation; State funding considerations arise only in the third phase, and only for services the State elects to procure. Missouri’s distinctive achievement — first in the nation for serving apprentices with disabilities, second in new apprentices, third in completions, with the 65,000 new apprentices goal met in January 2026 — may make Missouri a particularly natural fit for a learner-side marketplace that demonstrates how a State’s apprenticeship leadership translates into individual credential portability, with particular relevance to accessibility-inclusive credential design.

A further consideration may be relevant to the State’s long-term planning. As the marketplace becomes the trusted system of record for skills and credentials across Missouri, states often find that certain point solutions they currently maintain — case management tooling supporting Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants, Eligible Training Provider List eligibility workflows, standalone skills-assessment platforms, district- or institution-level credential wallets that today operate in isolation, and the patchwork of employer-side job-board and applicant-tracking subscriptions that result when many platforms each serve a slice of the same workforce — become candidates for consolidation or retirement, with associated reductions in ongoing licensing and maintenance costs. EBSCOed offers no opinion on which systems Missouri may wish to retain and which it may wish to consolidate; those decisions belong to the State and the relevant agencies, on the State’s own timeline. We mention the possibility only because the cost-of-ownership story is one states have asked us to address, and because we are glad to support evaluations of that kind when the State considers them useful.

We recognize that Missouri has earned the right to be deliberate. The State’s coordination among the Department of Higher Education and Workforce Development, the Office of Apprenticeship & Work-Based Learning, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, the University of Missouri System, the regional public universities, the 12 community colleges, State Technical College of Missouri, the Missouri Community College Association, and the State’s significant private nonprofit college community reflects years of careful institution-building. EBSCOed has no interest in disrupting that coordination. Our interest is in offering a free, open-standards layer that makes Missouri’s existing investments — particularly Apprenticeship Missouri, the Office of Apprenticeship & Work-Based Learning, Registered Youth Apprenticeship, DESE-Approved Industry-Recognized Credentials and Stackable Credentials, the Workforce of the Future Challenge, and Pathways for Teachers Grants — more useful to the Missourians they serve.

If any of this is worth a conversation, we would welcome one — at the convenience of whoever the State considers the right convening authority, in whatever form would be most useful, and on whatever timeline the State prefers. The contact information below is the appropriate first point of contact. The QR codes that follow provide direct access to the current EBSCOed ecosystem overview, which is kept current as capabilities evolve, and to LER.me itself, where any Missourian may today create a free Learning and Employment Record in a few minutes.

With great respect for the work Missouri is already doing, and with hope that the next chapter may be written together,

Montana has, under Governor Greg Gianforte, built one of the most coherent State-level workforce frameworks in the Mountain West. The 406 JOBS Initiative — established by Executive Order 5-2025 in August 2025 — coordinates four pathways into Montana careers (career and apprenticeship, college, entrepreneurship, and military), aimed at zero barriers across six high-demand industries: healthcare, construction trades, hospitality and recreation, advanced manufacturing and computing, education and child care, and financial and professional services. The Montana Registered Apprenticeship Program (MRAP), administered through the Department of Labor and Industry under Commissioner Sarah Swanson, reached a record 3,464 active apprentices in 2025 across 65 in-demand occupations with 800+ employer sponsors and reach across all 47 counties not designated as Indian reservations. MRAP apprentices earn an average post-completion wage of $72,220 with 84 percent retained in Montana five years after completion. The State Workforce Innovation Board (SWIB), under Executive Director Jennifer Owen, coordinates workforce strategy. House Bill 336 (2025) established apprenticeship as an occupational licensing pathway for more than 30 Montana professions. The State launched its first Registered Teacher Apprenticeship Program in July 2025 with a target of 160 teacher apprentices in 2026. HB 449, HB 656, and HB 823 from the 2025 legislative session represent the State’s broader workforce reform package. The STARS Act prioritizes career and technical education. Montana received a $50,000 National Governors Association Policy Academy on Youth Apprenticeship grant. The journeyman-to-apprentice ratio reform (changed from 2:1 to 1:2) significantly expanded employer apprenticeship capacity. Montana State University, the University of Montana, the Montana State University-Northern, MSU-Billings, MSU-Great Falls, the State’s tribal colleges, Montana University System community colleges, and the 17-campus Montana University System round out the State’s postsecondary infrastructure. Few states have built so much, so deliberately, in service of their workers.

This letter is written in admiration of that work, and with a specific proposition: that the next chapter of Montana’s education-to-workforce strategy may benefit from a learner-held layer that the State has not yet had occasion to build. EBSCOed is the division of EBSCO Information Services that has spent the last several years constructing that layer — the LER talent marketplace — and offering LER.me to states, learners, educators, and employers at no cost. We write to share what it is, where it complements Montana’s investments, where it bridges systems that today operate in parallel, and how it is designed to extend rather than disturb the credential infrastructure Montana has already built.

LER.me is an open-standards platform that gives each individual a portable digital wallet containing their verified learning and employment records. The marketplace is built on the IEEE Learning and Employment Record standard, Open Badges 3.0, and Comprehensive Learner Record 2.0 — the same open standards used across the credentialing field — so the data Montana already publishes to the Credential Engine Registry, and the credentials issued by Montana State University, the University of Montana, the Montana University System’s flagship and regional campuses, the State’s tribal colleges, K-12 districts, and registered apprenticeship sponsors, remain authoritative and continue to operate exactly as they do today. The marketplace exchanges with those systems; it does not replace them. The platform itself is free to learners, to educators, and to employers, with optional subscription services available to states and large institutions that want deeper integration or custom analytics. The foundation is the foundation, and the foundation is free.

Four capabilities are most relevant to Montana’s context. The first is free credential issuance: any approved Montana institution, tribal college, apprenticeship sponsor, or employer can issue verifiable credentials into learner-held wallets without licensing fees, supporting institutions of every size and budget on equal footing. The second is an open employer marketplace, in which Montana employers post opportunities and discover qualified candidates based on verified skills and credentials, again at no cost. The third is public workforce intelligence — dashboards that aggregate credential issuance and labor demand data as linked open data, available to State agencies for planning, reporting, and supporting the 406 JOBS Initiative and State Workforce Innovation Board reporting missions. The fourth is the contributor framework, which crosswalks issued credentials to occupational standards and to the 406 JOBS Initiative’s six high-demand industries at the point of issuance, so the demand signal Montana has invested years in defining is operationalized at the individual level, automatically.

Montana’s distinctive achievement is the operational scale of MRAP combined with the framework coherence of 406 JOBS. A record 3,464 active apprentices across 65 in-demand occupations with 800+ employer sponsors reaching 47 counties, $72,220 average post-completion wage, and 84 percent five-year Montana retention represent apprenticeship metrics that few states match in absolute terms or proportionally for a state of Montana’s population. The 406 JOBS Initiative’s four-pathways/six-industries framework, established by Executive Order 5-2025, gives Montana a clarifying narrative few states match. HB 336’s establishment of apprenticeship as an occupational licensing pathway for 30+ professions, the first Registered Teacher Apprenticeship Program launched in July 2025 (with 160 teacher apprentices targeted for 2026), the journeyman-to-apprentice ratio change (2:1 to 1:2) substantially expanding employer capacity, the STARS Act prioritizing CTE, and the broader 2025 legislative workforce package (HB 449, HB 656, HB 823) together represent legislative discipline that few states match in a single session. What sits underneath every one of those structures is the same need: a verifiable, portable, learner-held record that lets each Montanan carry their Montana University System credential, their tribal college attainment, their MRAP milestones, their HB 336-recognized occupational licensing apprenticeship completion, their Registered Teacher Apprenticeship attainment, their 406 JOBS-aligned credential, and their employer-issued microcredentials in one place, recognized by employers, transferable across institutions, and durable beyond any one platform. That record is what the LER marketplace provides, at no cost, on the open standards the State already uses. EBSCOed is not asking Montana to alter the 406 JOBS framework or the MRAP infrastructure — we are offering the learner-side layer that lets the credentials Montana has built infrastructure to produce travel with each Montanan in a verifiable wallet.

There are three lenses through which we have found it useful to discuss this marketplace with State leadership, and we offer them here in the same spirit. The first is complement — where the marketplace adds capability Montana has not yet had reason to build at scale. The Department of Labor and Industry and the State Workforce Innovation Board track MRAP enrollment, 406 JOBS pathway participation, and broader workforce outcomes at the State level; the marketplace adds the learner-side artifact, a verifiable record each Montanan carries with them. The Montana University System’s campuses, the State’s tribal colleges, MRAP sponsors, HB 336 occupational-licensing-pathway employers, and Registered Teacher Apprenticeship partner districts all produce credentials that today travel through institutional transcripts; the marketplace gives each issuer a free way to issue those credentials as verifiable Open Badges directly into learner wallets, with 406 JOBS industry designation, MRAP completion, or HB 336 licensing-pathway attribution embedded in the badge metadata at issuance where applicable. None of this displaces Montana’s current investments. All of it makes them more visible, more durable, and more useful to the Montanans who earn them.

The second lens is bridge — where the marketplace connects systems that today operate in parallel. A Montanan who completes career and technical education at a Montana high school, earns a Montana University System credential through one of the 406 JOBS pathways, participates in a Montana Registered Apprenticeship Program in one of the six high-demand industries with the recently improved 1:2 journeyman-to-apprentice ratio, transitions through an HB 336 occupational-licensing-pathway apprenticeship, completes a Registered Teacher Apprenticeship and enters the classroom, transfers between Montana University System campuses or to a tribal college, and gains employer-issued microcredentials currently has those attainments living in different places. The marketplace allows them to travel together in one learner-owned record. Job Service Montana career navigators serving WIOA participants can see a complete skill picture rather than reconstructing it from a paper trail. The connective tissue 406 JOBS, MRAP, and SWIB provide at the State level can be operationalized at the learner level through a credential wallet that travels with each Montanan.

The third lens is interoperability — where existing Montana platforms occupy adjacent space and where it is essential that the State’s investments be respected. The Montana Department of Labor and Industry remains the State’s authoritative workforce agency and the agency administering MRAP; the marketplace operates as a learner-side complement that supports DLI’s mission. The State Workforce Innovation Board continues exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives credentials produced through SWIB-coordinated programs. The Office of the Commissioner of Higher Education and the Montana Board of Regents continue exactly as they operate today; the marketplace receives credentials issued by Montana University System institutions. The Office of Public Instruction continues exactly as it operates today, including its coordination of the Registered Teacher Apprenticeship Program; the marketplace receives K-12 educator credentials. Job Service Montana remains the State’s official labor exchange; the marketplace acts as a complementary skills-and-credentials profile layer that posts to Job Service Montana through standard application programming interfaces.

The matrix below — included here as a reference Montana leadership may return to — applies three perspectives to selected initiatives. The Complement column identifies where the marketplace adds capabilities current State investments do not provide. The Bridge column identifies where the marketplace connects presently separate systems. The Interoperability column describes how the marketplace is designed to work alongside existing Montana platforms.

If the State were to find this conversation worth continuing, three paths forward suggest themselves — each with discrete decision points and none requiring the State to commit beyond the step in front of it. The first is a discovery brief: a joint presentation to the Montana Department of Labor and Industry, the State Workforce Innovation Board, the Office of the Commissioner of Higher Education and the Montana Board of Regents, the Office of Public Instruction, and — where the State considers it useful — Montana University System campus leadership, tribal college leadership, MRAP sponsor representatives, and Local Workforce Investment Board members, outlining the marketplace’s open-standards architecture, the at-no-cost foundation, and what a small first cohort could look like. The second is a sector pilot: subject to a State decision to proceed, a focused cohort drawn from one of the 406 JOBS Initiative’s six high-demand industries — healthcare, construction trades, hospitality and recreation, advanced manufacturing and computing, education and child care (with Registered Teacher Apprenticeship cohorts), or financial and professional services are natural candidates — in which MRAP completers, HB 336 occupational-licensing apprenticeship completers, Registered Teacher Apprentices, or Montana University System credential recipients receive a Comprehensive Learner Record aligned with 406 JOBS industry designations and made available through the EBSCOed marketplace. The third path would, only at the State’s direction, layer in optional subscription services that integrate the marketplace with Job Service Montana, the Eligible Training Provider List, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act case management, MRAP sponsor records, the 406 JOBS pathway data pipeline, and the Registered Teacher Apprenticeship reporting infrastructure. Any eligibility automation Montana wished to pursue for Workforce Pell, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, or registered apprenticeship would live in this phase. State funds engage only here, and only to the extent the State chooses to procure subscription services. The first two phases require no new State appropriation.

Several considerations may inform Montana’s thinking about the partnership. The marketplace’s open-standards foundation ensures the State’s prior investments in the Credential Engine Registry, Job Service Montana, and the credentialing work of the Montana University System, the tribal colleges, and MRAP sponsors continue to operate as they do today; the marketplace exchanges data with those systems rather than displacing them. The no-cost foundation means that the early phases require no new State appropriation; State funding considerations arise only in the third phase, and only for services the State elects to procure. Montana’s distinctive 2025 legislative discipline — the 406 JOBS Initiative, HB 336’s occupational-licensing pathway, the first Registered Teacher Apprenticeship Program, the journeyman-to-apprentice ratio reform, the STARS Act, and the broader workforce package — together represent the kind of cross-cutting framework that benefits from a learner-side marketplace preserving each program’s distinctive designation at issuance.

A further consideration may be relevant to the State’s long-term planning. As the marketplace becomes the trusted system of record for skills and credentials across Montana, states often find that certain point solutions they currently maintain — case management tooling supporting Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants, Eligible Training Provider List eligibility workflows, standalone skills-assessment platforms, district- or institution-level credential wallets that today operate in isolation, and the patchwork of employer-side job-board and applicant-tracking subscriptions that result when many platforms each serve a slice of the same workforce — become candidates for consolidation or retirement, with associated reductions in ongoing licensing and maintenance costs. EBSCOed offers no opinion on which systems Montana may wish to retain and which it may wish to consolidate; those decisions belong to the State and the relevant agencies, on the State’s own timeline. We mention the possibility only because the cost-of-ownership story is one states have asked us to address, and because we are glad to support evaluations of that kind when the State considers them useful.

We recognize that Montana has earned the right to be deliberate. The State’s coordination among the Department of Labor and Industry, the State Workforce Innovation Board, the Office of the Commissioner of Higher Education, the Montana Board of Regents, the Office of Public Instruction, the Montana University System campuses, the tribal colleges, and the MRAP sponsor community reflects years of careful institution-building, accelerated through the Gianforte Administration’s 2025 legislative session and the 406 JOBS Initiative. EBSCOed has no interest in disrupting that coordination. Our interest is in offering a free, open-standards layer that makes Montana’s existing investments — particularly the 406 JOBS Initiative, MRAP, HB 336, the Registered Teacher Apprenticeship Program, and the STARS Act — more useful to the Montanans they serve.

If any of this is worth a conversation, we would welcome one — at the convenience of whoever the State considers the right convening authority, in whatever form would be most useful, and on whatever timeline the State prefers. The contact information below is the appropriate first point of contact. The QR codes that follow provide direct access to the current EBSCOed ecosystem overview, which is kept current as capabilities evolve, and to LER.me itself, where any Montanan may today create a free Learning and Employment Record in a few minutes.

With great respect for the work Montana is already doing, and with hope that the next chapter may be written together,

Nebraska has, through Governor Jim Pillen’s Good Life, Great Careers Initiative, built one of the most recently coordinated State workforce frameworks in the country. Launched by Executive Order in October 2025 at Northeast Community College, the Good Life, Great Careers Initiative sets the goal of adding 6,000 new registered active apprentices in Nebraska by December 31, 2030, and establishes the Office of Registered Apprenticeship within the Nebraska Department of Labor (NDOL) as the state hub for all matters related to registered apprenticeship programs — with NDOL preparing an application to be recognized as a State Apprenticeship Agency. NDOL Commissioner Katie Thurber leads the workforce coordination, with the Office of Registered Apprenticeship focusing on manufacturing, healthcare, transportation, construction, the bioeconomy, agriculture, and other high-demand industries. The Nebraska Manufacturing Alliance Credential — a statewide, stackable entry-level credential announced in March 2026 by NDOL and the Nebraska Chamber — verifies manufacturing skills and creates a consistent industry-recognized standard across Nebraska, with all six of Nebraska’s community colleges participating (Southeast, Northeast, Mid-Plains, Central, Metro, and Western), all serving as registered apprenticeship hubs. The credential can be completed in 6-8 weeks at one class per week, with Level 1 qualifying as pre-apprenticeship and additional Level 2 or Level 3 manufacturing certificates available. The Manufacturing Advisory Council activates area manufacturers to work with the community colleges on curriculum, ensuring industry-led design. The 6 Regions One Nebraska program coordinates regional approaches to workforce, housing, and childcare. NDOL has recorded 85.71 percent growth in active Registered Apprenticeship sponsors and similar growth in participating employers from FY18 to FY24. The University of Nebraska System, the State’s regional state colleges, the Nebraska Department of Education, and the Greater Omaha Chamber together extend the system. Few states have built so much, so deliberately, in service of their workers.

This letter is written in admiration of that work, and with a specific proposition: that the next chapter of Nebraska’s education-to-workforce strategy may benefit from a learner-held layer that the State has not yet had occasion to build. EBSCOed is the division of EBSCO Information Services that has spent the last several years constructing that layer — the LER talent marketplace — and offering LER.me to states, learners, educators, and employers at no cost. We write to share what it is, where it complements Nebraska’s investments, where it bridges systems that today operate in parallel, and how it is designed to extend rather than disturb the credential infrastructure Nebraska has already built.

LER.me is an open-standards platform that gives each individual a portable digital wallet containing their verified learning and employment records. The marketplace is built on the IEEE Learning and Employment Record standard, Open Badges 3.0, and Comprehensive Learner Record 2.0 — the same open standards used across the credentialing field — so the credentials issued by Nebraska’s six community colleges, the University of Nebraska System, the State’s regional state colleges, the State’s private nonprofit colleges, K-12 districts, and registered apprenticeship sponsors remain authoritative and continue to operate exactly as they do today. The marketplace exchanges with those systems; it does not replace them. The platform itself is free to learners, to educators, and to employers, with optional subscription services available to states and large institutions that want deeper integration or custom analytics. The foundation is the foundation, and the foundation is free.

Four capabilities are most relevant to Nebraska’s context. The first is free credential issuance: any approved Nebraska institution, apprenticeship sponsor, or employer can issue verifiable credentials into learner-held wallets without licensing fees, supporting institutions of every size and budget on equal footing. The second is an open employer marketplace, in which Nebraska employers post opportunities and discover qualified candidates based on verified skills and credentials, again at no cost. The third is public workforce intelligence — dashboards that aggregate credential issuance and labor demand data as linked open data, available to State agencies for planning, reporting, and supporting NDOL, the Office of Registered Apprenticeship, the Manufacturing Advisory Council, and Good Life, Great Careers Initiative reporting missions. The fourth is the contributor framework, which crosswalks issued credentials to occupational standards and to Nebraska Manufacturing Alliance Credential, Good Life, Great Careers Initiative, and other State-defined high-demand designations at the point of issuance, so the demand signal Nebraska has invested years in defining is operationalized at the individual level, automatically.

Nebraska’s distinctive achievement is the Nebraska Manufacturing Alliance Credential and the six-community-college coordinated delivery model. Few states have organized a single statewide, stackable, industry-recognized credential delivered consistently at every community college in the State. The credential’s 6-8-week duration, Level 1 pre-apprenticeship qualification, Level 2 and Level 3 progression, and industry-led curriculum design (with the Manufacturing Advisory Council and area manufacturers shaping competencies) operationalize the State’s commitment to fast pathways into family-sustaining manufacturing careers. The Good Life, Great Careers Initiative’s 6,000-new-registered-apprentice goal by 2030, the establishment of the Office of Registered Apprenticeship, and NDOL’s planned application as a State Apprenticeship Agency together represent an unusual concentration of recent State action. What sits underneath every one of those structures is the same need: a verifiable, portable, learner-held record that lets each Nebraskan carry their K-12 attainment, their Nebraska Manufacturing Alliance Credential at Levels 1, 2, or 3, their community college credit and noncredit credential, their University of Nebraska System or regional state college degree, their Registered Apprenticeship milestones across the Good Life, Great Careers Initiative’s priority sectors, their 6 Regions One Nebraska-supported program credential, and their employer-issued microcredentials in one place, recognized by employers, transferable across institutions, and durable beyond any one platform. That record is what the LER marketplace provides, at no cost, on the open standards the field has converged on. EBSCOed is not asking Nebraska to alter the Good Life, Great Careers Initiative or the Nebraska Manufacturing Alliance Credential design — we are offering the learner-side layer that lets the credentials Nebraska’s coordinated infrastructure produces travel with each Nebraskan in a verifiable wallet.

There are three lenses through which we have found it useful to discuss this marketplace with State leadership, and we offer them here in the same spirit. The first is complement — where the marketplace adds capability Nebraska has not yet had reason to build at the individual level. NDOL tracks Registered Apprenticeship growth at the State level (with the documented 85.71 percent growth in active sponsors FY18-FY24); the marketplace adds the learner-side artifact, a verifiable record each Nebraskan carries with them. The six community colleges, the University of Nebraska System, the State’s regional state colleges, the State’s private colleges, registered apprenticeship sponsors, and Manufacturing Advisory Council partner employers all produce credentials that today travel through institutional transcripts; the marketplace gives each institution a free way to issue those credentials as verifiable Open Badges directly into learner wallets, with Nebraska Manufacturing Alliance Credential Level designation, Good Life, Great Careers Initiative designation, or 6 Regions One Nebraska designation embedded in the badge metadata at issuance where applicable. None of this displaces Nebraska’s current investments. All of it makes them more visible, more durable, and more useful to the Nebraskans who earn them.

The second lens is bridge — where the marketplace connects systems that today operate in parallel. A Nebraskan who completes K-12 attainment, earns a Nebraska Manufacturing Alliance Credential Level 1 (pre-apprenticeship) at one of Nebraska’s six community colleges, progresses to Level 2 or Level 3, enters a Good Life, Great Careers Initiative Registered Apprenticeship in manufacturing, healthcare, transportation, construction, the bioeconomy, or agriculture, transfers to the University of Nebraska System or a regional state college for a bachelor’s degree, participates in 6 Regions One Nebraska-supported programs, and gains employer-issued microcredentials currently has those attainments living in different places. The marketplace allows them to travel together in one learner-owned record. NDOL navigators serving Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants can see a complete skill picture rather than reconstructing it from a paper trail. The connective tissue NDOL and the Office of Registered Apprenticeship provide at the State level can be operationalized at the learner level through a credential wallet that travels with each Nebraskan.

The third lens is interoperability — where existing Nebraska platforms occupy adjacent space and where it is essential that the State’s investments be respected. The Nebraska Department of Labor remains the State’s authoritative workforce agency under Commissioner Katie Thurber; the marketplace operates as a learner-side complement that supports NDOL’s coordinated mission. The newly established Office of Registered Apprenticeship within NDOL (per Governor Pillen’s October 2025 Executive Order) continues exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives credentials produced through Good Life, Great Careers Initiative-supported Registered Apprenticeship programs with State designation preserved at issuance. The six community colleges continue exactly as they operate today; the marketplace receives credentials issued by Southeast, Northeast, Mid-Plains, Central, Metro, and Western Community Colleges with Nebraska Manufacturing Alliance Credential designation preserved where applicable. The University of Nebraska System and the State’s regional state colleges continue exactly as they operate today; the marketplace receives credentials issued by Nebraska’s four-year institutions.

The matrix below — included here as a reference Nebraska leadership may return to — applies three perspectives to selected initiatives. The Complement column identifies where the marketplace adds capabilities current State investments do not provide. The Bridge column identifies where the marketplace connects presently separate systems. The Interoperability column describes how the marketplace is designed to work alongside existing Nebraska platforms.

If the State were to find this conversation worth continuing, three paths forward suggest themselves — each with discrete decision points and none requiring the State to commit beyond the step in front of it. The first is a discovery brief: a joint presentation to the Nebraska Department of Labor, the Office of Registered Apprenticeship, the Nebraska Department of Education, the University of Nebraska System, the State’s regional state colleges, the State’s six community colleges (Southeast, Northeast, Mid-Plains, Central, Metro, Western), and — where the State considers it useful — the Manufacturing Advisory Council, the Greater Omaha Chamber under CEO Heath Mello, the Nebraska State Workforce Investment Board, and Good Life, Great Careers Initiative employer partners, outlining the marketplace’s open-standards architecture, the at-no-cost foundation, and what a small first cohort could look like. The second is a sector pilot: subject to a State decision to proceed, a focused cohort drawn from one of Good Life, Great Careers Initiative’s priority sectors — manufacturing (with Nebraska Manufacturing Alliance Credential cohorts), healthcare, transportation, construction, the bioeconomy, or agriculture are natural candidates — in which Nebraska Manufacturing Alliance Credential earners, Good Life, Great Careers Initiative Registered Apprenticeship completers, or 6 Regions One Nebraska program participants receive a Comprehensive Learner Record made available through the EBSCOed marketplace. The third path would, only at the State’s direction, layer in optional subscription services that integrate the marketplace with NEworks, the Eligible Training Provider List, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act case management, the Office of Registered Apprenticeship’s sponsor records, the Nebraska Manufacturing Alliance Credential pipeline, and Good Life, Great Careers Initiative reporting. Any eligibility automation Nebraska wished to pursue for Workforce Pell, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, or registered apprenticeship would live in this phase. State funds engage only here, and only to the extent the State chooses to procure subscription services. The first two phases require no new State appropriation.

Several considerations may inform Nebraska’s thinking about the partnership. The marketplace’s open-standards foundation ensures the State’s prior investments in NEworks, the credentialing work of the six community colleges, the University of Nebraska System, the regional state colleges, and the State’s private colleges continue to operate as they do today; the marketplace exchanges data with those systems rather than displacing them. The no-cost foundation means that the early phases require no new State appropriation; State funding considerations arise only in the third phase, and only for services the State elects to procure. Nebraska’s distinctive recent achievement — establishing the Office of Registered Apprenticeship within NDOL, launching the Nebraska Manufacturing Alliance Credential at all six community colleges simultaneously, and setting clear measurable goals through the Good Life, Great Careers Initiative — may make Nebraska a particularly natural fit for a learner-side marketplace that supports the State’s coordinated implementation as the Initiative scales toward its 2030 goals.

A further consideration may be relevant to the State’s long-term planning. As the marketplace becomes the trusted system of record for skills and credentials across Nebraska, states often find that certain point solutions they currently maintain — case management tooling supporting Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants, Eligible Training Provider List eligibility workflows, standalone skills-assessment platforms, district- or institution-level credential wallets that today operate in isolation, and the patchwork of employer-side job-board and applicant-tracking subscriptions that result when many platforms each serve a slice of the same workforce — become candidates for consolidation or retirement, with associated reductions in ongoing licensing and maintenance costs. EBSCOed offers no opinion on which systems Nebraska may wish to retain and which it may wish to consolidate; those decisions belong to the State and the relevant agencies, on the State’s own timeline. We mention the possibility only because the cost-of-ownership story is one states have asked us to address, and because we are glad to support evaluations of that kind when the State considers them useful.

We recognize that Nebraska has earned the right to be deliberate. The State’s coordination among the Department of Labor, the newly established Office of Registered Apprenticeship, the Department of Education, the University of Nebraska System, the regional state colleges, the six community colleges, the Manufacturing Advisory Council, the Greater Omaha Chamber, the State Workforce Investment Board, and the registered apprenticeship sponsor community reflects coordinated institution-building under Governor Pillen’s leadership. EBSCOed has no interest in disrupting that coordination. Our interest is in offering a free, open-standards layer that makes Nebraska’s existing investments — particularly the Good Life, Great Careers Initiative, the Office of Registered Apprenticeship, the Nebraska Manufacturing Alliance Credential, the 6 Regions One Nebraska program, and NDOL’s pending State Apprenticeship Agency application — more useful to the Nebraskans they serve.

If any of this is worth a conversation, we would welcome one — at the convenience of whoever the State considers the right convening authority, in whatever form would be most useful, and on whatever timeline the State prefers. The contact information below is the appropriate first point of contact. The QR codes that follow provide direct access to the current EBSCOed ecosystem overview, which is kept current as capabilities evolve, and to LER.me itself, where any Nebraskan may today create a free Learning and Employment Record in a few minutes.

With great respect for the work Nebraska is already doing, and with hope that the next chapter may be written together,

Nevada has, since codifying the Governor’s Office of Workforce Innovation in State statute in 2017, built one of the most strategically coordinated workforce systems in the Mountain West. GOWINN — the Office of Workforce Innovation — convenes the Governor’s Workforce Development Board, which serves as the primary leader of workforce policy in the State, develops the WIOA State Plan, and recommends policy improvements to the Governor’s Office. The Nevada P-20 to Workforce Research Data System (NPWR), administered through GOWINN, ties K-12, postsecondary, and workforce data together. The Governor’s Office of Economic Development administers the Workforce Innovations for a New Nevada (WINN) Fund — the first workforce development training program of its kind in Nevada — which has, across the four institutions of the Nevada System of Higher Education’s community college sector, partnered with at least 60 employers to deliver workforce training to over 2,000 students in FY25 across 18 WINN-funded programs. The College of Southern Nevada’s Westside Education & Training Center, opened with WINN investment and partnered with employers including HAAS Automation, exemplifies what the program produces. The Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation administers WIOA programs and the State’s labor exchange. NevadaWorks coordinates northern Nevada workforce delivery alongside Workforce Connections in southern Nevada. The 2025 OWINN Annual Report and the NPWR Research Forums in Reno and Las Vegas continue to advance Nevada’s distinctive evidence-based approach to workforce policy. Few states have built so much, so deliberately, in service of their workers.

This letter is written in admiration of that work, and with a specific proposition: that the next chapter of Nevada’s education-to-workforce strategy may benefit from a learner-held layer that the State has not yet had occasion to build. EBSCOed is the division of EBSCO Information Services that has spent the last several years constructing that layer — the LER talent marketplace — and offering LER.me to states, learners, educators, and employers at no cost. We write to share what it is, where it complements Nevada’s investments, where it bridges systems that today operate in parallel, and how it is designed to extend rather than disturb the credential infrastructure Nevada has already built.

LER.me is an open-standards platform that gives each individual a portable digital wallet containing their verified learning and employment records. The marketplace is built on the IEEE Learning and Employment Record standard, Open Badges 3.0, and Comprehensive Learner Record 2.0 — the same open standards used across the credentialing field — so the data Nevada already publishes to the Credential Engine Registry, and the credentials issued by the four NSHE community colleges, the State universities, K-12 districts, and registered apprenticeship sponsors, remain authoritative and continue to operate exactly as they do today. The marketplace exchanges with those systems; it does not replace them. The platform itself is free to learners, to educators, and to employers, with optional subscription services available to states and large institutions that want deeper integration or custom analytics. The foundation is the foundation, and the foundation is free.

Four capabilities are most relevant to Nevada’s context. The first is free credential issuance: any approved Nevada institution, apprenticeship sponsor, or employer can issue verifiable credentials into learner-held wallets without licensing fees, supporting institutions of every size and budget on equal footing. The second is an open employer marketplace, in which Nevada employers post opportunities and discover qualified candidates based on verified skills and credentials, again at no cost. The third is public workforce intelligence — dashboards that aggregate credential issuance and labor demand data as linked open data, available to State agencies for planning, reporting, and supporting NPWR’s research mission. The fourth is the contributor framework, which crosswalks issued credentials to occupational standards and to State-defined In-Demand Occupations at the point of issuance, so the demand signal Nevada has invested years in defining — through GOWINN, GWDB, and NPWR — is operationalized at the individual level, automatically.

Nevada’s distinctive achievement is the structural commitment to evidence-based workforce policy. The codification of GOWINN in statute in 2017, the establishment and ongoing operation of NPWR as a cross-agency longitudinal data system, the WINN Fund’s measurable employer partnerships and student outcomes, and the NPWR Research Forums together represent a level of analytic infrastructure few states have matched. What sits underneath every one of those investments is the same need: a verifiable, portable, learner-held record that lets each Nevadan carry their NSHE community college credential, their university degree, their WINN-funded training credential, their registered apprenticeship milestones, and their employer-issued microcredentials in one place, recognized by employers, transferable across institutions, and durable beyond any one platform. That record is what the LER marketplace provides, at no cost, on the open standards the State already uses. EBSCOed is not asking Nevada to replicate any State analytic infrastructure — we are offering the learner-side layer that operationalizes what NPWR and GOWINN already analyze at the individual credential level.

There are three lenses through which we have found it useful to discuss this marketplace with state leadership, and we offer them here in the same spirit. The first is complement — where the marketplace adds capability Nevada has not yet had reason to build. NPWR provides cross-agency longitudinal analysis at the State level; the marketplace adds the learner-side artifact, a verifiable record each Nevadan carries with them. The WINN Fund produces credentials in employer-aligned training at the four NSHE community colleges; the marketplace gives those colleges, the WINN-partnering employers, and Nevada State University and University of Nevada institutions a free way to issue WINN-funded credentials as verifiable Open Badges directly into learner wallets. The Governor’s Workforce Development Board’s In-Demand Occupations designations anchor the State’s labor-market signal; the marketplace embeds those designations in badge metadata at issuance. None of this displaces Nevada’s current investments. All of it makes them more visible, more durable, and more useful to the Nevadans who earn them.

The second lens is bridge — where the marketplace connects systems that today operate in parallel. A Nevadan who completes K-12 CTE, earns an NSHE community college credential through WINN-funded training, transfers into an NSHE university, completes a registered apprenticeship, and gains employer-issued microcredentials currently has those attainments living in different places — NPWR ties them together analytically, but the learner does not carry a verifiable record they can show an employer. The marketplace allows them to travel together in one learner-owned record. DETR navigators serving Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants through NevadaWorks (northern Nevada) and Workforce Connections (southern Nevada) can see a complete skill picture rather than reconstructing it from a paper trail. The analytic coordination GOWINN provides at the State level can be operationalized at the learner level through a credential wallet that travels with each Nevadan.

The third lens is interoperability — where existing Nevada platforms occupy adjacent space and where it is essential that the State’s investments be respected. NPWR remains the State’s authoritative cross-agency longitudinal data system; the marketplace operates as a complementary, learner-side layer that gives each Nevadan a portable record while NPWR continues to serve State analytic functions. GOWINN remains the State’s authoritative workforce coordination office; the marketplace supports GOWINN’s mission as a learner-side complement. The GOED’s WINN Fund administration continues exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives credentials produced through WINN-funded programs. The DETR labor exchange remains Nevada’s official employment channel; the marketplace acts as a complementary skills-and-credentials profile layer that posts to DETR systems through standard application programming interfaces.

The matrix below — included here as a reference Nevada leadership may return to — applies three perspectives to selected initiatives. The Complement column identifies where the marketplace adds capabilities current State investments do not provide. The Bridge column identifies where the marketplace connects presently separate systems. The Interoperability column describes how the marketplace is designed to work alongside existing Nevada platforms.

If the State were to find this conversation worth continuing, three paths forward suggest themselves — each with discrete decision points and none requiring the State to commit beyond the step in front of it. The first is a discovery brief: a joint presentation to GOWINN, the Governor’s Workforce Development Board, GOED, the Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation, the Nevada System of Higher Education, and — where the State considers it useful — NevadaWorks and Workforce Connections leadership, outlining the marketplace’s open-standards architecture, the at-no-cost foundation, and what a small first cohort could look like. The second is a sector pilot: subject to a State decision to proceed, a focused cohort drawn from one of Nevada’s WINN-funded sectors — manufacturing (with employer partners like HAAS Automation), healthcare, IT, or hospitality and tourism are natural candidates — in which WINN program completers receive a Comprehensive Learner Record aligned with Governor’s Workforce Development Board In-Demand Occupations designations and made available through the EBSCOed marketplace. The third path would, only at the State’s direction, layer in optional subscription services that integrate the marketplace with the DETR labor exchange, the Eligible Training Provider List, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act case management, registered apprenticeship sponsor records, WINN program data, and the NPWR data pipeline. Any eligibility automation Nevada wished to pursue for Workforce Pell, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, or registered apprenticeship would live in this phase. State funds engage only here, and only to the extent the State chooses to procure subscription services. The first two phases require no new State appropriation.

Several considerations may inform Nevada’s thinking about the partnership. The marketplace’s open-standards foundation ensures the State’s prior investments in the Credential Engine Registry, NPWR, the DETR labor exchange, and the credentialing work of the four NSHE community colleges and the State universities continue to operate as they do today; the marketplace exchanges data with those systems rather than displacing them. The no-cost foundation means that the early phases require no new State appropriation; State funding considerations arise only in the third phase, and only for services the State elects to procure. Nevada’s distinctive analytic infrastructure — NPWR’s longitudinal data system, GOWINN’s coordination role since 2017, and the WINN Fund’s measurable employer-college partnerships — may make the present a particularly natural moment to engage with a learner-side credential layer that complements that analytic depth.

A further consideration may be relevant to the State’s long-term planning. As the marketplace becomes the trusted system of record for skills and credentials across Nevada, states often find that certain point solutions they currently maintain — case management tooling supporting Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants, Eligible Training Provider List eligibility workflows, standalone skills-assessment platforms, district- or institution-level credential wallets that today operate in isolation, and the patchwork of employer-side job-board and applicant-tracking subscriptions that result when many platforms each serve a slice of the same workforce — become candidates for consolidation or retirement, with associated reductions in ongoing licensing and maintenance costs. EBSCOed offers no opinion on which systems Nevada may wish to retain and which it may wish to consolidate; those decisions belong to the State and the relevant agencies, on the State’s own timeline. We mention the possibility only because the cost-of-ownership story is one states have asked us to address, and because we are glad to support evaluations of that kind when the State considers them useful.

We recognize that Nevada has earned the right to be deliberate. The State’s coordination among the Governor’s Office of Workforce Innovation, the Governor’s Office of Economic Development, the Governor’s Workforce Development Board, the Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation, the Department of Business and Industry, the Nevada System of Higher Education, NevadaWorks, Workforce Connections, and the State Apprenticeship Council reflects years of careful institution-building — and Nevada’s structural commitment to evidence-based workforce policy through NPWR and the NPWR Research Forums sets the State apart. EBSCOed has no interest in disrupting that coordination. Our interest is in offering a free, open-standards layer that makes Nevada’s existing investments — particularly the WINN Fund, GOWINN’s coordination work, and NPWR’s research infrastructure — more useful to the Nevadans they serve.

If any of this is worth a conversation, we would welcome one — at the convenience of whoever the State considers the right convening authority, in whatever form would be most useful, and on whatever timeline the State prefers. The contact information below is the appropriate first point of contact. The QR codes that follow provide direct access to the current EBSCOed ecosystem overview, which is kept current as capabilities evolve, and to LER.me itself, where any Nevadan may today create a free Learning and Employment Record in a few minutes.

With great respect for the work Nevada is already doing, and with hope that the next chapter may be written together,

New Hampshire has, through the Community College System of New Hampshire and its ApprenticeshipNH workforce training program, built one of the most respected community-college-anchored apprenticeship infrastructures in the Northeast. CCSNH — under Chancellor Mark Rubinstein and coordinating seven colleges including Manchester Community College, NHTI-Concord’s Community College, Great Bay Community College, Lakes Region Community College, Nashua Community College, River Valley Community College, and White Mountains Community College — anchors postsecondary credential delivery across the State. ApprenticeshipNH, founded in 2017 as a workforce training program of CCSNH, supports more than 3,223 active apprentices in advanced manufacturing, automotive technology, biomedical technology, business and finance, construction and infrastructure, education and childcare, healthcare, hospitality, and information technology. The total ApprenticeshipNH initiative has been funded at $9.57 million, primarily through U.S. Department of Labor State Apprenticeship Expansion Formula (SAEF) and Apprenticeship Building America (ABA) grants. Four regional ApprenticeshipNH hubs — centered at CCSNH campuses — tailor and align programs to local employer needs. In July 2024, ApprenticeshipNH and A Place to Grow collaborated with NH’s Office of Apprenticeship to launch the nation’s first federally approved Early Childhood Director Registered Apprenticeship Program. Governor Ayotte’s FY26-27 budget invests in CCSNH with a tuition freeze, $6 million for dual and concurrent enrollment scholarships, and expansion of CTE and workforce credential programs in trades, healthcare, and other critical fields. The University of New Hampshire and the seven CCSNH community colleges have published more than 600 credentials to the Credential Engine Registry through the New England Board of Higher Education collaboration. The WorkReadyNH program develops the soft skills employers identify as critical to workplace success. Few states have built so much, so deliberately, in service of their workers.

This letter is written in admiration of that work, and with a specific proposition: that the next chapter of New Hampshire’s education-to-workforce strategy may benefit from a learner-held layer that the State has not yet had occasion to build. EBSCOed is the division of EBSCO Information Services that has spent the last several years constructing that layer — the LER talent marketplace — and offering LER.me to states, learners, educators, and employers at no cost. We write to share what it is, where it complements New Hampshire’s investments, where it bridges systems that today operate in parallel, and how it is designed to extend rather than disturb the credential infrastructure New Hampshire has already built.

LER.me is an open-standards platform that gives each individual a portable digital wallet containing their verified learning and employment records. The marketplace is built on the IEEE Learning and Employment Record standard, Open Badges 3.0, and Comprehensive Learner Record 2.0 — the same open standards used across the credentialing field — so the credentials New Hampshire has already published to the Credential Engine Registry (more than 600 from UNH and the seven CCSNH colleges, alongside the broader work of Southern New Hampshire University), and the credentials issued by the State’s seven community colleges, K-12 districts, regional CTE centers, and registered apprenticeship sponsors all remain authoritative and continue to operate exactly as they do today. The marketplace exchanges with those systems; it does not replace them. The platform itself is free to learners, to educators, and to employers, with optional subscription services available to states and large institutions that want deeper integration or custom analytics. The foundation is the foundation, and the foundation is free.

Four capabilities are most relevant to New Hampshire’s context. The first is free credential issuance: any approved New Hampshire institution, regional CTE center, apprenticeship sponsor, or employer can issue verifiable credentials into learner-held wallets without licensing fees, supporting institutions of every size and budget on equal footing. The second is an open employer marketplace, in which New Hampshire employers post opportunities and discover qualified candidates based on verified skills and credentials, again at no cost. The third is public workforce intelligence — dashboards that aggregate credential issuance and labor demand data as linked open data, available to State agencies for planning, reporting, and supporting NH Employment Labor Marketing Information functions. The fourth is the contributor framework, which crosswalks issued credentials to occupational standards and to State-defined high-demand designations — including ApprenticeshipNH priority sectors — at the point of issuance, so the demand signal New Hampshire has invested years in defining is operationalized at the individual level, automatically.

New Hampshire’s distinctive achievement is the depth of community-college-anchored credentialing. ApprenticeshipNH’s regional hub model — embedding apprenticeship development at four community college campuses — and the State’s extensive Credential Engine Registry publication (more than 600 credentials from UNH and CCSNH plus the substantial contributions of Southern New Hampshire University, a national leader in credential transparency) together represent an unusually mature credentialing infrastructure for a state of New Hampshire’s size. The first-in-the-nation Early Childhood Director Registered Apprenticeship Program — federally approved in July 2024 — demonstrates the State’s capacity for credential innovation. Governor Ayotte’s commitment to a CCSNH tuition freeze and expanded dual enrollment signals continuing State investment. What sits underneath every one of those investments is the same need: a verifiable, portable, learner-held record that lets each Granite Stater carry their CCSNH credential, their UNH degree, their SNHU credential, their ApprenticeshipNH milestone, their regional CTE center attainment, their WorkReadyNH soft-skills credential, and their employer-issued microcredentials in one place, recognized by employers, transferable across institutions, and durable beyond any one platform. That record is what the LER marketplace provides, at no cost, on the open standards New Hampshire’s institutions have already adopted through their Credential Engine publication. EBSCOed is not asking New Hampshire to alter the ApprenticeshipNH hub model — we are offering the learner-side layer that lets the credentials ApprenticeshipNH and CCSNH produce travel with each Granite Stater in a verifiable wallet.

There are three lenses through which we have found it useful to discuss this marketplace with State leadership, and we offer them here in the same spirit. The first is complement — where the marketplace adds capability New Hampshire has not yet had reason to build. The State’s Credential Engine Registry publication establishes the supply-side credential metadata; the marketplace adds the learner-side artifact, a verifiable record each Granite Stater carries with them. ApprenticeshipNH produces more than 3,000 active apprenticeships across diverse sectors; the marketplace gives ApprenticeshipNH, the seven CCSNH colleges, UNH, SNHU, the regional CTE centers, and registered apprenticeship sponsors a free way to issue credentials as verifiable Open Badges directly into learner wallets, with ApprenticeshipNH or sector designation embedded in the badge metadata at issuance. None of this displaces New Hampshire’s current investments. All of it makes them more visible, more durable, and more useful to the Granite Staters who earn them.

The second lens is bridge — where the marketplace connects systems that today operate in parallel. A Granite Stater who completes career and technical education at a regional CTE center, earns a CCSNH community college credential through dual enrollment or post-secondary study, transfers to UNH or another four-year institution, completes an ApprenticeshipNH registered apprenticeship through one of the four regional hubs, completes WorkReadyNH, and gains employer-issued microcredentials currently has those attainments living in different places. The marketplace allows them to travel together in one learner-owned record. New Hampshire Employment Security and American Job Center navigators serving Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants can see a complete skill picture rather than reconstructing it from a paper trail. The connective tissue CCSNH and ApprenticeshipNH provide at the State level can be operationalized at the learner level through a credential wallet that travels with each Granite Stater.

The third lens is interoperability — where existing New Hampshire platforms occupy adjacent space and where it is essential that the State’s investments be respected. The Community College System of New Hampshire remains the State’s authoritative coordinating body for the seven community colleges and ApprenticeshipNH; the marketplace operates as a learner-side complement that supports CCSNH’s mission. ApprenticeshipNH continues exactly as it operates today through its four regional hubs; the marketplace receives credentials produced through ApprenticeshipNH-supported Registered Apprenticeship programs. New Hampshire’s Office of Apprenticeship continues exactly as it operates today; the marketplace operates alongside, with State and federal apprenticeship designation preserved at issuance. NH JobMatch and New Hampshire Employment Security’s labor exchange remain the State’s official employment channels; the marketplace acts as a complementary skills-and-credentials profile layer that posts to those systems through standard application programming interfaces. The Credential Engine Registry publication continues unchanged; the marketplace ingests Registry-published credentials and presents them in learner wallets.

The matrix below — included here as a reference New Hampshire leadership may return to — applies three perspectives to selected initiatives. The Complement column identifies where the marketplace adds capabilities current State investments do not provide. The Bridge column identifies where the marketplace connects presently separate systems. The Interoperability column describes how the marketplace is designed to work alongside existing New Hampshire platforms.

If the State were to find this conversation worth continuing, three paths forward suggest themselves — each with discrete decision points and none requiring the State to commit beyond the step in front of it. The first is a discovery brief: a joint presentation to the Community College System of New Hampshire, ApprenticeshipNH, the New Hampshire Department of Business and Economic Affairs, New Hampshire Employment Security, the University System of New Hampshire, the New Hampshire Department of Education, and — where the State considers it useful — Southern New Hampshire University and regional CTE center leadership, outlining the marketplace’s open-standards architecture, the at-no-cost foundation, and what a small first cohort could look like. The second is a sector pilot: subject to a State decision to proceed, a focused cohort drawn from one of ApprenticeshipNH’s priority sectors — healthcare, IT, advanced manufacturing, automotive technology, construction, or the new Early Childhood Director program are natural candidates — in which Registered Apprentices, CCSNH graduates, or regional CTE center completers receive a Comprehensive Learner Record aligned with State-defined high-demand designations and made available through the EBSCOed marketplace. The third path would, only at the State’s direction, layer in optional subscription services that integrate the marketplace with NH JobMatch, the Eligible Training Provider List, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act case management, registered apprenticeship sponsor records, the Credential Engine Registry publication pipeline, and ApprenticeshipNH program data. Any eligibility automation New Hampshire wished to pursue for Workforce Pell, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, or registered apprenticeship would live in this phase. State funds engage only here, and only to the extent the State chooses to procure subscription services. The first two phases require no new State appropriation.

Several considerations may inform New Hampshire’s thinking about the partnership. The marketplace’s open-standards foundation ensures the State’s prior investments in the Credential Engine Registry, NH JobMatch, and the credentialing work of the seven CCSNH colleges, UNH, Southern New Hampshire University, and the regional CTE centers continue to operate as they do today; the marketplace exchanges data with those systems rather than displacing them. The no-cost foundation means that the early phases require no new State appropriation; State funding considerations arise only in the third phase, and only for services the State elects to procure. New Hampshire’s distinctive ApprenticeshipNH hub model and the State’s mature Credential Engine Registry publication may make a learner-side marketplace that builds on the metadata New Hampshire institutions have already published a particularly natural fit.

A further consideration may be relevant to the State’s long-term planning. As the marketplace becomes the trusted system of record for skills and credentials across New Hampshire, states often find that certain point solutions they currently maintain — case management tooling supporting Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants, Eligible Training Provider List eligibility workflows, standalone skills-assessment platforms, district- or institution-level credential wallets that today operate in isolation, and the patchwork of employer-side job-board and applicant-tracking subscriptions that result when many platforms each serve a slice of the same workforce — become candidates for consolidation or retirement, with associated reductions in ongoing licensing and maintenance costs. EBSCOed offers no opinion on which systems New Hampshire may wish to retain and which it may wish to consolidate; those decisions belong to the State and the relevant agencies, on the State’s own timeline. We mention the possibility only because the cost-of-ownership story is one states have asked us to address, and because we are glad to support evaluations of that kind when the State considers them useful.

We recognize that New Hampshire has earned the right to be deliberate. The State’s coordination among the Community College System of New Hampshire, ApprenticeshipNH, the Department of Business and Economic Affairs, New Hampshire Employment Security, the University System of New Hampshire, the regional CTE centers, the Office of Apprenticeship, and the State’s independent institutions including Southern New Hampshire University reflects years of careful institution-building — and Governor Ayotte’s CCSNH-focused budget commitments signal continued State investment. EBSCOed has no interest in disrupting that coordination. Our interest is in offering a free, open-standards layer that makes New Hampshire’s existing investments — particularly ApprenticeshipNH, the Credential Engine Registry publication, WorkReadyNH, and the CCSNH dual and concurrent enrollment expansion — more useful to the Granite Staters they serve.

If any of this is worth a conversation, we would welcome one — at the convenience of whoever the State considers the right convening authority, in whatever form would be most useful, and on whatever timeline the State prefers. The contact information below is the appropriate first point of contact. The QR codes that follow provide direct access to the current EBSCOed ecosystem overview, which is kept current as capabilities evolve, and to LER.me itself, where any Granite Stater may today create a free Learning and Employment Record in a few minutes.

With great respect for the work New Hampshire is already doing, and with hope that the next chapter may be written together,

New Jersey has, across both the Murphy and Sherrill administrations, built one of the most coherent skills-first workforce policy environments in the Northeast. In April 2023, Governor Murphy signed an Executive Order de-emphasizing four-year degree requirements for State employment in qualifying positions, joining a small group of states explicitly prioritizing practical work experience and skills training over the four-year degree. The New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development — under Acting Labor Commissioner Kevin D. Jarvis, nominated by Governor Sherrill in January 2026 — administers a workforce serving more than 4.3 million New Jersey workers. Governor Sherrill has identified registered apprenticeship as "a cornerstone of New Jersey’s economic future," celebrating National Apprenticeship Week at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory in April 2026. The State has invested in the Lifelong Learning Accounts program, a pilot supporting jobless and chronically underemployed residents without college degrees or workplace credentials. The NJBUILD Women and Minorities in Construction Trades grant continues to support diversity in apprenticeship pipelines. SkillUp New Jersey provides free access to more than 5,000 Skillsoft courses. The New Jersey Council of County Colleges, the State’s 18 county colleges, and Rutgers, Rowan, and the broader state university system anchor postsecondary credential delivery, alongside the New Jersey AI Hub at Princeton. Few states have built so much, so deliberately, in service of their workers.

This letter is written in admiration of that work, and with a specific proposition: that the next chapter of New Jersey’s education-to-workforce strategy may benefit from a learner-held layer that the State has not yet had occasion to build. EBSCOed is the division of EBSCO Information Services that has spent the last several years constructing that layer — the LER talent marketplace — and offering LER.me to states, learners, educators, and employers at no cost. We write to share what it is, where it complements New Jersey’s investments, where it bridges systems that today operate in parallel, and how it is designed to extend rather than disturb the credential infrastructure New Jersey has already built.

LER.me is an open-standards platform that gives each individual a portable digital wallet containing their verified learning and employment records. The marketplace is built on the IEEE Learning and Employment Record standard, Open Badges 3.0, and Comprehensive Learner Record 2.0 — the same open standards used across the credentialing field — so the data New Jersey already publishes to the Credential Engine Registry, and the credentials issued by New Jersey’s 18 county colleges, the State’s public universities, K-12 districts, county vocational-technical school districts, and registered apprenticeship sponsors, remain authoritative and continue to operate exactly as they do today. The marketplace exchanges with those systems; it does not replace them. The platform itself is free to learners, to educators, and to employers, with optional subscription services available to states and large institutions that want deeper integration or custom analytics. The foundation is the foundation, and the foundation is free.

Four capabilities are most relevant to New Jersey’s context. The first is free credential issuance: any approved New Jersey institution, county vocational-technical school district, apprenticeship sponsor, or employer can issue verifiable credentials into learner-held wallets without licensing fees, supporting institutions of every size and budget on equal footing. The second is an open employer marketplace, in which New Jersey employers post opportunities and discover qualified candidates based on verified skills and credentials, again at no cost. The third is public workforce intelligence — dashboards that aggregate credential issuance and labor demand data as linked open data, available to State agencies for planning, reporting, and supporting NJDOL workforce coordination. The fourth is the contributor framework, which crosswalks issued credentials to occupational standards and to State-defined high-demand designations at the point of issuance, so the demand signal New Jersey has invested years in defining is operationalized at the individual level, automatically.

New Jersey’s distinctive achievement is the State’s explicit alignment of public-sector hiring practice with skills-based workforce principles. Governor Murphy’s April 2023 Executive Order made New Jersey one of the first states in the Northeast to de-emphasize four-year degree requirements for State employment — a structural commitment that creates direct demand inside State government for credentials a marketplace LER can carry. Governor Sherrill’s continuing emphasis on registered apprenticeship — anchored by partnerships like Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory — and Acting Commissioner Jarvis’s mandate to expand workforce training access, facilitate higher education and business partnerships, and improve government services align the State’s executive direction with credential-portability infrastructure. What sits underneath every one of those moves is the same need: a verifiable, portable, learner-held record that lets each New Jerseyan carry their county college credential, their NJBUILD-supported apprenticeship milestones, their Lifelong Learning Accounts-funded credential, their SkillUp NJ training, their employer-issued microcredentials, and their registered apprenticeship completion in one place, recognized by State agencies hiring under the Murphy EO and by private employers, transferable across institutions, and durable beyond any one platform. That record is what the LER marketplace provides, at no cost, on the open standards the State already uses. EBSCOed is not asking New Jersey to alter the trajectory established by the Murphy EO or the Sherrill administration’s apprenticeship priorities — we are offering the learner-side layer that operationalizes them at the credential level for each New Jerseyan.

There are three lenses through which we have found it useful to discuss this marketplace with state leadership, and we offer them here in the same spirit. The first is complement — where the marketplace adds capability New Jersey has not yet had reason to build. The State’s skills-first hiring posture measures degree-requirement reduction at the State agency level; the marketplace adds the learner-side artifact, a verifiable record each New Jerseyan carries with them that State and private hiring managers can read directly. The State’s 18 county colleges and 21 county vocational-technical school districts produce credentials that today travel through institutional transcripts; the marketplace gives each institution a free way to issue those credentials as verifiable Open Badges directly into learner wallets. NJBUILD apprenticeship grantees, Lifelong Learning Accounts participants, SkillUp NJ users, and registered apprenticeship sponsors face the same opportunity. None of this displaces New Jersey’s current investments. All of it makes them more visible, more durable, and more useful to the New Jerseyans who earn them.

The second lens is bridge — where the marketplace connects systems that today operate in parallel. A New Jerseyan who completes K-12 CTE through a county vocational-technical school district, earns a county college credential, participates in NJBUILD or another registered apprenticeship pipeline, uses SkillUp NJ training, completes a Lifelong Learning Accounts-funded credential, and gains employer-issued microcredentials currently has those attainments living in different places. The marketplace allows them to travel together in one learner-owned record. NJDOL career navigators serving Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants — and State agency hiring managers operating under the Murphy EO — can see a complete skill picture rather than reconstructing it from a paper trail. The connective tissue NJDOL provides at the State level can be operationalized at the learner level through a credential wallet that travels with each New Jerseyan.

The third lens is interoperability — where existing New Jersey platforms occupy adjacent space and where it is essential that the State’s investments be respected. The New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development remains the State’s authoritative labor agency; the marketplace operates as a learner-side complement that supports NJDOL’s mission. The State’s Office of Innovation, which partners with NJDOL on the Lifelong Learning Accounts pilot, continues exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives credentials produced through that pilot. The New Jersey Council of County Colleges remains the coordinating body for the 18 county colleges; the marketplace receives credentials issued by NJCCC member institutions. CareerOneStop New Jersey and the State’s American Job Centers remain New Jersey’s official employment channels; the marketplace acts as a complementary skills-and-credentials profile layer that posts to those systems through standard application programming interfaces.

The matrix below — included here as a reference New Jersey leadership may return to — applies three perspectives to selected initiatives. The Complement column identifies where the marketplace adds capabilities current State investments do not provide. The Bridge column identifies where the marketplace connects presently separate systems. The Interoperability column describes how the marketplace is designed to work alongside existing New Jersey platforms.

If the State were to find this conversation worth continuing, three paths forward suggest themselves — each with discrete decision points and none requiring the State to commit beyond the step in front of it. The first is a discovery brief: a joint presentation to the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development, the Office of the Secretary of Higher Education, the New Jersey Council of County Colleges, the Office of Innovation, and — where the State considers it useful — the New Jersey State Employment and Training Commission and county vocational-technical school district leadership, outlining the marketplace’s open-standards architecture, the at-no-cost foundation, and what a small first cohort could look like. The second is a sector pilot: subject to a State decision to proceed, a focused cohort drawn from one of New Jersey’s strategic sectors — advanced manufacturing, scientific research (with PPPL or similar employer partners), healthcare, financial services, AI and technology (with NJ AI Hub-aligned employer partners), or construction trades (with NJBUILD-supported sponsors) are natural candidates — in which registered apprenticeship completers, county college graduates, or Lifelong Learning Accounts recipients receive a Comprehensive Learner Record made available through the EBSCOed marketplace. The third path would, only at the State’s direction, layer in optional subscription services that integrate the marketplace with CareerOneStop New Jersey, the Eligible Training Provider List, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act case management, registered apprenticeship sponsor records, and the Lifelong Learning Accounts program data pipeline. Any eligibility automation New Jersey wished to pursue for Workforce Pell, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, or registered apprenticeship would live in this phase. State funds engage only here, and only to the extent the State chooses to procure subscription services. The first two phases require no new State appropriation.

Several considerations may inform New Jersey’s thinking about the partnership. The marketplace’s open-standards foundation ensures the State’s prior investments in the Credential Engine Registry, CareerOneStop New Jersey, and the credentialing work of the 18 county colleges, the State’s public universities, the county vocational-technical school districts, and registered apprenticeship sponsors continue to operate as they do today; the marketplace exchanges data with those systems rather than displacing them. The no-cost foundation means that the early phases require no new State appropriation; State funding considerations arise only in the third phase, and only for services the State elects to procure. New Jersey’s distinctive policy posture — the explicit skills-first State hiring direction established under Murphy and the apprenticeship and workforce training priorities articulated by Governor Sherrill — may benefit from engagement that allows the State to operationalize the credential-portability layer that complements those structural commitments.

A further consideration may be relevant to the State’s long-term planning. As the marketplace becomes the trusted system of record for skills and credentials across New Jersey, states often find that certain point solutions they currently maintain — case management tooling supporting Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants, Eligible Training Provider List eligibility workflows, standalone skills-assessment platforms, district- or institution-level credential wallets that today operate in isolation, and the patchwork of employer-side job-board and applicant-tracking subscriptions that result when many platforms each serve a slice of the same workforce — become candidates for consolidation or retirement, with associated reductions in ongoing licensing and maintenance costs. EBSCOed offers no opinion on which systems New Jersey may wish to retain and which it may wish to consolidate; those decisions belong to the State and the relevant agencies, on the State’s own timeline. We mention the possibility only because the cost-of-ownership story is one states have asked us to address, and because we are glad to support evaluations of that kind when the State considers them useful.

We recognize that New Jersey has earned the right to be deliberate. The State’s coordination among the Department of Labor and Workforce Development, the Office of the Secretary of Higher Education, the New Jersey Council of County Colleges, the Office of Innovation, the New Jersey State Employment and Training Commission, the county vocational-technical school districts, the State’s public universities, and the registered apprenticeship sponsor community reflects years of careful institution-building under both the Murphy and Sherrill administrations. EBSCOed has no interest in disrupting that coordination. Our interest is in offering a free, open-standards layer that makes New Jersey’s existing investments — particularly the State’s skills-first hiring direction, the apprenticeship pipeline (including NJBUILD and PPPL partnerships), the Lifelong Learning Accounts pilot, and SkillUp NJ — more useful to the New Jerseyans they serve.

If any of this is worth a conversation, we would welcome one — at the convenience of whoever the State considers the right convening authority, in whatever form would be most useful, and on whatever timeline the State prefers. The contact information below is the appropriate first point of contact. The QR codes that follow provide direct access to the current EBSCOed ecosystem overview, which is kept current as capabilities evolve, and to LER.me itself, where any New Jerseyan may today create a free Learning and Employment Record in a few minutes.

With great respect for the work New Jersey is already doing, and with hope that the next chapter may be written together,

New Mexico has, under Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, built one of the most ambitious State-level investments in workforce credentialing in the Southwest. The Government Results and Opportunity Trust (GRO) program — established in 2023 as a $60 million three-year investment in workforce training, apprenticeships, and internships — produced in FY25 alone a 94 percent completion rate across 224 programs at 19 institutions, serving 6,249 students with $20 million expended. The New Mexico Higher Education Department, under Higher Education Secretary Stephanie M. Rodriguez, coordinates GRO alongside the State’s broader postsecondary credential mission. The New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions delivers the State’s WIOA and apprenticeship infrastructure. New Mexico’s 19 community and regional colleges — including Central New Mexico Community College (CNM, the State’s largest provider with 2,121 trained through GRO), San Juan College (643), Northern New Mexico College, UNM-Los Alamos, and the State’s other regional comprehensives — anchor postsecondary credential delivery. Integrated Education and Training (IET) saw a 50 percent enrollment increase to 787 enrollees yielding 487 certificates through recent reporting periods. Build New Mexico, the State’s economic-development credentialing framework, identifies eight priority sectors aligned to the State’s growth strategy. Los Alamos National Laboratory’s apprenticeship partnerships — in welding, radiological protection, and similar high-skill fields, anchored by partnerships with Northern New Mexico College, UNM-Los Alamos, N3B, and the LANL Foundation Work-Based Learning Coalition (28 partners launched April 2021) — bring federally-funded national-laboratory credentialing into New Mexico’s State workforce ecosystem. The Energy Transition Act and related legislation shape ongoing energy sector workforce demand. Few states have built so much, so deliberately, in service of their workers.

This letter is written in admiration of that work, and with a specific proposition: that the next chapter of New Mexico’s education-to-workforce strategy may benefit from a learner-held layer that the State has not yet had occasion to build. EBSCOed is the division of EBSCO Information Services that has spent the last several years constructing that layer — the LER talent marketplace — and offering LER.me to states, learners, educators, and employers at no cost. We write to share what it is, where it complements New Mexico’s investments, where it bridges systems that today operate in parallel, and how it is designed to extend rather than disturb the credential infrastructure New Mexico has already built.

LER.me is an open-standards platform that gives each individual a portable digital wallet containing their verified learning and employment records. The marketplace is built on the IEEE Learning and Employment Record standard, Open Badges 3.0, and Comprehensive Learner Record 2.0 — the same open standards used across the credentialing field — so the data New Mexico already publishes to the Credential Engine Registry, and the credentials issued by the State’s 19 community and regional colleges, the University of New Mexico, New Mexico State University, the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, Eastern, Western, Northern, and Highlands universities, the State’s tribal colleges, K-12 districts, and registered apprenticeship sponsors, remain authoritative and continue to operate exactly as they do today. The marketplace exchanges with those systems; it does not replace them. The platform itself is free to learners, to educators, and to employers, with optional subscription services available to states and large institutions that want deeper integration or custom analytics. The foundation is the foundation, and the foundation is free.

Four capabilities are most relevant to New Mexico’s context. The first is free credential issuance: any approved New Mexico institution, tribal college, apprenticeship sponsor, or employer can issue verifiable credentials into learner-held wallets without licensing fees, supporting institutions of every size and budget on equal footing. The second is an open employer marketplace, in which New Mexico employers post opportunities and discover qualified candidates based on verified skills and credentials, again at no cost. The third is public workforce intelligence — dashboards that aggregate credential issuance and labor demand data as linked open data, available to State agencies for planning, reporting, and supporting the Government Results and Opportunity Trust and Build New Mexico reporting missions. The fourth is the contributor framework, which crosswalks issued credentials to occupational standards and to Build New Mexico priority-sector designations at the point of issuance, so the demand signal New Mexico has invested years in defining is operationalized at the individual level, automatically.

New Mexico’s distinctive achievement is the GRO program’s operational discipline at scale. A 94 percent completion rate across 224 programs serving 6,249 students at 19 institutions in a single fiscal year represents implementation execution that few states can match. The combination of GRO’s three-year $60 million commitment, the Integrated Education and Training expansion (50 percent enrollment growth to 787 enrollees), Build New Mexico’s eight-priority-sector framework, the deepening LANL apprenticeship partnerships (welding, radiological protection, and related high-skill credentialing through Northern New Mexico College, UNM-Los Alamos, N3B, and the LANL Foundation Work-Based Learning Coalition with its 28 partners), and CNM’s role as the State’s largest workforce training provider together represent active credential production at scale. What sits underneath every one of those investments is the same need: a verifiable, portable, learner-held record that lets each New Mexican carry their community college credential, their UNM, NMSU, Tech, or regional comprehensive degree, their tribal college attainment, their GRO-funded credential, their LANL apprenticeship milestone, their Integrated Education and Training credential, their Build New Mexico priority-sector credential, and their employer-issued microcredentials in one place, recognized by employers, transferable across institutions, and durable beyond any one platform. That record is what the LER marketplace provides, at no cost, on the open standards the State already uses. EBSCOed is not asking New Mexico to alter the GRO framework or the Build New Mexico priority-sector strategy — we are offering the learner-side layer that lets the credentials the State has built infrastructure to produce travel with each New Mexican in a verifiable wallet.

There are three lenses through which we have found it useful to discuss this marketplace with State leadership, and we offer them here in the same spirit. The first is complement — where the marketplace adds capability New Mexico has not yet had reason to build at scale. The New Mexico Higher Education Department tracks GRO program completion at the institutional level; the marketplace adds the learner-side artifact, a verifiable record each New Mexican carries with them. The State’s 19 community and regional colleges, the public universities, the tribal colleges, the LANL apprenticeship partner institutions, and registered apprenticeship sponsors all produce credentials that today travel through institutional transcripts; the marketplace gives each issuer a free way to issue those credentials as verifiable Open Badges directly into learner wallets, with GRO, Build New Mexico, or LANL apprenticeship designation embedded in the badge metadata at issuance where applicable. None of this displaces New Mexico’s current investments. All of it makes them more visible, more durable, and more useful to the New Mexicans who earn them.

The second lens is bridge — where the marketplace connects systems that today operate in parallel. A New Mexican who completes career and technical education at a high school, earns a GRO-funded credential at CNM, San Juan College, or another community or regional college, participates in an Integrated Education and Training program, completes a LANL-affiliated apprenticeship through Northern New Mexico College or UNM-Los Alamos, transfers to UNM, NMSU, or another four-year institution, and gains employer-issued microcredentials in a Build New Mexico priority sector currently has those attainments living in different places. The marketplace allows them to travel together in one learner-owned record. New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions career navigators serving WIOA participants can see a complete skill picture rather than reconstructing it from a paper trail. The connective tissue NMHED and NMDWS provide at the State level can be operationalized at the learner level through a credential wallet that travels with each New Mexican.

The third lens is interoperability — where existing New Mexico platforms occupy adjacent space and where it is essential that the State’s investments be respected. The New Mexico Higher Education Department remains the State’s authoritative postsecondary coordinating body and the agency operationalizing the GRO program; the marketplace operates as a learner-side complement that supports NMHED’s mission. The New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions continues exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives credentials produced through NMDWS-overseen programs. The State’s 19 community and regional colleges continue exactly as they operate today; the marketplace receives credentials issued by these institutions, with GRO funding designation preserved where applicable. The tribal colleges continue exactly as they operate today; the marketplace receives credentials issued by these institutions, with tribal-college issuance attribution preserved. JobsNM remains New Mexico’s official labor exchange; the marketplace acts as a complementary skills-and-credentials profile layer that posts to JobsNM through standard application programming interfaces.

The matrix below — included here as a reference New Mexico leadership may return to — applies three perspectives to selected initiatives. The Complement column identifies where the marketplace adds capabilities current State investments do not provide. The Bridge column identifies where the marketplace connects presently separate systems. The Interoperability column describes how the marketplace is designed to work alongside existing New Mexico platforms.

If the State were to find this conversation worth continuing, three paths forward suggest themselves — each with discrete decision points and none requiring the State to commit beyond the step in front of it. The first is a discovery brief: a joint presentation to the New Mexico Higher Education Department, the New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions, the New Mexico Public Education Department, the Economic Development Department, the State’s public university leadership, and — where the State considers it useful — Central New Mexico Community College, the State’s other community and regional college presidents, tribal college leadership, the LANL Foundation Work-Based Learning Coalition, and Local Workforce Development Board representatives, outlining the marketplace’s open-standards architecture, the at-no-cost foundation, and what a small first cohort could look like. The second is a sector pilot: subject to a State decision to proceed, a focused cohort drawn from one of the Build New Mexico priority sectors or from one of the LANL-affiliated apprenticeship programs (welding, radiological protection, or similar) — in which GRO-funded credential recipients, Integrated Education and Training certificate completers, or LANL-affiliated apprenticeship completers receive a Comprehensive Learner Record aligned with Build New Mexico priority-sector designations and made available through the EBSCOed marketplace. The third path would, only at the State’s direction, layer in optional subscription services that integrate the marketplace with JobsNM, the Eligible Training Provider List, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act case management, registered apprenticeship sponsor records, the GRO program data pipeline, and the Integrated Education and Training reporting infrastructure. Any eligibility automation New Mexico wished to pursue for Workforce Pell, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, or registered apprenticeship would live in this phase. State funds engage only here, and only to the extent the State chooses to procure subscription services. The first two phases require no new State appropriation.

Several considerations may inform New Mexico’s thinking about the partnership. The marketplace’s open-standards foundation ensures the State’s prior investments in the Credential Engine Registry, JobsNM, and the credentialing work of the 19 community and regional colleges, the public universities, the tribal colleges, and the LANL apprenticeship partner institutions continue to operate as they do today; the marketplace exchanges data with those systems rather than displacing them. The no-cost foundation means that the early phases require no new State appropriation; State funding considerations arise only in the third phase, and only for services the State elects to procure. New Mexico’s distinctive operational track record — 94 percent GRO program completion at scale across 19 institutions — and the State’s distinctive partnership with the federal national-laboratory community through LANL may benefit from engagement that operationalizes credential portability across the State’s diverse credentialing pathways.

A further consideration may be relevant to the State’s long-term planning. As the marketplace becomes the trusted system of record for skills and credentials across New Mexico, states often find that certain point solutions they currently maintain — case management tooling supporting Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants, Eligible Training Provider List eligibility workflows, standalone skills-assessment platforms, district- or institution-level credential wallets that today operate in isolation, and the patchwork of employer-side job-board and applicant-tracking subscriptions that result when many platforms each serve a slice of the same workforce — become candidates for consolidation or retirement, with associated reductions in ongoing licensing and maintenance costs. EBSCOed offers no opinion on which systems New Mexico may wish to retain and which it may wish to consolidate; those decisions belong to the State and the relevant agencies, on the State’s own timeline. We mention the possibility only because the cost-of-ownership story is one states have asked us to address, and because we are glad to support evaluations of that kind when the State considers them useful.

We recognize that New Mexico has earned the right to be deliberate. The State’s coordination among the Higher Education Department, the Department of Workforce Solutions, the Public Education Department, the Economic Development Department, the public universities, the 19 community and regional colleges, the tribal colleges, the LANL Foundation Work-Based Learning Coalition, the Local Workforce Development Boards, and the broader Build New Mexico partner community reflects years of careful institution-building under the Lujan Grisham administration’s coordinated workforce direction. EBSCOed has no interest in disrupting that coordination. Our interest is in offering a free, open-standards layer that makes New Mexico’s existing investments — particularly the Government Results and Opportunity Trust, Build New Mexico, Integrated Education and Training, and the LANL apprenticeship partnerships — more useful to the New Mexicans they serve.

If any of this is worth a conversation, we would welcome one — at the convenience of whoever the State considers the right convening authority, in whatever form would be most useful, and on whatever timeline the State prefers. The contact information below is the appropriate first point of contact. The QR codes that follow provide direct access to the current EBSCOed ecosystem overview, which is kept current as capabilities evolve, and to LER.me itself, where any New Mexican may today create a free Learning and Employment Record in a few minutes.

With great respect for the work New Mexico is already doing, and with hope that the next chapter may be written together,

New York has, under Governor Hochul’s coordinated workforce architecture, made some of the largest State investments in workforce development in the country. The Office of Strategic Workforce Development — established in 2022 with $350 million in initial State funding and housed under Empire State Development — coordinates workforce training with employers' regional needs through the State’s 10 Regional Economic Development Councils, in partnership with the New York State Department of Labor, SUNY, and CUNY. SUNY, the nation’s largest comprehensive system of higher education, serves about 1.7 million students across 64 colleges and universities; SUNY’s apprenticeship programs span 42 campuses across advanced manufacturing, education, human services, and agriculture. CUNY — the nation’s largest urban public university, with seven community colleges, 11 senior colleges, and seven graduate or professional institutions — has expanded its Associate of Applied Science College Apprenticeship Degree program with employer partners including Bloomberg, Travelers, and Northwell Health. The NYS Opportunity Promise proposal extends free community college tuition, fees, and books to adult learners pursuing associate degrees in high-demand fields. The SUNY/CUNY Reconnect Program supports eligible adult students ages 25-55. The Empire State Apprenticeship Tax Credit incentivizes employers. Upstate New York’s designation as a National Workforce Hub for semiconductor manufacturing — anchored by Micron and GlobalFoundries — accompanies a $40 million investment in the Applied Technology Education Center at Hudson Valley Community College. Few states have built so much, so deliberately, in service of their workers.

This letter is written in admiration of that work, and with a specific proposition: that the next chapter of New York’s education-to-workforce strategy may benefit from a learner-held layer that the State has not yet had occasion to build. EBSCOed is the division of EBSCO Information Services that has spent the last several years constructing that layer — the LER talent marketplace — and offering LER.me to states, learners, educators, and employers at no cost. We write to share what it is, where it complements New York’s investments, where it bridges systems that today operate in parallel, and how it is designed to extend rather than disturb the credential infrastructure New York has already built.

LER.me is an open-standards platform that gives each individual a portable digital wallet containing their verified learning and employment records. The marketplace is built on the IEEE Learning and Employment Record standard, Open Badges 3.0, and Comprehensive Learner Record 2.0 — the same open standards used across the credentialing field — so the data New York already publishes to the Credential Engine Registry, and the credentials issued by SUNY’s 64 institutions, CUNY’s 25 institutions, the State’s BOCES districts, K-12 districts, and registered apprenticeship sponsors, remain authoritative and continue to operate exactly as they do today. The marketplace exchanges with those systems; it does not replace them. The platform itself is free to learners, to educators, and to employers, with optional subscription services available to states and large institutions that want deeper integration or custom analytics. The foundation is the foundation, and the foundation is free.

Four capabilities are most relevant to New York’s context. The first is free credential issuance: any approved New York institution, BOCES district, apprenticeship sponsor, or employer can issue verifiable credentials into learner-held wallets without licensing fees, supporting institutions of every size and budget on equal footing — a particular benefit given the scale of SUNY’s 64 campuses and CUNY’s 25 institutions. The second is an open employer marketplace, in which New York employers post opportunities and discover qualified candidates based on verified skills and credentials, again at no cost. The third is public workforce intelligence — dashboards that aggregate credential issuance and labor demand data as linked open data, available to State agencies for planning, reporting, and supporting OSWD’s regional alignment mission across the 10 REDCs. The fourth is the contributor framework, which crosswalks issued credentials to occupational standards and to State-defined high-demand designations at the point of issuance, so the demand signal New York has invested years in defining is operationalized at the individual level, automatically.

New York’s distinctive achievement is the scale and coordination of the investment. $350 million through OSWD, $40 million in the HVCC Applied Technology Education Center, $2 million expansion of CUNY’s apprenticeship degree program, the Empire State Apprenticeship Tax Credit, the Excelsior Service Fellowship Program, the SUNY/CUNY Reconnect Program, free community college tuition for adult learners pursuing high-demand fields — across more than 1.7 million SUNY students and 225,000 CUNY undergraduate and graduate students, this is workforce development at a scale few other states can match. What sits underneath every one of those investments is the same need: a verifiable, portable, learner-held record that lets each New Yorker carry their SUNY or CUNY credential, their BOCES attainment, their CUNY AAS apprenticeship credential, their Career Pathway-aligned training, their registered apprenticeship milestones, their employer-issued microcredentials, and any Workforce Pell-funded short-term credentials when Workforce Pell launches in July 2026 in one place, recognized by employers, transferable across institutions, and durable beyond any one platform. That record is what the LER marketplace provides, at no cost, on the open standards the State already uses. EBSCOed is not asking New York to reorganize OSWD or to alter the scale of the State’s investment — we are offering the learner-side layer that lets New York’s investments show up at each New Yorker’s hand.

There are three lenses through which we have found it useful to discuss this marketplace with state leadership, and we offer them here in the same spirit. The first is complement — where the marketplace adds capability New York has not yet had reason to build. OSWD measures regional workforce alignment at the State level; the marketplace adds the learner-side artifact, a verifiable record each New Yorker carries with them. SUNY’s 64 campuses issue credentials that today travel through SUNY transcripts and institutional certifications; the marketplace gives each campus a free way to issue those credentials as verifiable Open Badges directly into learner wallets, with SUNY designation preserved at issuance. CUNY’s apprenticeship degree program, the State’s BOCES districts, the SUNY/CUNY Reconnect Program participants, Excelsior Service Fellows, and registered apprenticeship sponsors face the same opportunity. None of this displaces New York’s current investments. All of it makes them more visible, more durable, and more useful to the New Yorkers who earn them.

The second lens is bridge — where the marketplace connects systems that today operate in parallel. A New Yorker who participates in K-12 CTE through a BOCES district, earns a SUNY or CUNY associate degree, transitions through CUNY’s AAS apprenticeship pipeline or SUNY’s Registered Apprenticeship infrastructure, transfers to a four-year campus through SUNY/CUNY transfer pathways, completes a Career Pathway-aligned training through an OSWD-funded program, and gains employer-issued microcredentials currently has those attainments living in different places. The marketplace allows them to travel together in one learner-owned record. Department of Labor career navigators and the State’s Local Workforce Development Boards serving Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants can see a complete skill picture rather than reconstructing it from a paper trail. The connective tissue OSWD provides at the State level can be operationalized at the learner level through a credential wallet that travels with each New Yorker.

The third lens is interoperability — where existing New York platforms occupy adjacent space and where it is essential that the State’s investments be respected. The Office of Strategic Workforce Development remains the State’s authoritative workforce coordination office, housed under Empire State Development; the marketplace operates as a learner-side complement that supports OSWD’s mission. The 10 Regional Economic Development Councils continue exactly as they operate today; the marketplace receives credentials produced through REDC-aligned programs. The Department of Labor remains New York’s authoritative labor agency; the marketplace operates alongside DOL’s career services. The SUNY Office of Workforce Development and Upward Mobility, the CUNY Inclusive Economy Initiative, and the Empire State Development workforce investments continue exactly as they operate today; the marketplace receives credentials produced through those programs. NY.gov Jobs and the State’s labor exchange remain New York’s official employment channels; the marketplace acts as a complementary skills-and-credentials profile layer that posts to those systems through standard application programming interfaces.

The matrix below — included here as a reference New York leadership may return to — applies three perspectives to selected initiatives. The Complement column identifies where the marketplace adds capabilities current State investments do not provide. The Bridge column identifies where the marketplace connects presently separate systems. The Interoperability column describes how the marketplace is designed to work alongside existing New York platforms.

If the State were to find this conversation worth continuing, three paths forward suggest themselves — each with discrete decision points and none requiring the State to commit beyond the step in front of it. The first is a discovery brief: a joint presentation to the Office of Strategic Workforce Development, Empire State Development, the Department of Labor, SUNY System Administration, CUNY’s Office of the Chancellor, the New York State Education Department, and — where the State considers it useful — the Regional Economic Development Council and Local Workforce Development Board leadership, outlining the marketplace’s open-standards architecture, the at-no-cost foundation, and what a small first cohort could look like. The second is a sector pilot: subject to a State decision to proceed, a focused cohort drawn from one of New York’s strategic sectors — semiconductor manufacturing (in partnership with Micron, GlobalFoundries, and Onondaga Community College’s Micron Simulation Lab), advanced manufacturing, healthcare, financial services, or IT/cybersecurity are natural candidates — in which SUNY or CUNY apprentices, OSWD-funded training graduates, and SUNY/CUNY Reconnect program completers receive a Comprehensive Learner Record aligned with State high-demand designations and made available through the EBSCOed marketplace. The third path would, only at the State’s direction, layer in optional subscription services that integrate the marketplace with NY.gov Jobs, the Eligible Training Provider List, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act case management, registered apprenticeship sponsor records, OSWD program data, and SUNY/CUNY data systems. Any eligibility automation New York wished to pursue for Workforce Pell, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, or registered apprenticeship would live in this phase. State funds engage only here, and only to the extent the State chooses to procure subscription services. The first two phases require no new State appropriation.

Several considerations may inform New York’s thinking about the partnership. The marketplace’s open-standards foundation ensures the State’s prior investments in the Credential Engine Registry, NY.gov Jobs, and the credentialing work of SUNY’s 64 institutions, CUNY’s 25 institutions, the State’s BOCES districts, the independent colleges, and registered apprenticeship sponsors continue to operate as they do today; the marketplace exchanges data with those systems rather than displacing them. The no-cost foundation means that the early phases require no new State appropriation; State funding considerations arise only in the third phase, and only for services the State elects to procure. New York’s distinctive scale — 1.7 million SUNY students, 225,000+ CUNY students, and four million working-age adults without a college credential — and the State’s CHIPS Act-anchored semiconductor industry growth may benefit from a marketplace whose contributor framework scales without per-institution licensing costs.

A further consideration may be relevant to the State’s long-term planning. As the marketplace becomes the trusted system of record for skills and credentials across New York, states often find that certain point solutions they currently maintain — case management tooling supporting Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants, Eligible Training Provider List eligibility workflows, standalone skills-assessment platforms, district- or institution-level credential wallets that today operate in isolation, and the patchwork of employer-side job-board and applicant-tracking subscriptions that result when many platforms each serve a slice of the same workforce — become candidates for consolidation or retirement, with associated reductions in ongoing licensing and maintenance costs. EBSCOed offers no opinion on which systems New York may wish to retain and which it may wish to consolidate; those decisions belong to the State and the relevant agencies, on the State’s own timeline. We mention the possibility only because the cost-of-ownership story is one states have asked us to address, and because we are glad to support evaluations of that kind when the State considers them useful.

We recognize that New York has earned the right to be deliberate. The State’s coordination among the Office of Strategic Workforce Development, Empire State Development, the Department of Labor, SUNY System Administration, CUNY’s Office of the Chancellor, the New York State Education Department, the 10 REDCs, the State’s BOCES districts, the Local Workforce Development Boards, and the State’s independent colleges and universities reflects years of careful institution-building — and Governor Hochul’s $350 million OSWD investment represents one of the largest workforce coordination investments any state has made. EBSCOed has no interest in disrupting that coordination. Our interest is in offering a free, open-standards layer that makes New York’s existing investments — particularly OSWD, SUNY’s apprenticeship infrastructure, CUNY’s AAS apprenticeship degree program, the NYS Opportunity Promise, and the SUNY/CUNY Reconnect Program — more useful to the New Yorkers they serve.

If any of this is worth a conversation, we would welcome one — at the convenience of whoever the State considers the right convening authority, in whatever form would be most useful, and on whatever timeline the State prefers. The contact information below is the appropriate first point of contact. The QR codes that follow provide direct access to the current EBSCOed ecosystem overview, which is kept current as capabilities evolve, and to LER.me itself, where any New Yorker may today create a free Learning and Employment Record in a few minutes.

With great respect for the work New York is already doing, and with hope that the next chapter may be written together,

North Carolina has, by bipartisan design, made workforce attainment a state-level priority that rises above shifting political winds. The myFutureNC goal — two million working-age North Carolinians holding a high-quality credential or postsecondary degree by 2030 — is codified in law with bipartisan support, and the State has built around it an unusually coherent infrastructure to make the goal real. The 58 colleges of the North Carolina Community College System reach every county. NCWorks Career Centers serve as the front door for adults entering training, and the NCWorks Commission, as North Carolina’s State Workforce Development Board, has approved a four-year Unified State Plan and now leads Workforce Pell implementation as the State’s designated lead agency. The NC Workforce Credentials Advisory Council — a partnership of the Office of the Governor, the Community College System, the Department of Public Instruction, the Department of Commerce, the Association of Workforce Development Boards, and myFutureNC — maintains a curated list of industry-valued credentials sorted into Essential, Career, Foundation, and Advanced tiers. ApprenticeshipNC, NC Career Launch, Finish Line Grants, NCCareers, and the Next NC Scholarship together make the path navigable. The Governor’s Council on Workforce and Apprenticeships has issued eleven workforce goals and thirty strategies that frame what comes next, and the proposed Workforce Act of 2026 represents the next step in that long arc. Few states have built so much, so deliberately, in service of their workers.

This letter is written in admiration of that work, and with a specific proposition: that the next chapter of North Carolina’s education-to-workforce strategy may benefit from a learner-held layer that the State has not yet had occasion to build. EBSCOed is the division of EBSCO Information Services that has spent the last several years constructing that layer — the LER talent marketplace — and offering LER.me to states, learners, educators, and employers at no cost. We write to share what it is, where it complements North Carolina’s investments, where it bridges systems that today operate in parallel, and how it is designed to extend rather than disturb the credential infrastructure North Carolina has already built.

LER.me is an open-standards platform that gives each individual a portable digital wallet containing their verified learning and employment records. The marketplace is built on the IEEE Learning and Employment Record standard, Open Badges 3.0, and Comprehensive Learner Record 2.0 — the same open standards used across the credentialing field — so the data North Carolina already publishes to the Credential Engine Registry, and the credentials issued by community colleges, universities, K-12 districts, and registered apprenticeship sponsors, remain authoritative and continue to operate exactly as they do today. The marketplace exchanges with those systems; it does not replace them. The platform itself is free to learners, to educators, and to employers, with optional subscription services available to states and large institutions that want deeper integration or custom analytics. The foundation is the foundation, and the foundation is free.

Four capabilities are most relevant to North Carolina’s context. The first is free credential issuance: any approved North Carolina institution, apprenticeship sponsor, or employer can issue verifiable credentials into learner-held wallets without licensing fees, supporting institutions of every size and budget on equal footing. The second is an open employer marketplace, in which North Carolina employers post opportunities and discover qualified candidates based on verified skills and credentials, again at no cost. The third is public workforce intelligence — dashboards that aggregate credential issuance and labor demand data as linked open data, available to State agencies for planning, reporting, and informing future revisions of the State’s labor market analysis. The fourth is the contributor framework, which crosswalks issued credentials to occupational standards and to State-defined high-demand categories — including the NC Workforce Credentials tiered list — at the point of issuance, so the demand signal North Carolina has invested years in defining is operationalized at the individual level, automatically.

North Carolina’s progress toward the two-million-by-2030 goal is real — more than 272,000 additional North Carolinians have earned a credential since 2019 — and the State has also been candid that current trajectory falls short. myFutureNC has called the present pace a "warning light," and the proposed Workforce Act of 2026 frames the response in the right terms: scaling work-based learning through ApprenticeshipNC, investing in NCCareers as a career exploration hub, supporting seamless education pathways with technology that lets students move between institutions, and expanding the NC Workforce Credentials list and short-term credential grants. What sits underneath every one of those moves is the same need: a verifiable, portable, learner-held record of what each North Carolinian has earned, recognized by employers, transferable across institutions, and durable beyond any one platform. That record is what the LER marketplace provides, at no cost, on the open standards the State already uses. EBSCOed is not asking North Carolina to build something new — we are offering to operate the layer the State’s own strategy calls for, in a form that respects the years of investment already made.

There are three lenses through which we have found it useful to discuss this marketplace with state leadership, and we offer them here in the same spirit. The first is complement — where the marketplace adds capability North Carolina has not yet had reason to build. The two-million-by-2030 goal, by design, measures attainment at the State level; the marketplace adds the learner-side artifact, a verifiable record each North Carolinian carries with them. The NC Workforce Credentials list curates industry-valued credentials across Essential, Career, Foundation, and Advanced tiers; the marketplace gives every community college, university, K-12 CTE program, and employer partner a free way to issue those credentials as verifiable Open Badges directly into learner wallets, with the tier and the credential’s place on the State list embedded in the badge metadata. ApprenticeshipNC sponsors face the same opportunity at the milestone level. NC Career Launch’s pre-apprenticeships in child care, health care, advanced manufacturing, and skilled trades produce work-based learning experiences that today travel inconsistently; verifiable issuance makes them durable. None of this displaces North Carolina’s current investments. All of it makes them more visible, more durable, and more useful to the North Carolinians who earn them.

The second lens is bridge — where the marketplace connects systems that today operate in parallel. A North Carolinian who earns a Next NC Scholarship, completes a community college credential on the NC Workforce Credentials list, finishes an ApprenticeshipNC program, and gains employer-issued microcredentials currently has those attainments living in different places. The marketplace allows them to travel together in one learner-owned record. American Job Center navigators at NCWorks Career Centers serving Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants can see a complete skill picture rather than reconstructing it from a paper trail. As Workforce Pell launches on July 1, 2026, with the NCWorks Commission as the State’s designated lead agency, the marketplace provides a ready way to capture the credentials Workforce Pell-eligible programs produce — programs that, as the State has noted, must meet rigorous 70 percent completion and 70 percent placement standards — and to put those credentials in front of employers in a form they can verify in seconds. The connective tissue exists, but it lives in the learner, where it belongs.

The third lens is interoperability — where existing North Carolina platforms occupy adjacent space and where it is essential that the State’s investments be respected. The NC Workforce Credentials list, maintained by the Advisory Council, remains the authoritative State list of industry-valued non-degree credentials; the marketplace operates alongside that list by inviting approved providers to issue list-aligned credentials as marketplace contributors, with the tier designation preserved at issuance. NCCareers, the State’s online career exploration hub, remains the authoritative front door for career exploration; the marketplace complements it as the credential layer learners carry with them once they begin earning credentials along a NCCareers-identified pathway. The NCWorks Online job exchange remains North Carolina’s official labor exchange; the marketplace acts as a complementary skills-and-credentials profile layer that posts to NCWorks-style systems through standard application programming interfaces. Any portfolio or transcript systems the Community College System and university campuses already operate continue unchanged; the marketplace ingests issued credentials and presents them as part of the broader learner record.

The matrix below — included here as a reference North Carolina leadership may return to — applies three perspectives to selected initiatives. The Complement column identifies where the marketplace adds capabilities current State investments do not provide. The Bridge column identifies where the marketplace connects presently separate systems. The Interoperability column describes how the marketplace is designed to work alongside existing North Carolina platforms.

If the State were to find this conversation worth continuing, three paths forward suggest themselves — each with discrete decision points and none requiring the State to commit beyond the step in front of it. The first is a discovery brief: a joint presentation to the NCWorks Commission, the NC Workforce Credentials Advisory Council, myFutureNC leadership, and the Governor’s Council on Workforce and Apprenticeships outlining the marketplace’s open-standards architecture, the at-no-cost foundation, and what a small first cohort could look like. The second is a sector pilot: subject to a State decision to proceed, a focused cohort drawn from one of the Governor’s Council priority sectors — advanced manufacturing, health care, child care, or skilled trades — in which graduates receive a Comprehensive Learner Record aligned with NC Workforce Credentials tier designations and made available through both the issuing institution’s preferred wallet and the EBSCOed marketplace. The third path would, only at the State’s direction, layer in optional subscription services that integrate the marketplace with NCWorks Online, the Eligible Training Provider List, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act case management, the ApprenticeshipNC sponsor portal, and the data pipeline that informs the NC Workforce Credentials list. Any eligibility automation North Carolina wished to pursue for Workforce Pell, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, or registered apprenticeship would live in this phase. State funds engage only here, and only to the extent the State chooses to procure subscription services. The first two phases require no new State appropriation.

Several considerations may inform North Carolina’s thinking about the partnership. The marketplace’s open-standards foundation ensures the State’s prior investments in the Credential Engine Registry, the NC Workforce Credentials Advisory Council list, and the credentialing work of the Community College System and the UNC System continue to operate as they do today; the marketplace exchanges data with those systems rather than displacing them. The no-cost foundation means that the early phases require no new State appropriation; State funding considerations arise only in the third phase, and only for services the State elects to procure. The distributed structure of North Carolina’s 23 Local Workforce Development Boards — and the bipartisan, cross-sector governance North Carolina has built around workforce attainment — may benefit from engagement at both the State and Local Area level during any broader rollout, and EBSCOed welcomes the opportunity to participate in such conversations at the State’s direction, in whatever forum the State considers most useful.

A further consideration may be relevant to the State’s long-term planning. As the marketplace becomes the trusted system of record for skills and credentials across North Carolina, states often find that certain point solutions they currently maintain — case management tooling supporting Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants, Eligible Training Provider List eligibility workflows, standalone skills-assessment platforms, district- or institution-level credential wallets that today operate in isolation, and the patchwork of employer-side job-board and applicant-tracking subscriptions that result when many platforms each serve a slice of the same workforce — become candidates for consolidation or retirement, with associated reductions in ongoing licensing and maintenance costs. EBSCOed offers no opinion on which systems North Carolina may wish to retain and which it may wish to consolidate; those decisions belong to the State and the relevant agencies, on the State’s own timeline. We mention the possibility only because the cost-of-ownership story is one states have asked us to address, and because we are glad to support evaluations of that kind when the State considers them useful.

We recognize that North Carolina has earned the right to be deliberate. The State’s coordination among the Office of the Governor, the Department of Commerce, the Community College System, the Department of Public Instruction, the UNC System, myFutureNC, the NCWorks Commission, the Governor’s Council on Workforce and Apprenticeships, the Local Workforce Development Boards, and the independent colleges reflects years of careful institution-building — and a rare achievement, as the State’s leadership has noted, of placing student and employer needs above the political and institutional silos that often define this work. EBSCOed has no interest in disrupting that coordination. Our interest is in offering a free, open-standards layer that makes North Carolina’s existing investments more useful to the North Carolinians they serve.

If any of this is worth a conversation, we would welcome one — at the convenience of whoever the State considers the right convening authority, in whatever form would be most useful, and on whatever timeline the State prefers. The contact information below is the appropriate first point of contact. The QR codes that follow provide direct access to the current EBSCOed ecosystem overview, which is kept current as capabilities evolve, and to LER.me itself, where any North Carolinian may today create a free Learning and Employment Record in a few minutes.

With great respect for the work North Carolina is already doing, and with hope that the next chapter may be written together,

North Dakota has, under Governor Kelly Armstrong’s administration and building on the workforce architecture established under Governor Burgum’s leadership, built a State workforce coordination system that combines tribal college partnership, comprehensive apprenticeship investment, and clear-eyed assessment of the State’s most pressing workforce challenge. The North Dakota Workforce Development Council (WDC) released its 2024 recommendations to address workforce challenges and position the State for economic growth in the 2025-2027 biennium, with proposals focused on expanding career exploration, closing skill gaps, reducing employment barriers, reforming licensure processes, and attracting and retaining workers. The 2025 ND Workforce Ecosystem Assessment identifies 'not enough workers' as the #1 recruitment challenge — with the third-lowest unemployment rate in the country and more than 16,000 open jobs requiring the State to look beyond its borders to fill workforce needs. The ND Works Investment Plan, released in 2022 with proposals totaling over $50 million, anchors the State’s coordinated workforce response. House Bill 1382, signed in 2023, expanded the State scholarship benefit beyond traditional two- and four-year colleges to include apprenticeship programs, with the State Board of Higher Education and State Board for Career and Technical Education jointly establishing eligibility requirements. The North Dakota Department of Commerce’s Workforce Programs include Operation Intern (expanding internships, work experience, and apprenticeship positions), the Regional Workforce Impact Program (RWIP, providing grants to regional workforce entities), the Technical Skills Training Grant, and the Tribal College Grant program (established 2013, providing dedicated funding to the five tribally controlled community colleges for workforce training and entrepreneurial assistance). Job Service North Dakota administers the H2A Visa Program and the Department of CTE coordinates K-12 and postsecondary CTE delivery. The 11 colleges of the North Dakota University System, the five tribally controlled community colleges, North Dakota State College of Science (NDSCS — where apprentices receive up to 32 college credits toward an AAS degree in Technical Studies for Registered Apprenticeship completion), Lake Region State College (LRSC, leading the federally funded ND apprenticeship expansion using a dual model offering federally registered apprenticeship with simultaneous college degree), the comprehensive apprenticeship package proposed by the Workforce Development Council, and the State’s growing network of registered apprenticeship sponsors together extend the system from K-12 through post-secondary, apprenticeship, and into employment. Few states have built so much, so deliberately, in service of their workers.

This letter is written in admiration of that work, and with a specific proposition: that the next chapter of North Dakota’s education-to-workforce strategy may benefit from a learner-held layer that the State has not yet had occasion to build. EBSCOed is the division of EBSCO Information Services that has spent the last several years constructing that layer — the LER talent marketplace — and offering LER.me to states, learners, educators, and employers at no cost. We write to share what it is, where it complements North Dakota’s investments, where it bridges systems that today operate in parallel, and how it is designed to extend rather than disturb the credential infrastructure North Dakota has already built.

LER.me is an open-standards platform that gives each individual a portable digital wallet containing their verified learning and employment records. The marketplace is built on the IEEE Learning and Employment Record standard, Open Badges 3.0, and Comprehensive Learner Record 2.0 — the same open standards used across the credentialing field — so the credentials issued by the 11 colleges of the North Dakota University System, the five tribally controlled community colleges, K-12 districts, the Department of CTE, and registered apprenticeship sponsors remain authoritative and continue to operate exactly as they do today. The marketplace exchanges with those systems; it does not replace them. The platform itself is free to learners, to educators, and to employers, with optional subscription services available to states and large institutions that want deeper integration or custom analytics. The foundation is the foundation, and the foundation is free.

Four capabilities are most relevant to North Dakota’s context. The first is free credential issuance: any approved North Dakota institution, tribal college, apprenticeship sponsor, or employer can issue verifiable credentials into learner-held wallets without licensing fees, supporting institutions of every size and budget on equal footing. The second is an open employer marketplace, in which North Dakota employers post opportunities and discover qualified candidates based on verified skills and credentials, again at no cost — a capability particularly relevant given the State’s identified need to recruit workers from beyond its borders. The third is public workforce intelligence — dashboards that aggregate credential issuance and labor demand data as linked open data, available to State agencies for planning, reporting, and supporting Workforce Development Council, Department of Commerce, and ND Works Investment Plan reporting missions. The fourth is the contributor framework, which crosswalks issued credentials to occupational standards and to ND Workforce Ecosystem Assessment-identified in-demand designations at the point of issuance, so the demand signal North Dakota has invested years in defining is operationalized at the individual level, automatically.

North Dakota’s distinctive achievements are the Tribal College Grant program — providing dedicated State funding to the five tribally controlled community colleges since 2013 — and the dual-credit apprenticeship model pioneered through NDSCS and Lake Region State College. NDSCS’s award of up to 32 college credits toward an AAS in Technical Studies for Registered Apprenticeship completers makes apprenticeship attainment immediately translatable into postsecondary credit. LRSC’s dual model — offering federally registered apprenticeship simultaneously with a college degree — represents a structural innovation few states have replicated. House Bill 1382’s expansion of State scholarship eligibility to apprenticeship programs operationalizes that commitment financially. What sits underneath every one of those structures is the same need: a verifiable, portable, learner-held record that lets each North Dakotan carry their K-12 CTE attainment, their tribal college credential, their North Dakota University System college credential, their NDSCS Registered Apprenticeship-to-AAS credential, their LRSC dual-model attainment, their House Bill 1382-supported scholarship credential, their Tribal College Grant-funded training credential, their Technical Skills Training Grant-supported attainment, their Operation Intern or RWIP credential, and their employer-issued microcredentials in one place, recognized by employers within the State and beyond, transferable across institutions, and durable beyond any one platform. That record is what the LER marketplace provides, at no cost, on the open standards the field has converged on. EBSCOed is not asking North Dakota to alter the dual-credit apprenticeship model or the Tribal College Grant program — we are offering the learner-side layer that lets the credentials North Dakota’s distinctive infrastructure produces travel with each North Dakotan in a verifiable wallet, including across State lines as the State recruits workers from beyond its borders.

There are three lenses through which we have found it useful to discuss this marketplace with State leadership, and we offer them here in the same spirit. The first is complement — where the marketplace adds capability North Dakota has not yet had reason to build at the individual level. The Workforce Development Council tracks workforce attainment at the State level through annual reporting; the marketplace adds the learner-side artifact, a verifiable record each North Dakotan (and each worker the State recruits from beyond its borders) carries with them. The 11 NDUS colleges, the five tribally controlled community colleges, NDSCS (with its 32-credit apprenticeship-to-AAS pathway), LRSC (with its dual federally registered apprenticeship and degree model), registered apprenticeship sponsors, and the State’s K-12 CTE delivery system all produce credentials that today travel through institutional transcripts; the marketplace gives each institution a free way to issue those credentials as verifiable Open Badges directly into learner wallets, with House Bill 1382, Tribal College Grant, Technical Skills Training Grant, RWIP, or Operation Intern designation embedded in the badge metadata at issuance where applicable. None of this displaces North Dakota’s current investments. All of it makes them more visible, more durable, and more useful to the North Dakotans who earn them.

The second lens is bridge — where the marketplace connects systems that today operate in parallel. A North Dakotan who completes high school CTE through the Department of CTE’s pathways, earns a tribally controlled community college credential through the Tribal College Grant program, transitions to NDSCS earning 32 college credits toward an AAS through Registered Apprenticeship completion, enters LRSC’s dual federally registered apprenticeship and degree program, transfers within or beyond the 11 NDUS colleges, completes Technical Skills Training Grant-supported coursework, gains Operation Intern or RWIP credentials, and accumulates employer-issued microcredentials currently has those attainments living in different places. The marketplace allows them to travel together in one learner-owned record. Job Service North Dakota navigators serving Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants — and supporting the H2A Visa Program for temporary agricultural workers — can see a complete skill picture rather than reconstructing it from a paper trail. The connective tissue the Workforce Development Council and Department of Commerce provide at the State level can be operationalized at the learner level through a credential wallet that travels with each worker, including those the State recruits from beyond its borders.

The third lens is interoperability — where existing North Dakota platforms occupy adjacent space and where it is essential that the State’s investments be respected. The North Dakota Workforce Development Council remains the State’s authoritative workforce strategy body; the marketplace operates as a learner-side complement that supports the Council’s coordinated mission. Job Service North Dakota continues exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives credentials produced through Job Service-overseen WIOA programs. The North Dakota Department of Commerce continues exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives credentials produced through Commerce-coordinated workforce programs including Operation Intern, RWIP, the Technical Skills Training Grant, and the Tribal College Grant program. The North Dakota University System continues exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives credentials issued by the 11 NDUS colleges including NDSCS. The State Board for Career and Technical Education continues exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives credentials produced through CTE-coordinated K-12 and postsecondary programs. The five tribally controlled community colleges continue exactly as they operate today, with full respect for tribal sovereignty in credential issuance and data governance; the marketplace receives credentials issued by tribally controlled institutions according to terms each institution determines.

The matrix below — included here as a reference North Dakota leadership may return to — applies three perspectives to selected initiatives. The Complement column identifies where the marketplace adds capabilities current State investments do not provide. The Bridge column identifies where the marketplace connects presently separate systems. The Interoperability column describes how the marketplace is designed to work alongside existing North Dakota platforms.

If the State were to find this conversation worth continuing, three paths forward suggest themselves — each with discrete decision points and none requiring the State to commit beyond the step in front of it. The first is a discovery brief: a joint presentation to the North Dakota Workforce Development Council, the North Dakota Department of Commerce, Job Service North Dakota, the North Dakota University System, the Department of CTE, the State Board of Higher Education, and — where the State considers it useful — NDSCS, Lake Region State College, the five tribally controlled community colleges (on terms each institution determines), and Workforce Development Council member organizations representing North Dakota employers, outlining the marketplace’s open-standards architecture, the at-no-cost foundation, and what a small first cohort could look like. The second is a sector pilot: subject to a State decision to proceed, a focused cohort drawn from one of North Dakota’s strategic sectors — energy, healthcare, advanced manufacturing, IT, agriculture, or construction trades are natural candidates — in which NDSCS or LRSC dual-credit apprenticeship completers, House Bill 1382 scholarship-funded apprentices, Technical Skills Training Grant participants, or Operation Intern or RWIP-supported workers receive a Comprehensive Learner Record made available through the EBSCOed marketplace. The third path would, only at the State’s direction, layer in optional subscription services that integrate the marketplace with Job Service ND, the Eligible Training Provider List, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act case management, registered apprenticeship sponsor records, the House Bill 1382 scholarship pipeline, the Tribal College Grant program (on tribal college governance terms), and Department of Commerce workforce program data. Any eligibility automation North Dakota wished to pursue for Workforce Pell, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, or registered apprenticeship would live in this phase. State funds engage only here, and only to the extent the State chooses to procure subscription services. The first two phases require no new State appropriation.

Several considerations may inform North Dakota’s thinking about the partnership. The marketplace’s open-standards foundation ensures the State’s prior investments in Job Service ND, the credentialing work of the 11 NDUS colleges (including NDSCS and LRSC), the five tribally controlled community colleges (under their own governance terms), and registered apprenticeship sponsors continue to operate as they do today; the marketplace exchanges data with those systems rather than displacing them. The no-cost foundation means that the early phases require no new State appropriation; State funding considerations arise only in the third phase, and only for services the State elects to procure. North Dakota’s distinctive workforce position — with the third-lowest unemployment rate in the country, more than 16,000 open jobs, and the clear need to recruit workers from beyond State borders — may make North Dakota a particularly natural fit for a multi-State-recognized credential marketplace that supports both in-State credential portability and out-of-State worker recruitment.

A further consideration may be relevant to the State’s long-term planning. As the marketplace becomes the trusted system of record for skills and credentials across North Dakota, states often find that certain point solutions they currently maintain — case management tooling supporting Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants, Eligible Training Provider List eligibility workflows, standalone skills-assessment platforms, district- or institution-level credential wallets that today operate in isolation, and the patchwork of employer-side job-board and applicant-tracking subscriptions that result when many platforms each serve a slice of the same workforce — become candidates for consolidation or retirement, with associated reductions in ongoing licensing and maintenance costs. EBSCOed offers no opinion on which systems North Dakota may wish to retain and which it may wish to consolidate; those decisions belong to the State and the relevant agencies, on the State’s own timeline. We mention the possibility only because the cost-of-ownership story is one states have asked us to address, and because we are glad to support evaluations of that kind when the State considers them useful.

We recognize that North Dakota has earned the right to be deliberate. The State’s coordination among the Workforce Development Council, the Department of Commerce, Job Service North Dakota, the North Dakota University System, the Department of CTE, the State Board of Higher Education, the five tribally controlled community colleges, and the employer community participating in the comprehensive apprenticeship package reflects years of careful institution-building. EBSCOed has no interest in disrupting that coordination, and we particularly respect tribal sovereignty in any engagement with the five tribally controlled community colleges. Our interest is in offering a free, open-standards layer that makes North Dakota’s existing investments — particularly the ND Works Investment Plan, House Bill 1382, the NDSCS Registered Apprenticeship-to-AAS pathway, the LRSC dual federally registered apprenticeship and degree model, the Tribal College Grant program, and the comprehensive apprenticeship package — more useful to the North Dakotans they serve and to the workers North Dakota recruits from beyond its borders.

If any of this is worth a conversation, we would welcome one — at the convenience of whoever the State considers the right convening authority, in whatever form would be most useful, and on whatever timeline the State prefers. The contact information below is the appropriate first point of contact. The QR codes that follow provide direct access to the current EBSCOed ecosystem overview, which is kept current as capabilities evolve, and to LER.me itself, where any North Dakotan may today create a free Learning and Employment Record in a few minutes.

With great respect for the work North Dakota is already doing, and with hope that the next chapter may be written together,

Ohio has built one of the most ambitious employer-led credential systems in the country. TechCred — established under H.B. 2 of the 133rd General Assembly and administered by the Governor’s Office of Workforce Transformation in partnership with the Ohio Department of Higher Education — has reimbursed Ohio employers for tens of thousands of industry-recognized, technology-focused microcredentials since launch, with the State investing tens of millions per biennium in employer reimbursement. The Individual Microcredential Assistance Program (IMAP) extends the same framework to individual learners. The Innovative Workforce Incentive Program (IWIP) puts $25 million into the K-12 system specifically to incentivize industry-recognized credential attainment by high school students. RAPIDS — Regionally Aligned Priorities in Delivering Skills — channels ODHE investments into seven regions to address local industry-specific workforce needs. The Office of Workforce Transformation is a cabinet-level office that serves as the convening authority across 17 Ohio state agencies running nearly 200 workforce-related programs, including ODJFS, ODHE, ODE, Opportunities for Ohioans with Disabilities, and the Department of Aging. The OhioMeansJobs system — including OhioMeansJobs.com and the In-Demand Jobs List developed with JobsOhio and employer input — anchors statewide labor exchange and demand signaling, with the TopJobs portal offering an interactive view of the same data. Few states have built so much, so deliberately, in service of their workers.

This letter is written in admiration of that work, and with a specific proposition: that the next chapter of Ohio’s education-to-workforce strategy may benefit from a learner-held layer that the State has not yet had occasion to build. EBSCOed is the division of EBSCO Information Services that has spent the last several years constructing that layer — the LER talent marketplace — and offering LER.me to states, learners, educators, and employers at no cost. We write to share what it is, where it complements Ohio’s investments, where it bridges systems that today operate in parallel, and how it is designed to extend rather than disturb the credential infrastructure Ohio has already built.

LER.me is an open-standards platform that gives each individual a portable digital wallet containing their verified learning and employment records. The marketplace is built on the IEEE Learning and Employment Record standard, Open Badges 3.0, and Comprehensive Learner Record 2.0 — the same open standards used across the credentialing field — so the data Ohio already publishes to the Credential Engine Registry, and the credentials issued by Ohio’s community colleges, four-year universities, Ohio Technical Centers, K-12 districts, and registered apprenticeship sponsors, remain authoritative and continue to operate exactly as they do today. The marketplace exchanges with those systems; it does not replace them. The platform itself is free to learners, to educators, and to employers, with optional subscription services available to states and large institutions that want deeper integration or custom analytics. The foundation is the foundation, and the foundation is free.

Four capabilities are most relevant to Ohio’s context. The first is free credential issuance: any approved Ohio institution, Ohio Technical Center, apprenticeship sponsor, or employer can issue verifiable credentials into learner-held wallets without licensing fees, supporting institutions of every size and budget on equal footing — a particular benefit alongside Ohio’s existing employer-reimbursement framework, since marketplace issuance has no cost to either side. The second is an open employer marketplace, in which Ohio employers post opportunities and discover qualified candidates based on verified skills and credentials, again at no cost. The third is public workforce intelligence — dashboards that aggregate credential issuance and labor demand data as linked open data, available to State agencies for planning, reporting, and informing future revisions of the In-Demand Jobs List. The fourth is the contributor framework, which crosswalks issued credentials to occupational standards and to State-defined high-demand categories — including the TechCred Eligible Credential List and the In-Demand Jobs List — at the point of issuance, so the demand signal Ohio has invested years in defining is operationalized at the individual level, automatically.

Ohio’s distinctive bet is that employers should be the demand signal — and that the State should reimburse employers and providers for producing the credentials that signal demands. TechCred works because it lets businesses define which credentials they want and then funds the upskilling that produces them. IMAP extends the same logic to individuals. IWIP extends it again to K-12, paying for credentialing assessments so students don’t bear the cost. RAPIDS puts the same logic to work regionally. What sits underneath every one of those programs is the same need: a verifiable, portable, learner-held record that lets each Ohioan carry their TechCred-funded credential, their IMAP-funded credential, their IWIP-earned credential, their Ohio Technical Center training, their community college certificate, their registered apprenticeship milestones, and their employer-issued microcredentials in one place, recognized by employers, transferable across institutions, and durable beyond any one platform. That record is what the LER marketplace provides, at no cost, on the open standards the State already uses. EBSCOed is not asking Ohio to change its employer-led credential bet — we are offering the learner-side layer that makes the credentials Ohio’s employers and providers are already producing visible and portable in each Ohioan’s hand.

There are three lenses through which we have found it useful to discuss this marketplace with state leadership, and we offer them here in the same spirit. The first is complement — where the marketplace adds capability Ohio has not yet had reason to build. TechCred measures credential production at the employer level and reimburses based on completion; the marketplace adds the learner-side artifact, a verifiable record each Ohioan carries with them. The TechCred Eligible Credential List defines what counts as a technology-focused credential under the program; the marketplace lets every TechCred-eligible provider, employer, community college, Ohio Technical Center, and university issue those credentials as verifiable Open Badges directly into learner wallets, with TechCred designation embedded in the badge metadata at issuance. IMAP-funded individual credentials face the same opportunity. IWIP-funded high school credentials face the same opportunity. None of this displaces Ohio’s current investments. All of it makes them more visible, more durable, and more useful to the Ohioans who earn them.

The second lens is bridge — where the marketplace connects systems that today operate in parallel. An Ohioan who earns an IWIP-funded credential in high school, completes an IMAP-funded individual microcredential, participates in TechCred-funded upskilling through an employer, completes a community college certificate or Ohio Technical Center program, finishes a registered apprenticeship, and gains additional employer-issued microcredentials currently has those attainments living in different places. The marketplace allows them to travel together in one learner-owned record. OhioMeansJobs Center navigators serving Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants and Comprehensive Case Management and Employment Program (CCMEP) youth can see a complete skill picture rather than reconstructing it from a paper trail. The connective tissue today lives in different reimbursement programs administered by different agencies; the marketplace puts it in the learner, where it belongs.

The third lens is interoperability — where existing Ohio platforms occupy adjacent space and where it is essential that the State’s investments be respected. TechCred’s employer reimbursement process, administered by the Governor’s Office of Workforce Transformation and the Department of Development, remains exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives credentials issued through TechCred-eligible programs and presents them in learner wallets without altering the reimbursement process. IMAP and IWIP continue as they are. The TechCred Eligible Credential List remains ODHE’s authoritative list of qualifying credentials; the In-Demand Jobs List remains the State’s authoritative occupation list. OhioMeansJobs.com remains Ohio’s official labor exchange and TopJobs remains the State’s interactive demand-data portal; the marketplace acts as a complementary skills-and-credentials profile layer that posts to those systems through standard application programming interfaces, and that, where useful, supplies verified candidate credentials into OhioMeansJobs profiles.

The matrix below — included here as a reference Ohio leadership may return to — applies three perspectives to selected initiatives. The Complement column identifies where the marketplace adds capabilities current State investments do not provide. The Bridge column identifies where the marketplace connects presently separate systems. The Interoperability column describes how the marketplace is designed to work alongside existing Ohio platforms.

If the State were to find this conversation worth continuing, three paths forward suggest themselves — each with discrete decision points and none requiring the State to commit beyond the step in front of it. The first is a discovery brief: a joint presentation to the Governor’s Office of Workforce Transformation, the Department of Higher Education, the Department of Job and Family Services, the Department of Education, and the Governor’s Executive Workforce Board outlining the marketplace’s open-standards architecture, the at-no-cost foundation, and what a small first cohort could look like. The second is a sector pilot: subject to a State decision to proceed, a focused cohort drawn from one of Ohio’s technology-focused TechCred priority areas — advanced manufacturing, information technology, healthcare technology, or logistics technology are natural candidates — in which TechCred completers and IMAP recipients receive a Comprehensive Learner Record aligned with the TechCred Eligible Credential List designation and made available through the EBSCOed marketplace. A RAPIDS-region pilot is another natural starting shape. The third path would, only at the State’s direction, layer in optional subscription services that integrate the marketplace with OhioMeansJobs.com, the Eligible Training Provider system, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act case management, CCMEP youth records, the TechCred and IMAP reimbursement pipelines, and the IWIP school district workflow. Any eligibility automation Ohio wished to pursue for Workforce Pell, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, or registered apprenticeship would live in this phase. State funds engage only here, and only to the extent the State chooses to procure subscription services. The first two phases require no new State appropriation.

Several considerations may inform Ohio’s thinking about the partnership. The marketplace’s open-standards foundation ensures the State’s prior investments in the Credential Engine Registry, the TechCred Eligible Credential List, the In-Demand Jobs List, OhioMeansJobs.com, TopJobs, and the credentialing work of Ohio’s community colleges, Ohio Technical Centers, public and independent universities continue to operate as they do today; the marketplace exchanges data with those systems rather than displacing them. The no-cost foundation means that the early phases require no new State appropriation; State funding considerations arise only in the third phase, and only for services the State elects to procure. Ohio’s distinctive arrangement — 17 state agencies running close to 200 workforce-related programs convened through the Office of Workforce Transformation — may benefit from engagement at both the State and agency level during any broader rollout, and EBSCOed welcomes the opportunity to participate in such conversations at the State’s direction, in whatever forum the State considers most useful.

A further consideration may be relevant to the State’s long-term planning. As the marketplace becomes the trusted system of record for skills and credentials across Ohio, states often find that certain point solutions they currently maintain — case management tooling supporting Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants, Eligible Training Provider List eligibility workflows, standalone skills-assessment platforms, district- or institution-level credential wallets that today operate in isolation, and the patchwork of employer-side job-board and applicant-tracking subscriptions that result when many platforms each serve a slice of the same workforce — become candidates for consolidation or retirement, with associated reductions in ongoing licensing and maintenance costs. EBSCOed offers no opinion on which systems Ohio may wish to retain and which it may wish to consolidate; those decisions belong to the State and the relevant agencies, on the State’s own timeline. We mention the possibility only because the cost-of-ownership story is one states have asked us to address, and because we are glad to support evaluations of that kind when the State considers them useful.

We recognize that Ohio has earned the right to be deliberate. The State’s coordination among the Governor’s Office of Workforce Transformation, the Governor’s Executive Workforce Board, the Department of Higher Education, the Department of Job and Family Services, the Department of Education, Opportunities for Ohioans with Disabilities, the Department of Aging, JobsOhio, the Ohio Association of Community Colleges, the Inter-University Council, and the 20 local workforce development areas reflects years of careful institution-building. EBSCOed has no interest in disrupting that coordination. Our interest is in offering a free, open-standards layer that makes Ohio’s existing investments — particularly TechCred, IMAP, IWIP, RAPIDS, and the broader employer-led credential infrastructure the State has built — more useful to the Ohioans they serve.

If any of this is worth a conversation, we would welcome one — at the convenience of whoever the State considers the right convening authority, in whatever form would be most useful, and on whatever timeline the State prefers. The contact information below is the appropriate first point of contact. The QR codes that follow provide direct access to the current EBSCOed ecosystem overview, which is kept current as capabilities evolve, and to LER.me itself, where any Ohioan may today create a free Learning and Employment Record in a few minutes.

With great respect for the work Ohio is already doing, and with hope that the next chapter may be written together,

Oklahoma has, for more than a century, operated one of the most efficient career and technical education systems in the country. Oklahoma CareerTech — comprising 29 technology center districts operating across 62 campuses plus skills centers and PK-12 partnerships — produced more than 25,000 certificates in FY24, served more than 520,000 enrollments, and achieved a 94 percent positive placement rate, all on roughly four percent of the State’s education appropriations. State Director Brent Haken has noted that no CareerTech system in the country has done more with less. In December 2025, the Oklahoma Workforce Commission released its Workforce Transformation Plan, organizing the State’s workforce ecosystem around three pillars: One System, Industry-Driven, and Results-Based & Data-Powered. The plan realigns K-12, higher education, CareerTech, public workforce programs, economic development partners, and employers around a shared talent-pipeline model. The Training for Industry Program (TIP), CareerTech’s signature customized training program, partners with Oklahoma employers to upskill workforces in alignment with industry need. The Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education coordinate the 25-institution Oklahoma State System of Higher Education. Oklahoma Works, the State’s workforce delivery network, connects job seekers and employers through Oklahoma Works.com. Governor Stitt’s continuing focus on workforce development and apprenticeships ties the system to the State’s broader economic mission. Few states have built so much, so deliberately, in service of their workers.

This letter is written in admiration of that work, and with a specific proposition: that the next chapter of Oklahoma’s education-to-workforce strategy may benefit from a learner-held layer that the State has not yet had occasion to build. EBSCOed is the division of EBSCO Information Services that has spent the last several years constructing that layer — the LER talent marketplace — and offering LER.me to states, learners, educators, and employers at no cost. We write to share what it is, where it complements Oklahoma’s investments, where it bridges systems that today operate in parallel, and how it is designed to extend rather than disturb the credential infrastructure Oklahoma has already built.

LER.me is an open-standards platform that gives each individual a portable digital wallet containing their verified learning and employment records. The marketplace is built on the IEEE Learning and Employment Record standard, Open Badges 3.0, and Comprehensive Learner Record 2.0 — the same open standards used across the credentialing field — so the data Oklahoma already publishes to the Credential Engine Registry, and the credentials issued by Oklahoma CareerTech technology centers, the Oklahoma State System of Higher Education institutions, K-12 districts, and registered apprenticeship sponsors, remain authoritative and continue to operate exactly as they do today. The marketplace exchanges with those systems; it does not replace them. The platform itself is free to learners, to educators, and to employers, with optional subscription services available to states and large institutions that want deeper integration or custom analytics. The foundation is the foundation, and the foundation is free.

Four capabilities are most relevant to Oklahoma’s context. The first is free credential issuance: any approved Oklahoma institution, technology center, apprenticeship sponsor, or employer can issue verifiable credentials into learner-held wallets without licensing fees, supporting institutions of every size and budget on equal footing — a particular benefit alongside CareerTech’s resource-efficient operating model. The second is an open employer marketplace, in which Oklahoma employers post opportunities and discover qualified candidates based on verified skills and credentials, again at no cost. The third is public workforce intelligence — dashboards that aggregate credential issuance and labor demand data as linked open data, available to State agencies for planning, reporting, and supporting the Workforce Transformation Plan’s Results-Based & Data-Powered pillar. The fourth is the contributor framework, which crosswalks issued credentials to occupational standards and to State-defined high-demand categories at the point of issuance, so the demand signal Oklahoma has invested years in defining is operationalized at the individual level, automatically.

Oklahoma’s distinctive strength is the productivity of its CareerTech system. 25,000 certificates a year on four percent of education appropriations, 94 percent positive placement, more than 520,000 enrollments, 10,600 businesses served in FY25 — those numbers describe a credential production engine few states can match. The Workforce Transformation Plan released in December 2025 commits the State to operating that engine inside a One System framework that ties CareerTech, higher education, K-12, public workforce programs, and economic development together. What sits underneath every one of those structures is the same need: a verifiable, portable, learner-held record that lets each Oklahoman carry their CareerTech certificate, their TIP-funded training, their associate or bachelor’s degree, their registered apprenticeship milestones, and their employer-issued microcredentials in one place, recognized by employers, transferable across institutions, and durable beyond any one platform. That record is what the LER marketplace provides, at no cost, on the open standards the State already uses. EBSCOed is not asking Oklahoma to change CareerTech’s operating model — we are offering the learner-side layer that makes the certificates Oklahoma CareerTech produces every year visible and portable in each Oklahoman’s hand.

There are three lenses through which we have found it useful to discuss this marketplace with state leadership, and we offer them here in the same spirit. The first is complement — where the marketplace adds capability Oklahoma has not yet had reason to build. The Workforce Transformation Plan’s Results-Based & Data-Powered pillar measures attainment and outcomes at the State and program level; the marketplace adds the learner-side artifact, a verifiable record each Oklahoman carries with them. CareerTech’s 25,000+ annual certificates travel today through technology center transcripts and individual certifications; the marketplace lets them travel as verifiable Open Badges directly into learner wallets, at no cost to any technology center, learner, or employer. The Training for Industry Program’s customized employer training credentials face the same opportunity, as do credentials issued by the Oklahoma State System of Higher Education’s 25 institutions, registered apprenticeship sponsors, and skills center partners. None of this displaces Oklahoma’s current investments. All of it makes them more visible, more durable, and more useful to the Oklahomans who earn them.

The second lens is bridge — where the marketplace connects systems that today operate in parallel. An Oklahoman who completes a CareerTech program in high school, transitions into Oklahoma State System of Higher Education studies, participates in TIP-funded employer upskilling, completes a registered apprenticeship, and gains employer-issued microcredentials currently has those attainments living in different places. The marketplace allows them to travel together in one learner-owned record. Oklahoma Works partners and Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act service center navigators can see a complete skill picture rather than reconstructing it from a paper trail. The Workforce Transformation Plan’s One System pillar can be operationalized at the learner level through a credential wallet that travels with each Oklahoman from PK-12 through CareerTech, higher education, and Oklahoma employment.

The third lens is interoperability — where existing Oklahoma platforms occupy adjacent space and where it is essential that the State’s investments be respected. Oklahoma CareerTech remains the State’s authoritative career and technical education system; the marketplace operates as a complementary layer that receives credentials issued by technology centers, skills centers, and CareerTech school districts without altering CareerTech’s operating model. The Training for Industry Program continues exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives TIP-funded credentials in learner wallets. The Oklahoma Workforce Commission remains the State’s authoritative coordinating body for the Workforce Transformation Plan; the marketplace supports the Commission’s mission as a learner-side complement. OKJobMatch and Oklahoma Works delivery channels remain the State’s official employment infrastructure; the marketplace acts as a complementary skills-and-credentials profile layer that posts to those systems through standard application programming interfaces.

The matrix below — included here as a reference Oklahoma leadership may return to — applies three perspectives to selected initiatives. The Complement column identifies where the marketplace adds capabilities current State investments do not provide. The Bridge column identifies where the marketplace connects presently separate systems. The Interoperability column describes how the marketplace is designed to work alongside existing Oklahoma platforms.

If the State were to find this conversation worth continuing, three paths forward suggest themselves — each with discrete decision points and none requiring the State to commit beyond the step in front of it. The first is a discovery brief: a joint presentation to the Oklahoma Workforce Commission, Oklahoma CareerTech, the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education, the Oklahoma State Department of Education, and — where the State considers it useful — Oklahoma Works leadership, outlining the marketplace’s open-standards architecture, the at-no-cost foundation, and what a small first cohort could look like. The second is a sector pilot: subject to a State decision to proceed, a focused cohort drawn from one of CareerTech’s high-demand sectors — health careers, advanced manufacturing, construction trades, aviation, IT, or aerospace are natural candidates — in which CareerTech graduates receive a Comprehensive Learner Record aligned with Workforce Transformation Plan designations and made available through the EBSCOed marketplace. A TIP-region pilot tied to one or two technology center districts is another natural starting shape. The third path would, only at the State’s direction, layer in optional subscription services that integrate the marketplace with OKJobMatch, Oklahoma Works, the Eligible Training Provider List, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act case management, registered apprenticeship sponsor records, and CareerTech reporting infrastructure. Any eligibility automation Oklahoma wished to pursue for Workforce Pell, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, or registered apprenticeship would live in this phase. State funds engage only here, and only to the extent the State chooses to procure subscription services. The first two phases require no new State appropriation.

Several considerations may inform Oklahoma’s thinking about the partnership. The marketplace’s open-standards foundation ensures the State’s prior investments in the Credential Engine Registry, OKJobMatch and Oklahoma Works, and the credentialing work of CareerTech’s 29 technology center districts and the 25 Oklahoma State System of Higher Education institutions continue to operate as they do today; the marketplace exchanges data with those systems rather than displacing them. The no-cost foundation means that the early phases require no new State appropriation; State funding considerations arise only in the third phase, and only for services the State elects to procure. Oklahoma’s distinctive CareerTech productivity — 25,000 certificates a year on four percent of education appropriations — may inform how the State thinks about a marketplace whose contributor framework is explicitly designed to make those certificates visible and portable.

A further consideration may be relevant to the State’s long-term planning. As the marketplace becomes the trusted system of record for skills and credentials across Oklahoma, states often find that certain point solutions they currently maintain — case management tooling supporting Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants, Eligible Training Provider List eligibility workflows, standalone skills-assessment platforms, district- or institution-level credential wallets that today operate in isolation, and the patchwork of employer-side job-board and applicant-tracking subscriptions that result when many platforms each serve a slice of the same workforce — become candidates for consolidation or retirement, with associated reductions in ongoing licensing and maintenance costs. EBSCOed offers no opinion on which systems Oklahoma may wish to retain and which it may wish to consolidate; those decisions belong to the State and the relevant agencies, on the State’s own timeline. We mention the possibility only because the cost-of-ownership story is one states have asked us to address, and because we are glad to support evaluations of that kind when the State considers them useful.

We recognize that Oklahoma has earned the right to be deliberate. The State’s coordination among the Oklahoma Workforce Commission, Oklahoma CareerTech, the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education, the Oklahoma State Department of Education, the Oklahoma Office of Workforce Development, Oklahoma Works partners, and the local Workforce Development Boards reflects more than a century of careful institution-building around CareerTech’s distinctive model — and the December 2025 Workforce Transformation Plan represents the State’s most ambitious commitment yet to aligning that institutional heritage with current industry need. EBSCOed has no interest in disrupting that coordination. Our interest is in offering a free, open-standards layer that makes Oklahoma’s existing investments — particularly CareerTech’s certificate production, the Training for Industry Program, and the Workforce Transformation Plan’s One System pillar — more useful to the Oklahomans they serve.

If any of this is worth a conversation, we would welcome one — at the convenience of whoever the State considers the right convening authority, in whatever form would be most useful, and on whatever timeline the State prefers. The contact information below is the appropriate first point of contact. The QR codes that follow provide direct access to the current EBSCOed ecosystem overview, which is kept current as capabilities evolve, and to LER.me itself, where any Oklahoman may today create a free Learning and Employment Record in a few minutes.

With great respect for the work Oklahoma is already doing, and with hope that the next chapter may be written together,

Oregon has, with the structural integration of postsecondary education and workforce development under a single coordinating agency, built one of the most coherent State-level workforce architectures in the country. The Higher Education Coordinating Commission — through its eight offices, including the Office of Community Colleges and Workforce Development (led by Director Donna Lewelling), the Office of Workforce Investments, and the Office of Student Access and Completion — coordinates funding and policy across Oregon’s 17 locally-governed community colleges, seven public universities, and the State’s workforce development partners. HECC houses the Oregon Workforce and Talent Development Board, which creates a natural alignment between WIOA Title I and II programs and Oregon’s community colleges and universities. The State’s Adult Attainment Goal — established under House Bill 2311 (2017) and adopted by HECC in November 2018 — commits Oregon to 300,000 additional adult Oregonians earning a new degree, certificate, or credential of value by 2030, and to reducing attainment gaps for underserved people of color, low-income learners, and rural learners by half during the decade. The Adult Learner Advisory Committee, formed in 2019, advises HECC and the WTDB. Oregon’s complementary 40-40-20 goal — with a 2025 end date — is now being replaced through HECC’s State Attainment Collaborative and an Oregon steering committee that includes the Legislature, institutions, K-12, workforce partners, and business and community leaders. Oregon Opportunity Grant, Oregon Promise, Oregon Tribal Student Grant, and ASPIRE round out the State’s financial aid infrastructure. The Transfer Council coordinates the Oregon Transfer Compass and Core Transfer Maps. Few states have built so much, so deliberately, in service of their workers.

This letter is written in admiration of that work, and with a specific proposition: that the next chapter of Oregon’s education-to-workforce strategy may benefit from a learner-held layer that the State has not yet had occasion to build. EBSCOed is the division of EBSCO Information Services that has spent the last several years constructing that layer — the LER talent marketplace — and offering LER.me to states, learners, educators, and employers at no cost. We write to share what it is, where it complements Oregon’s investments, where it bridges systems that today operate in parallel, and how it is designed to extend rather than disturb the credential infrastructure Oregon has already built.

LER.me is an open-standards platform that gives each individual a portable digital wallet containing their verified learning and employment records. The marketplace is built on the IEEE Learning and Employment Record standard, Open Badges 3.0, and Comprehensive Learner Record 2.0 — the same open standards used across the credentialing field — so the data Oregon already publishes to the Credential Engine Registry, and the credentials issued by Oregon’s 17 community colleges, seven public universities, K-12 districts, and registered apprenticeship sponsors, remain authoritative and continue to operate exactly as they do today. The marketplace exchanges with those systems; it does not replace them. The platform itself is free to learners, to educators, and to employers, with optional subscription services available to states and large institutions that want deeper integration or custom analytics. The foundation is the foundation, and the foundation is free.

Four capabilities are most relevant to Oregon’s context. The first is free credential issuance: any approved Oregon institution, apprenticeship sponsor, or employer can issue verifiable credentials into learner-held wallets without licensing fees, supporting institutions of every size and budget on equal footing. The second is an open employer marketplace, in which Oregon employers post opportunities and discover qualified candidates based on verified skills and credentials, again at no cost. The third is public workforce intelligence — dashboards that aggregate credential issuance and labor demand data as linked open data, available to State agencies for planning, reporting, and supporting Oregon’s inter-agency longitudinal data system coordinated by HECC. The fourth is the contributor framework, which crosswalks issued credentials to occupational standards and to State-defined high-demand designations at the point of issuance, so the demand signal Oregon has invested years in defining is operationalized at the individual level, automatically.

Oregon’s distinctive structural advantage is the integration of postsecondary education and workforce development inside a single coordinating commission. Few states have placed WIOA Title I and II programs, community college coordination, four-year institutional policy and budget development, the Workforce and Talent Development Board, the Office of Workforce Investments, and the State’s financial aid administration inside one agency. That integration is the reason Oregon can speak about its 300,000 adult attainment goal, its community college credential production, and its workforce delivery system as a coherent State effort rather than as separately-administered programs. What sits underneath every one of those structures is the same need: a verifiable, portable, learner-held record that lets each Oregonian carry their community college credential, their public university degree, their Oregon Promise-funded attainment, their registered apprenticeship milestones, their Oregon Youth Corps or Oregon Conservation Corps experience, and their employer-issued microcredentials in one place, recognized by employers, transferable across institutions, and durable beyond any one platform. That record is what the LER marketplace provides, at no cost, on the open standards the State already uses. EBSCOed is not asking Oregon to reorganize HECC — we are offering the learner-side layer that lets Oregon’s distinctive HECC integration show up at the credential level in each Oregonian’s hand.

There are three lenses through which we have found it useful to discuss this marketplace with state leadership, and we offer them here in the same spirit. The first is complement — where the marketplace adds capability Oregon has not yet had reason to build. The Adult Attainment Goal measures progress at the State level; the marketplace adds the learner-side artifact, a verifiable record each Oregonian carries with them. Oregon’s 17 community colleges issue credentials that today travel through CCWD-coordinated transcript and CTE attainment systems; the marketplace gives each college a free way to issue those credentials as verifiable Open Badges directly into learner wallets, with State and Perkins V designations preserved at issuance. Registered apprenticeship sponsors, Oregon Promise recipients, Oregon Tribal Student Grant recipients, Oregon Opportunity Grant recipients, Oregon Conservation Corps and Oregon Youth Corps participants face the same opportunity. None of this displaces Oregon’s current investments. All of it makes them more visible, more durable, and more useful to the Oregonians who earn them.

The second lens is bridge — where the marketplace connects systems that today operate in parallel. An Oregonian who participates in I-BEST or Vocational ESL during adult education, earns a community college credential funded by Oregon Promise, transfers to a public university through the Oregon Transfer Compass, completes a registered apprenticeship, participates in Oregon Youth Corps or Oregon Conservation Corps, and gains employer-issued microcredentials currently has those attainments living in different places — HECC’s inter-agency longitudinal data system ties them together analytically, but the learner does not carry a verifiable record they can show an employer. The marketplace allows them to travel together in one learner-owned record. WorkSource Oregon navigators serving Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants can see a complete skill picture rather than reconstructing it from a paper trail. The connective tissue HECC’s structural integration provides at the State level can be operationalized at the learner level through a credential wallet that travels with each Oregonian.

The third lens is interoperability — where existing Oregon platforms occupy adjacent space and where it is essential that the State’s investments be respected. HECC remains the State’s authoritative coordinating commission and the steward of the inter-agency longitudinal data system; the marketplace operates as a complementary, learner-side layer that gives each Oregonian a portable record while HECC’s longitudinal data system continues to serve State analytic functions. The HECC Office of Community Colleges and Workforce Development remains the authoritative coordinator of Oregon’s 17 community colleges and Perkins V postsecondary CTE; the marketplace receives credentials issued by CCWD-coordinated programs. The Oregon Workforce and Talent Development Board continues exactly as it operates today; the marketplace supports the Board’s mission as a learner-side complement. WorkSource Oregon, operated by the Oregon Employment Department in cooperation with HECC, remains the State’s authoritative labor exchange; the marketplace acts as a complementary skills-and-credentials profile layer that posts to WorkSource Oregon through standard application programming interfaces.

The matrix below — included here as a reference Oregon leadership may return to — applies three perspectives to selected initiatives. The Complement column identifies where the marketplace adds capabilities current State investments do not provide. The Bridge column identifies where the marketplace connects presently separate systems. The Interoperability column describes how the marketplace is designed to work alongside existing Oregon platforms.

If the State were to find this conversation worth continuing, three paths forward suggest themselves — each with discrete decision points and none requiring the State to commit beyond the step in front of it. The first is a discovery brief: a joint presentation to the Higher Education Coordinating Commission, the HECC Office of Community Colleges and Workforce Development, the HECC Office of Workforce Investments, the Oregon Workforce and Talent Development Board, the Adult Learner Advisory Committee, and — where the State considers it useful — the Oregon Department of Education, the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries, and the Transfer Council, outlining the marketplace’s open-standards architecture, the at-no-cost foundation, and what a small first cohort could look like. The second is a sector pilot: subject to a State decision to proceed, a focused cohort drawn from one of Oregon’s strategic sectors — healthcare, semiconductors and advanced manufacturing, clean energy, or construction trades are natural candidates — in which community college graduates, Oregon Promise recipients, and registered apprenticeship completers receive a Comprehensive Learner Record aligned with State high-demand designations and made available through the EBSCOed marketplace. An adult attainment cohort tied to the Adult Attainment Goal is another natural starting shape. The third path would, only at the State’s direction, layer in optional subscription services that integrate the marketplace with WorkSource Oregon, the Eligible Training Provider List, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act case management, registered apprenticeship sponsor records, the Oregon Transfer Compass data pipeline, and the inter-agency longitudinal data system. Any eligibility automation Oregon wished to pursue for Workforce Pell, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, or registered apprenticeship would live in this phase. State funds engage only here, and only to the extent the State chooses to procure subscription services. The first two phases require no new State appropriation.

Several considerations may inform Oregon’s thinking about the partnership. The marketplace’s open-standards foundation ensures the State’s prior investments in the Credential Engine Registry, WorkSource Oregon, HECC’s inter-agency longitudinal data system, the Oregon Transfer Compass, and the credentialing work of the 17 community colleges, the seven public universities, and the State’s independent institutions continue to operate as they do today; the marketplace exchanges data with those systems rather than displacing them. The no-cost foundation means that the early phases require no new State appropriation; State funding considerations arise only in the third phase, and only for services the State elects to procure. Oregon’s distinctive structural advantage — the integration of community college coordination, public university policy, WIOA Title I and II programs, the Workforce and Talent Development Board, and student financial aid administration inside a single coordinating commission — may make the State a natural fit for engagement at the HECC level, where multiple workforce decisions converge.

A further consideration may be relevant to the State’s long-term planning. As the marketplace becomes the trusted system of record for skills and credentials across Oregon, states often find that certain point solutions they currently maintain — case management tooling supporting Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants, Eligible Training Provider List eligibility workflows, standalone skills-assessment platforms, district- or institution-level credential wallets that today operate in isolation, and the patchwork of employer-side job-board and applicant-tracking subscriptions that result when many platforms each serve a slice of the same workforce — become candidates for consolidation or retirement, with associated reductions in ongoing licensing and maintenance costs. EBSCOed offers no opinion on which systems Oregon may wish to retain and which it may wish to consolidate; those decisions belong to the State and the relevant agencies, on the State’s own timeline. We mention the possibility only because the cost-of-ownership story is one states have asked us to address, and because we are glad to support evaluations of that kind when the State considers them useful.

We recognize that Oregon has earned the right to be deliberate. The State’s coordination through the Higher Education Coordinating Commission and its eight offices, alongside the Oregon Workforce and Talent Development Board, the Oregon Department of Education, the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries, the Adult Learner Advisory Committee, the Transfer Council, the Oregon Employment Department, and the State’s nine Local Workforce Development Boards reflects years of careful institution-building under HECC’s unique integration of education and workforce coordination. EBSCOed has no interest in disrupting that coordination. Our interest is in offering a free, open-standards layer that makes Oregon’s existing investments — particularly the Adult Attainment Goal infrastructure, Oregon Promise, the 17 community colleges' Perkins V CTE work, and the Oregon Transfer Compass — more useful to the Oregonians they serve.

If any of this is worth a conversation, we would welcome one — at the convenience of whoever the State considers the right convening authority, in whatever form would be most useful, and on whatever timeline the State prefers. The contact information below is the appropriate first point of contact. The QR codes that follow provide direct access to the current EBSCOed ecosystem overview, which is kept current as capabilities evolve, and to LER.me itself, where any Oregonian may today create a free Learning and Employment Record in a few minutes.

With great respect for the work Oregon is already doing, and with hope that the next chapter may be written together,

Pennsylvania has, under Governor Shapiro, made one of the most decisive State-level skills-first commitments in the country. On his first full day in office in January 2023, Governor Shapiro signed Executive Order 2023-03 — his administration’s first — instructing the Office of Administration to emphasize skills and experience in Commonwealth job postings and announcing that 92 percent of Commonwealth jobs (approximately 65,000 positions) do not require a four-year college degree. In 2024, Executive Order 2024-01 established the Hire, Improve, Recruit, Empower (HIRE) Committee. The Department of Labor & Industry, under Secretary Nancy Walker, leads the Commonwealth’s workforce delivery, while the Pennsylvania Workforce Development Board sets workforce policy direction. Pennsylvania Industry Partnerships convene cross-sector collaboration in healthcare, IT, manufacturing, building and construction, energy, and other priority sectors. SkillUp™ PA — the Commonwealth’s online training platform — has registered more than 77,000 individuals and supported the completion of 157,296 courses. PA CareerLink® locations across the Commonwealth deliver job-seeker and employer services. The Pennsylvania State Board of Higher Education, under Chief Postsecondary Officer for Economic & Workforce Development Carrie Amann, aligns postsecondary learning with current employer needs. The Shapiro Administration has committed more than $61 million in additional workforce investment across its first two budgets. PAsmart and PAsmart Pathway Innovations to Registered Apprenticeships continue to expand the Commonwealth’s apprenticeship and CTE pipeline, alongside the Certified Teacher Registered Apprentice program. Few states have built so much, so deliberately, in service of their workers.

This letter is written in admiration of that work, and with a specific proposition: that the next chapter of Pennsylvania’s education-to-workforce strategy may benefit from a learner-held layer that the Commonwealth has not yet had occasion to build. EBSCOed is the division of EBSCO Information Services that has spent the last several years constructing that layer — the LER talent marketplace — and offering LER.me to states, learners, educators, and employers at no cost. We write to share what it is, where it complements Pennsylvania’s investments, where it bridges systems that today operate in parallel, and how it is designed to extend rather than disturb the credential infrastructure Pennsylvania has already built.

LER.me is an open-standards platform that gives each individual a portable digital wallet containing their verified learning and employment records. The marketplace is built on the IEEE Learning and Employment Record standard, Open Badges 3.0, and Comprehensive Learner Record 2.0 — the same open standards used across the credentialing field — so the data Pennsylvania already publishes to the Credential Engine Registry, and the credentials issued by the Commonwealth’s 14 community colleges, the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education campuses, the Commonwealth System universities (Penn State, Pitt, Temple, Lincoln), the State’s career and technology centers, K-12 districts, and registered apprenticeship sponsors, remain authoritative and continue to operate exactly as they do today. The marketplace exchanges with those systems; it does not replace them. The platform itself is free to learners, to educators, and to employers, with optional subscription services available to states and large institutions that want deeper integration or custom analytics. The foundation is the foundation, and the foundation is free.

Four capabilities are most relevant to Pennsylvania’s context. The first is free credential issuance: any approved Pennsylvania institution, career and technology center, apprenticeship sponsor, or employer can issue verifiable credentials into learner-held wallets without licensing fees, supporting institutions of every size and budget on equal footing. The second is an open employer marketplace, in which Pennsylvania employers post opportunities and discover qualified candidates based on verified skills and credentials, again at no cost. The third is public workforce intelligence — dashboards that aggregate credential issuance and labor demand data as linked open data, available to State agencies for planning, reporting, and supporting the PA Workforce Development Board’s 2024-2028 WIOA Combined State Plan reporting. The fourth is the contributor framework, which crosswalks issued credentials to occupational standards and to State-defined high-demand designations — including Pennsylvania Industry Partnership sector priorities — at the point of issuance, so the demand signal Pennsylvania has invested years in defining is operationalized at the individual level, automatically.

Pennsylvania’s distinctive achievement is the explicit State commitment to skills-first hiring. Executive Order 2023-03 made the Commonwealth one of the first major states to instruct its agencies to emphasize skills and experience over credential prerequisites — opening 92 percent of State jobs to applicants without four-year degrees. Executive Order 2024-01 followed by establishing the HIRE Committee, formalizing the cross-agency infrastructure for skills-based hiring at the Commonwealth level. SkillUp™ PA’s 77,000-plus registered users and 157,296 completed courses, alongside the Commonwealth Workforce Transformation Program, the State’s Industry Partnerships in healthcare, IT, manufacturing, building and construction, and energy, and the State’s significant FY25-FY26 apprenticeship investment together represent a level of operational commitment few states have matched. What sits underneath every one of those structures is the same need: a verifiable, portable, learner-held record that lets each Pennsylvanian carry their PASSHE or Commonwealth System degree, their community college credential, their career and technology center attainment, their SkillUp PA training, their Industry Partnership-aligned credential, their registered apprenticeship milestones, their Certified Teacher Registered Apprentice attainment, and their employer-issued microcredentials in one place, recognized by Commonwealth State agencies hiring under EO 2023-03 and by private employers, transferable across institutions, and durable beyond any one platform. That record is what the LER marketplace provides, at no cost, on the open standards the Commonwealth already uses. EBSCOed is not asking Pennsylvania to alter the direction established by EO 2023-03 or EO 2024-01 — we are offering the learner-side layer that operationalizes the Commonwealth’s skills-first commitment at each Pennsylvanian’s hand.

There are three lenses through which we have found it useful to discuss this marketplace with Commonwealth leadership, and we offer them here in the same spirit. The first is complement — where the marketplace adds capability Pennsylvania has not yet had reason to build. EO 2023-03’s skills-first direction measures the State’s hiring posture at the Commonwealth level; the marketplace adds the learner-side artifact, a verifiable record each Pennsylvanian carries with them that State and private hiring managers can read directly. The HIRE Committee under EO 2024-01 produces State-level recruiting strategy; the marketplace gives each PASSHE campus, Commonwealth System university, community college, career and technology center, PA CareerLink® partner, and registered apprenticeship sponsor a free way to issue credentials as verifiable Open Badges directly into learner wallets, with State and Industry Partnership designation embedded in the badge metadata at issuance. None of this displaces Pennsylvania’s current investments. All of it makes them more visible, more durable, and more useful to the Pennsylvanians who earn them.

The second lens is bridge — where the marketplace connects systems that today operate in parallel. A Pennsylvanian who completes career and technical education through a career and technology center, earns a community college credential, attends a PASSHE or Commonwealth System university, completes SkillUp PA training, participates in a PAsmart-funded Registered Apprenticeship, completes a Certified Teacher Registered Apprenticeship, and gains employer-issued microcredentials currently has those attainments living in different places. The marketplace allows them to travel together in one learner-owned record. PA CareerLink® navigators and Local Workforce Development Boards (including Partner4Work in Allegheny County, the Southwest Corner Workforce Development Board, and the Luzerne-Schuylkill and Lackawanna Workforce Development Boards) serving Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants — and Commonwealth State agency hiring managers operating under EO 2023-03 — can see a complete skill picture rather than reconstructing it from a paper trail. The connective tissue the Department of Labor & Industry provides at the Commonwealth level can be operationalized at the learner level through a credential wallet that travels with each Pennsylvanian.

The third lens is interoperability — where existing Pennsylvania platforms occupy adjacent space and where it is essential that the Commonwealth’s investments be respected. The Pennsylvania Workforce Development Board remains the Commonwealth’s authoritative workforce policy body; the marketplace operates as a learner-side complement that supports the Board’s mission and the 2024-2028 WIOA Combined State Plan. The Department of Labor & Industry, under Secretary Walker, continues exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives credentials produced through L&I-overseen programs. Pennsylvania Industry Partnerships continue exactly as they operate today; the marketplace receives credentials produced through Industry Partnership-aligned training. PA CareerLink® and the State’s labor exchange remain Pennsylvania’s official employment channels; the marketplace acts as a complementary skills-and-credentials profile layer that posts to those systems through standard application programming interfaces. SkillUp™ PA, employment.pa.gov, and the Commonwealth’s skills-first hiring infrastructure continue exactly as they operate today; the marketplace complements them at the learner-credential level.

The matrix below — included here as a reference Pennsylvania leadership may return to — applies three perspectives to selected initiatives. The Complement column identifies where the marketplace adds capabilities current Commonwealth investments do not provide. The Bridge column identifies where the marketplace connects presently separate systems. The Interoperability column describes how the marketplace is designed to work alongside existing Pennsylvania platforms.

If the Commonwealth were to find this conversation worth continuing, three paths forward suggest themselves — each with discrete decision points and none requiring the Commonwealth to commit beyond the step in front of it. The first is a discovery brief: a joint presentation to the Department of Labor & Industry, the Pennsylvania Workforce Development Board, the Office of Administration, the Pennsylvania State Board of Higher Education, the Pennsylvania Department of Education, and — where the Commonwealth considers it useful — the Pennsylvania Commission for Community Colleges, PASSHE Office of the Chancellor, and Local Workforce Development Board leadership including Partner4Work, outlining the marketplace’s open-standards architecture, the at-no-cost foundation, and what a small first cohort could look like. The second is a sector pilot: subject to a Commonwealth decision to proceed, a focused cohort drawn from one of Pennsylvania’s Industry Partnerships — healthcare, IT, advanced manufacturing, building and construction (with employer partners including Eastern Atlantic States Carpenters and Sheet Metal Workers Local 19), or energy are natural candidates — in which Industry Partnership members, PAsmart Pathway Innovations grantees, or Certified Teacher Registered Apprentices receive a Comprehensive Learner Record aligned with Commonwealth high-demand designations and made available through the EBSCOed marketplace. The third path would, only at the Commonwealth’s direction, layer in optional subscription services that integrate the marketplace with PA CareerLink®, the Eligible Training Provider List, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act case management, registered apprenticeship sponsor records, SkillUp PA, and Commonwealth Workforce Transformation Program data. Any eligibility automation Pennsylvania wished to pursue for Workforce Pell, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, or registered apprenticeship would live in this phase. Commonwealth funds engage only here, and only to the extent the Commonwealth chooses to procure subscription services. The first two phases require no new Commonwealth appropriation.

Several considerations may inform Pennsylvania’s thinking about the partnership. The marketplace’s open-standards foundation ensures the Commonwealth’s prior investments in the Credential Engine Registry, PA CareerLink®, SkillUp PA, employment.pa.gov, and the credentialing work of the 14 community colleges, the PASSHE campuses, the Commonwealth System universities, and the State’s career and technology centers continue to operate as they do today; the marketplace exchanges data with those systems rather than displacing them. The no-cost foundation means that the early phases require no new Commonwealth appropriation; State funding considerations arise only in the third phase, and only for services the Commonwealth elects to procure. Pennsylvania’s distinctive structural commitment — Executive Order 2023-03’s skills-first hiring direction signed on the Governor’s first full day in office, paired with Executive Order 2024-01’s HIRE Committee — may make the Commonwealth a natural fit for engagement with a learner-side credential layer that operationalizes those EOs at the individual credential level.

A further consideration may be relevant to the Commonwealth’s long-term planning. As the marketplace becomes the trusted system of record for skills and credentials across Pennsylvania, states often find that certain point solutions they currently maintain — case management tooling supporting Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants, Eligible Training Provider List eligibility workflows, standalone skills-assessment platforms, district- or institution-level credential wallets that today operate in isolation, and the patchwork of employer-side job-board and applicant-tracking subscriptions that result when many platforms each serve a slice of the same workforce — become candidates for consolidation or retirement, with associated reductions in ongoing licensing and maintenance costs. EBSCOed offers no opinion on which systems Pennsylvania may wish to retain and which it may wish to consolidate; those decisions belong to the Commonwealth and the relevant agencies, on the Commonwealth’s own timeline. We mention the possibility only because the cost-of-ownership story is one states have asked us to address, and because we are glad to support evaluations of that kind when the Commonwealth considers them useful.

We recognize that Pennsylvania has earned the right to be deliberate. The Commonwealth’s coordination among the Department of Labor & Industry, the Pennsylvania Workforce Development Board, the Office of Administration, the Pennsylvania State Board of Higher Education, the Pennsylvania Department of Education, the Pennsylvania Commission for Community Colleges, the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, the Commonwealth System universities, the State’s career and technology centers, and the Local Workforce Development Boards reflects years of careful institution-building — and Governor Shapiro’s first-day Executive Order 2023-03, followed by Executive Order 2024-01 establishing the HIRE Committee, signals a structural commitment to skills-first hiring that few states have matched. EBSCOed has no interest in disrupting that coordination. Our interest is in offering a free, open-standards layer that makes Pennsylvania’s existing investments — particularly the Commonwealth’s skills-first hiring direction, Pennsylvania Industry Partnerships, SkillUp PA, PAsmart, and the Certified Teacher Registered Apprentice program — more useful to the Pennsylvanians they serve.

If any of this is worth a conversation, we would welcome one — at the convenience of whoever the Commonwealth considers the right convening authority, in whatever form would be most useful, and on whatever timeline the Commonwealth prefers. The contact information below is the appropriate first point of contact. The QR codes that follow provide direct access to the current EBSCOed ecosystem overview, which is kept current as capabilities evolve, and to LER.me itself, where any Pennsylvanian may today create a free Learning and Employment Record in a few minutes.

With great respect for the work Pennsylvania is already doing, and with hope that the next chapter may be written together,

Rhode Island has, since the founding of Real Jobs Rhode Island in 2015, operated one of the longest-running and most respected business-led sector partnership models in the country. Real Jobs RI — administered by the Governor’s Workforce Board through the Department of Labor and Training — trained more than 7,600 Rhode Islanders in FY25, serving 4,300 job seekers and 2,700 incumbent workers and business owners, with a 77 percent employment rate of job seekers upon program completion. Under Governor McKee’s Rhode to Prosperity initiative, Real Jobs RI is evolving to require work-based learning in all RJRI-funded programs, with $14.3 million in FY26 awards across 39 new RJRI partnerships. Real Skills for Youth invested $4.3 million in 29 FY26 partnerships to prepare young people for college and careers. The Rhode Island Promise Scholarship, made permanent by McKee, provides free CCRI tuition for Rhode Island high school graduates, with 18,928 awards since 2017. The Hope Scholarship at Rhode Island College, extended through 2030, complements the Promise. RI Reconnect supports adult credential attainment. Building Futures serves as Rhode Island’s State Apprenticeship Agency Intermediary, supporting registered apprenticeship across construction trades and increasingly non-traditional sectors — including the State’s first registered apprenticeship in Information Security Analysis launched in 2026 by RIC, CCRI, Citizens, and Building Futures. Governor McKee’s FY27 budget proposes a $60 million general obligation bond for a CCRI Workforce Innovation Center at the Warwick Campus. Few states have built so much, so deliberately, in service of their workers.

This letter is written in admiration of that work, and with a specific proposition: that the next chapter of Rhode Island’s education-to-workforce strategy may benefit from a learner-held layer that the State has not yet had occasion to build. EBSCOed is the division of EBSCO Information Services that has spent the last several years constructing that layer — the LER talent marketplace — and offering LER.me to states, learners, educators, and employers at no cost. We write to share what it is, where it complements Rhode Island’s investments, where it bridges systems that today operate in parallel, and how it is designed to extend rather than disturb the credential infrastructure Rhode Island has already built.

LER.me is an open-standards platform that gives each individual a portable digital wallet containing their verified learning and employment records. The marketplace is built on the IEEE Learning and Employment Record standard, Open Badges 3.0, and Comprehensive Learner Record 2.0 — the same open standards used across the credentialing field — so the data Rhode Island already publishes to the Credential Engine Registry, and the credentials issued by CCRI, Rhode Island College, the University of Rhode Island, K-12 districts, and registered apprenticeship sponsors, remain authoritative and continue to operate exactly as they do today. The marketplace exchanges with those systems; it does not replace them. The platform itself is free to learners, to educators, and to employers, with optional subscription services available to states and large institutions that want deeper integration or custom analytics. The foundation is the foundation, and the foundation is free.

Four capabilities are most relevant to Rhode Island’s context. The first is free credential issuance: any approved Rhode Island institution, apprenticeship sponsor, or employer can issue verifiable credentials into learner-held wallets without licensing fees, supporting institutions of every size and budget on equal footing — a particular benefit in a small state where each credential-producing institution serves an outsized share of the workforce. The second is an open employer marketplace, in which Rhode Island employers post opportunities and discover qualified candidates based on verified skills and credentials, again at no cost. The third is public workforce intelligence — dashboards that aggregate credential issuance and labor demand data as linked open data, available to State agencies for planning, reporting, and supporting Governor’s Workforce Board and Real Jobs RI performance reporting. The fourth is the contributor framework, which crosswalks issued credentials to occupational standards and to State-defined Real Jobs RI sector priorities at the point of issuance, so the demand signal Rhode Island has invested years in defining is operationalized at the individual level, automatically.

Rhode Island’s distinctive strength is the maturity of the Real Jobs RI sector partnership model. Founded in 2015, RJRI has, over a decade, demonstrated that business-led sector partnerships with embedded training and employer commitment can produce credentials that translate into employment outcomes — 7,600 Rhode Islanders trained in FY25, 77% employment for job seekers, 7,000+ youth and adults served across RJRI and RSFY in FY26. Governor McKee’s evolution of the program to require work-based learning in all RJRI-funded programs and the State’s $60 million proposed CCRI Workforce Innovation Center investment together signal a deepening commitment to the credential-to-employment pathway. What sits underneath every one of those structures is the same need: a verifiable, portable, learner-held record that lets each Rhode Islander carry their RI Promise CCRI credential, their Hope Scholarship-funded RIC credential, their URI degree, their Real Jobs RI program completion, their Real Skills for Youth attainment, their RI Reconnect-funded adult credential, their registered apprenticeship milestones, and their employer-issued microcredentials in one place, recognized by employers, transferable across institutions, and durable beyond any one platform. That record is what the LER marketplace provides, at no cost, on the open standards the State already uses. EBSCOed is not asking Rhode Island to alter the Real Jobs RI model — we are offering the learner-side layer that lets the credentials RJRI produces travel with each Rhode Islander in a verifiable wallet.

There are three lenses through which we have found it useful to discuss this marketplace with State leadership, and we offer them here in the same spirit. The first is complement — where the marketplace adds capability Rhode Island has not yet had reason to build. The Governor’s Workforce Board measures Real Jobs RI performance at the program level; the marketplace adds the learner-side artifact, a verifiable record each Rhode Islander carries with them. CCRI, Rhode Island College, and URI issue credentials that today travel through institutional transcripts; the marketplace gives each institution a free way to issue those credentials as verifiable Open Badges directly into learner wallets, with RI Promise, Hope Scholarship, RI Reconnect, or RJRI funding designation preserved where applicable. The Institute for Cybersecurity and Emerging Technologies at RIC, Building Futures, the Career and Technical Education centers at CCRI, the Non-Trade Apprenticeship Expansion Grant program recipients, and Skills for Rhode Island’s Future face the same opportunity. None of this displaces Rhode Island’s current investments. All of it makes them more visible, more durable, and more useful to the Rhode Islanders who earn them.

The second lens is bridge — where the marketplace connects systems that today operate in parallel. A Rhode Islander who completes Real Skills for Youth in high school, earns a CCRI credential through RI Promise, transfers to Rhode Island College on the Hope Scholarship or to URI, participates in a Real Jobs RI sector partnership, completes a registered apprenticeship through Building Futures, and gains employer-issued microcredentials currently has those attainments living in different places. The marketplace allows them to travel together in one learner-owned record. netWORKri American Job Center navigators serving Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants can see a complete skill picture rather than reconstructing it from a paper trail. The connective tissue the Governor’s Workforce Board provides at the State level can be operationalized at the learner level through a credential wallet that travels with each Rhode Islander.

The third lens is interoperability — where existing Rhode Island platforms occupy adjacent space and where it is essential that the State’s investments be respected. The Governor’s Workforce Board remains the State’s authoritative workforce policy body, housed within the Department of Labor and Training; the marketplace operates as a learner-side complement that supports GWB’s mission. Real Jobs RI continues exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives credentials produced through RJRI sector partnerships. Building Futures, Rhode Island’s State Apprenticeship Agency Intermediary, continues exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives credentials produced through Building Futures-supported registered apprenticeship programs. EmployRI remains Rhode Island’s official labor exchange; the marketplace acts as a complementary skills-and-credentials profile layer that posts to EmployRI through standard application programming interfaces. The Hope Scholarship, RI Promise, and RI Reconnect administration continues unchanged; the marketplace receives credentials issued through programs funded by those scholarships.

The matrix below — included here as a reference Rhode Island leadership may return to — applies three perspectives to selected initiatives. The Complement column identifies where the marketplace adds capabilities current State investments do not provide. The Bridge column identifies where the marketplace connects presently separate systems. The Interoperability column describes how the marketplace is designed to work alongside existing Rhode Island platforms.

If the State were to find this conversation worth continuing, three paths forward suggest themselves — each with discrete decision points and none requiring the State to commit beyond the step in front of it. The first is a discovery brief: a joint presentation to the Department of Labor and Training, the Governor’s Workforce Board, the Community College of Rhode Island, Rhode Island College, the University of Rhode Island, the Rhode Island Office of the Postsecondary Commissioner, and — where the State considers it useful — Building Futures, Skills for Rhode Island’s Future, and Real Jobs RI sector partnership leadership, outlining the marketplace’s open-standards architecture, the at-no-cost foundation, and what a small first cohort could look like. The second is a sector pilot: subject to a State decision to proceed, a focused cohort drawn from one of the Real Jobs RI priority sectors — healthcare, IT (including the new Information Security Analyst Registered Apprenticeship), advanced manufacturing, defense industry, or construction trades (through Building Futures) are natural candidates — in which Real Jobs RI graduates, RI Promise scholars, Hope Scholarship recipients, or registered apprenticeship completers receive a Comprehensive Learner Record aligned with State sector priorities and made available through the EBSCOed marketplace. The third path would, only at the State’s direction, layer in optional subscription services that integrate the marketplace with EmployRI, the Eligible Training Provider List, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act case management, registered apprenticeship sponsor records, Real Jobs RI program data, and the Governor’s Workforce Board reporting infrastructure. Any eligibility automation Rhode Island wished to pursue for Workforce Pell, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, or registered apprenticeship would live in this phase. State funds engage only here, and only to the extent the State chooses to procure subscription services. The first two phases require no new State appropriation.

Several considerations may inform Rhode Island’s thinking about the partnership. The marketplace’s open-standards foundation ensures the State’s prior investments in the Credential Engine Registry, EmployRI, and the credentialing work of CCRI, Rhode Island College, the University of Rhode Island, and the State’s independent institutions continue to operate as they do today; the marketplace exchanges data with those systems rather than displacing them. The no-cost foundation means that the early phases require no new State appropriation; State funding considerations arise only in the third phase, and only for services the State elects to procure. Rhode Island’s distinctive Real Jobs RI maturity — a decade of business-led sector partnership operations — and the State’s compact geography may make Rhode Island a particularly suitable State for a Comprehensive Learner Record pilot, where the marketplace can demonstrate credential portability across a complete State workforce ecosystem.

A further consideration may be relevant to the State’s long-term planning. As the marketplace becomes the trusted system of record for skills and credentials across Rhode Island, states often find that certain point solutions they currently maintain — case management tooling supporting Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants, Eligible Training Provider List eligibility workflows, standalone skills-assessment platforms, district- or institution-level credential wallets that today operate in isolation, and the patchwork of employer-side job-board and applicant-tracking subscriptions that result when many platforms each serve a slice of the same workforce — become candidates for consolidation or retirement, with associated reductions in ongoing licensing and maintenance costs. EBSCOed offers no opinion on which systems Rhode Island may wish to retain and which it may wish to consolidate; those decisions belong to the State and the relevant agencies, on the State’s own timeline. We mention the possibility only because the cost-of-ownership story is one states have asked us to address, and because we are glad to support evaluations of that kind when the State considers them useful.

We recognize that Rhode Island has earned the right to be deliberate. The State’s coordination among the Department of Labor and Training, the Governor’s Workforce Board, the Rhode Island Office of the Postsecondary Commissioner, the Community College of Rhode Island, Rhode Island College, the University of Rhode Island, Building Futures, the State’s Workforce Development Boards, and the Real Jobs RI sector partnership community reflects a decade of careful institution-building under the RJRI model — and Governor McKee’s Rhode to Prosperity initiative continues to build on that foundation. EBSCOed has no interest in disrupting that coordination. Our interest is in offering a free, open-standards layer that makes Rhode Island’s existing investments — particularly Real Jobs RI, the RI Promise Scholarship, the Hope Scholarship, RI Reconnect, Building Futures' apprenticeship work, and the proposed CCRI Workforce Innovation Center — more useful to the Rhode Islanders they serve.

If any of this is worth a conversation, we would welcome one — at the convenience of whoever the State considers the right convening authority, in whatever form would be most useful, and on whatever timeline the State prefers. The contact information below is the appropriate first point of contact. The QR codes that follow provide direct access to the current EBSCOed ecosystem overview, which is kept current as capabilities evolve, and to LER.me itself, where any Rhode Islander may today create a free Learning and Employment Record in a few minutes.

With great respect for the work Rhode Island is already doing, and with hope that the next chapter may be written together,

South Carolina has built one of the most mature workforce-training delivery systems in the United States. readySC, founded in 1961, has trained more than 327,000 people for over 2,300 companies — providing recruiting, assessment, curriculum development, and training to employers expanding or relocating in the State. Apprenticeship Carolina, launched in 2007 and supported by a $1,000–$6,000-per-apprentice state tax credit, has served more than 34,000 apprentices across over 1,067 registered programs and 235 youth apprenticeships. retrainSC completes the picture with employer-driven incumbent worker retraining. The SC Technical College System’s 16 colleges operate across 80 campuses, putting every South Carolinian within a 30-minute drive of a local technical college. SC WINS scholarships supplement Lottery Tuition Assistance to fund six high-demand fields. SC Future Makers, led by the SC Manufacturers Alliance, has placed more than 120,000 high school student profiles on the Tallo platform across more than 200 South Carolina high schools — one of the deepest student-profile deployments in the country. Few states have built so much, so deliberately, in service of their workers.

This letter is written in admiration of that work, and with a specific proposition: that the next chapter of South Carolina’s workforce strategy may benefit from a learner-held layer that the State has not yet had occasion to build. EBSCOed is the division of EBSCO Information Services that has spent the last several years constructing that layer — the LER talent marketplace — and offering LER.me to states, learners, educators, and employers at no cost. We write to share what it is, where it complements South Carolina’s investments, where it bridges systems that today operate in parallel, and how it is designed to extend rather than disturb the workforce infrastructure South Carolina has already built.

LER.me is an open-standards platform that gives each individual a portable digital wallet containing their verified learning and employment records. The marketplace is built on the IEEE Learning and Employment Record standard, Open Badges 3.0, and Comprehensive Learner Record 2.0 — open standards that interoperate cleanly with the data flows South Carolina’s institutions already use. The credentials South Carolina’s institutions, employers, and apprenticeship sponsors already issue remain authoritative and continue to operate exactly as they do today. The marketplace exchanges with those systems; it does not replace them. The platform itself is free to learners, to educators, and to employers, with optional subscription services available to states and large institutions that want deeper integration or custom analytics. The foundation is the foundation, and the foundation is free.

Four capabilities are most relevant to South Carolina’s context. The first is free credential issuance: any SCTCS college, Apprenticeship Carolina sponsor, readySC employer partner, school district, or South Carolina employer can issue verifiable credentials into learner-held wallets without licensing fees, supporting institutions of every size and budget on equal footing. The second is an open employer marketplace, in which South Carolina employers — from the BMW, Volvo, Boeing, and Mercedes-Benz Vans manufacturing concentrations to small businesses across the State’s 12 Local Workforce Development Areas — post opportunities and discover qualified candidates based on verified skills and credentials, again at no cost. The third is public workforce intelligence — dashboards that aggregate credential issuance and labor demand data as linked open data, available to the SC Department of Employment and Workforce, the SC Department of Commerce, the State Board for Technical and Comprehensive Education, and the State Workforce Development Board for planning and reporting. The fourth is the contributor framework, which crosswalks issued credentials to occupational standards and to State-defined high-demand categories at the point of issuance.

There are three lenses through which we have found it useful to discuss this marketplace with state leadership, and we offer them here in the same spirit. The first is complement — where the marketplace adds capability South Carolina has not yet had reason to build. readySC delivers training that prepares workers for specific employers; the marketplace adds the learner-side artifact, a verifiable record of readySC training milestones that each worker may carry to future employers. Apprenticeship Carolina sponsors today operate without a low-friction credentialing system for apprenticeship milestones; the marketplace gives every sponsor a free way to issue milestone credentials directly into apprentice wallets, increasing the visible value of the State’s tax credit investment. The 16 SCTCS colleges, the SC WINS-funded programs, retrainSC, and CTE programs in South Carolina school districts face the same opportunity. None of this displaces South Carolina’s current investments. All of it makes them more visible, more durable, and more useful to the South Carolinians who earn them.

The second lens is bridge — where the marketplace connects systems that today operate in parallel. A South Carolinian who builds a profile through SC Future Makers and Tallo in high school, completes a CTE pathway, enrolls in an SCTCS program with SC WINS support, completes an Apprenticeship Carolina apprenticeship, and gains employer-issued microcredentials currently has those attainments living in different places. The marketplace allows them to travel together in one learner-owned record. SC Works center navigators serving Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants across the State’s 12 Local Workforce Development Areas can see a complete skill picture rather than reconstructing it from a paper trail when a participant moves between Areas. The connective tissue exists, but it lives in the learner, where it belongs.

The third lens is interoperability — where existing South Carolina platforms occupy adjacent space and where it is essential that the State’s investments be respected. readySC remains the SC Technical College System’s flagship customized-training program and continues to operate exactly as it does today; the marketplace may, at the State’s discretion, make readySC credentials portable and verifiable to downstream employers, without changing readySC’s operating model. Apprenticeship Carolina remains the State’s authoritative registered apprenticeship intermediary. SC Future Makers and Tallo remain the SC Manufacturers Alliance’s flagship high school student-profile platform, with more than 120,000 students participating; LER.me operates in a different layer — a verifiable, learner-owned credential record rather than a student profile — and is designed to work alongside Tallo rather than displace it. EBSCOed welcomes the opportunity to discuss Tallo interoperability with SCMA and the relevant State leadership at the State’s direction. SC Works Online Services remains the official labor exchange operated by SC DEW. The State’s prior investments are preserved and extended, not displaced.

The matrix below — included here as a reference South Carolina leadership may return to — applies three perspectives to selected initiatives. The Complement column identifies where the marketplace adds capabilities current State investments do not provide. The Bridge column identifies where the marketplace connects presently separate systems. The Interoperability column describes how the marketplace is designed to work alongside existing South Carolina platforms.

If the State were to find this conversation worth continuing, three paths forward suggest themselves — each with discrete decision points and none requiring the State to commit beyond the step in front of it. The first is a briefing to the State Board for Technical and Comprehensive Education and the SC Manufacturers Alliance, in whatever sequence and forum the State prefers, presenting how the marketplace operates as a complementary verifiable-credential layer beneath the existing readySC, Apprenticeship Carolina, and SC Future Makers experiences. The second is a sector-focused pilot involving Apprenticeship Carolina sponsors in a high-demand sector — advanced manufacturing is a natural candidate given the Volvo, BMW, Boeing, and Mercedes-Benz Vans concentrations — with issuance into apprentice wallets, employer-side visibility through the open marketplace, and outcomes reporting back to SBTCE leadership. The pilot would validate the operating model and provide outcomes data to inform a Phase Three decision. The third path would, only at the State’s direction, layer in optional subscription services that integrate the marketplace with SC Works Online Services, the 12 Local Workforce Development Areas’ case management systems, retrainSC eligibility workflows, and SCTCS student information systems for outcomes reporting. State funds engage only here, and only to the extent the State chooses to procure subscription services. The first two phases require no new State appropriation.

Several considerations may inform South Carolina’s thinking about the partnership. The marketplace’s open-standards foundation ensures the State’s prior investments — readySC, Apprenticeship Carolina, retrainSC, SC Future Makers, Tallo, SC Works Online Services, and the SCTCS student information systems — continue to operate as they do today; the marketplace exchanges data with those systems rather than displacing them. The no-cost foundation means that the early phases require no new State appropriation; State funding considerations arise only in the third phase, and only for services the State elects to procure. The SC Technical College System’s national reputation in workforce training and the SC Manufacturers Alliance’s incumbent relationship with Tallo and SC Future Makers are both assets the State should preserve; EBSCOed has no interest in disturbing either, and has structured this proposal so that the marketplace operates as additive infrastructure rather than displacement.

A further consideration may be relevant to the State’s long-term planning. As the marketplace becomes the trusted system of record for skills and credentials across South Carolina, states often find that certain point solutions they currently maintain — case management tooling supporting Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants, Eligible Training Provider List eligibility workflows, standalone skills-assessment platforms, district- or institution-level credential wallets that today operate in isolation, and the patchwork of employer-side job-board and applicant-tracking subscriptions that result when many platforms each serve a slice of the same workforce — become candidates for consolidation or retirement, with associated reductions in ongoing licensing and maintenance costs. EBSCOed offers no opinion on which systems South Carolina may wish to retain and which it may wish to consolidate; those decisions belong to the State and the relevant agencies, on the State’s own timeline. We mention the possibility only because the cost-of-ownership story is one states have asked us to address, and because we are glad to support evaluations of that kind when the State considers them useful.

We recognize that South Carolina has earned the right to be deliberate. The coordination the State has built between the SC Technical College System, the SC Department of Employment and Workforce, the SC Department of Commerce, the SC Manufacturers Alliance, the State Workforce Development Board, and the Local Workforce Development Boards reflects decades of careful institution-building, and readySC and Apprenticeship Carolina are national benchmarks for what state-funded workforce training can achieve. EBSCOed has no interest in disrupting that coordination. Our interest is in offering a free, open-standards layer that makes South Carolina’s existing investments more visible to employers, more durable for workers, and more useful to the South Carolinians they serve.

If any of this is worth a conversation, we would welcome one — at the convenience of whoever the State considers the right convening authority, in whatever form would be most useful, and on whatever timeline the State prefers. The contact information below is the appropriate first point of contact. The QR codes that follow provide direct access to the current EBSCOed ecosystem overview, which is kept current as capabilities evolve, and to LER.me itself, where any South Carolinian may today create a free Learning and Employment Record in a few minutes.

With great respect for the work South Carolina is already doing, and with hope that the next chapter may be written together,

South Dakota has, under Governor Larry Rhoden’s leadership, built a State workforce architecture that combines a recently established State office of apprenticeship, a focused four-college State technical college system, and innovative teacher pipeline development. SB 63, signed by Governor Rhoden in February 2026, established a state office of apprenticeship within the South Dakota Department of Labor and Regulation (DLR), centralizing apprenticeship opportunities and supporting the next generation of workers. DLR operates South Dakota’s workforce delivery infrastructure including the SD UpSkill certificate program (offering tuition-supported certificate programs at the State’s technical colleges in high-demand fields), Career Launch SD (connecting youth ages 16-24 to workplace opportunities through registered apprenticeships, job shadows, classroom presentations, informational interviews, and internships), the Workforce Training program with On-the-Job Training reimbursement up to 50 percent of wage rate, the Senior Community Service Employment Program, and the Bring Your 'A' Game to Work curriculum developing foundational workplace behaviors. South Dakota has more than 100 Registered Apprenticeship programs in industries including construction, dental, municipalities, health services, fire protection, fire medic, electric, plumbing, and building maintenance. The South Dakota Workforce Development Council coordinates statewide workforce strategy. The South Dakota Teacher Apprenticeship Pathway program, started in 2023, has produced 118 graduates and 48 new graduates in the most recent cohort, with Governor Rhoden’s $500,000 Future Fund award expanding the upcoming cohort to 71 participants — the program allows full-time paraprofessionals to pursue teaching degrees online through Dakota State University (elementary or special education) or Northern State University (secondary education) at a steep discount while retaining their positions. The State’s four public technical colleges — Western Dakota Tech, Lake Area Tech, Mitchell Tech, and Southeast Tech — anchor postsecondary technical credential delivery, alongside the six-institution Board of Regents public university system (including South Dakota State University, the University of South Dakota, Dakota State University, Northern State University, Black Hills State University, and South Dakota School of Mines & Technology). Few states have built so much, so deliberately, in service of their workers.

This letter is written in admiration of that work, and with a specific proposition: that the next chapter of South Dakota’s education-to-workforce strategy may benefit from a learner-held layer that the State has not yet had occasion to build. EBSCOed is the division of EBSCO Information Services that has spent the last several years constructing that layer — the LER talent marketplace — and offering LER.me to states, learners, educators, and employers at no cost. We write to share what it is, where it complements South Dakota’s investments, where it bridges systems that today operate in parallel, and how it is designed to extend rather than disturb the credential infrastructure South Dakota has already built.

LER.me is an open-standards platform that gives each individual a portable digital wallet containing their verified learning and employment records. The marketplace is built on the IEEE Learning and Employment Record standard, Open Badges 3.0, and Comprehensive Learner Record 2.0 — the same open standards used across the credentialing field — so the credentials issued by South Dakota’s four technical colleges, the six institutions of the Board of Regents system, the State’s private colleges, K-12 districts, and registered apprenticeship sponsors remain authoritative and continue to operate exactly as they do today. The marketplace exchanges with those systems; it does not replace them. The platform itself is free to learners, to educators, and to employers, with optional subscription services available to states and large institutions that want deeper integration or custom analytics. The foundation is the foundation, and the foundation is free.

Four capabilities are most relevant to South Dakota’s context. The first is free credential issuance: any approved South Dakota institution, apprenticeship sponsor, or employer can issue verifiable credentials into learner-held wallets without licensing fees, supporting institutions of every size and budget on equal footing. The second is an open employer marketplace, in which South Dakota employers post opportunities and discover qualified candidates based on verified skills and credentials, again at no cost. The third is public workforce intelligence — dashboards that aggregate credential issuance and labor demand data as linked open data, available to State agencies for planning, reporting, and supporting DLR, Workforce Development Council, and the newly established state office of apprenticeship reporting missions. The fourth is the contributor framework, which crosswalks issued credentials to occupational standards and to SD UpSkill and Career Launch SD high-demand designations at the point of issuance, so the demand signal South Dakota has invested years in defining is operationalized at the individual level, automatically.

South Dakota’s distinctive achievement is the Teacher Apprenticeship Pathway program — partnering DLR, the Department of Education, Dakota State University, and Northern State University to convert full-time paraprofessionals into certified teachers through an online apprenticeship-based pathway. With 118 graduates since the 2023 launch and the upcoming 71-participant cohort, the program represents a concrete State response to an unfilled-teaching-positions challenge, with statewide unfilled positions declining from 256 (2023) and 225 (2022) to 144 (July 2024). SB 63’s February 2026 establishment of a state office of apprenticeship within DLR centralizes coordination for the State’s 100+ Registered Apprenticeship programs. SD UpSkill’s tuition-supported certificate model at the four technical colleges operationalizes the State’s commitment to in-demand workforce credentialing. What sits underneath every one of those structures is the same need: a verifiable, portable, learner-held record that lets each South Dakotan carry their K-12 attainment, their technical college credential, their Board of Regents university degree, their Teacher Apprenticeship Pathway milestone, their SD UpSkill-funded certificate, their Career Launch SD experience credential, their Registered Apprenticeship attainment, their OJT-supported credential, and their employer-issued microcredentials in one place, recognized by employers, transferable across institutions, and durable beyond any one platform. That record is what the LER marketplace provides, at no cost, on the open standards the field has converged on. EBSCOed is not asking South Dakota to alter the Teacher Apprenticeship Pathway or the newly established state office of apprenticeship — we are offering the learner-side layer that lets the credentials South Dakota’s focused workforce infrastructure produces travel with each South Dakotan in a verifiable wallet.

There are three lenses through which we have found it useful to discuss this marketplace with State leadership, and we offer them here in the same spirit. The first is complement — where the marketplace adds capability South Dakota has not yet had reason to build at the individual level. DLR tracks workforce attainment at the State level through annual reporting and the new state office of apprenticeship; the marketplace adds the learner-side artifact, a verifiable record each South Dakotan carries with them. The four technical colleges, the six Board of Regents institutions, registered apprenticeship sponsors, Teacher Apprenticeship Pathway program participants, and Career Launch SD employer partners all produce credentials that today travel through institutional transcripts; the marketplace gives each institution a free way to issue those credentials as verifiable Open Badges directly into learner wallets, with SD UpSkill, Teacher Apprenticeship Pathway, Future Fund, or Career Launch SD designation embedded in the badge metadata at issuance where applicable. None of this displaces South Dakota’s current investments. All of it makes them more visible, more durable, and more useful to the South Dakotans who earn them.

The second lens is bridge — where the marketplace connects systems that today operate in parallel. A South Dakotan who completes K-12 attainment, participates in Career Launch SD experiences, earns an SD UpSkill-funded certificate at Western Dakota Tech, Lake Area Tech, Mitchell Tech, or Southeast Tech, transfers to a Board of Regents university, enters a Registered Apprenticeship through one of the State’s 100+ programs, completes Teacher Apprenticeship Pathway through Dakota State or Northern State Universities, completes the Bring Your 'A' Game to Work curriculum, and gains employer-issued microcredentials currently has those attainments living in different places. The marketplace allows them to travel together in one learner-owned record. DLR navigators serving Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants and OJT-eligible workers can see a complete skill picture rather than reconstructing it from a paper trail. The connective tissue DLR and the Workforce Development Council provide at the State level can be operationalized at the learner level through a credential wallet that travels with each South Dakotan.

The third lens is interoperability — where existing South Dakota platforms occupy adjacent space and where it is essential that the State’s investments be respected. The South Dakota Department of Labor and Regulation remains the State’s authoritative workforce agency; the marketplace operates as a learner-side complement that supports DLR’s mission. The newly established state office of apprenticeship within DLR (per SB 63, February 2026) continues exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives credentials produced through the State’s 100+ Registered Apprenticeship programs with State office of apprenticeship designation preserved at issuance. The South Dakota Workforce Development Council continues exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives credentials produced through Council-coordinated programs. The four public technical colleges continue exactly as they operate today; the marketplace receives credentials issued by Western Dakota Tech, Lake Area Tech, Mitchell Tech, and Southeast Tech with SD UpSkill designation preserved where applicable. The Board of Regents continues exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives credentials issued by South Dakota’s six public universities.

The matrix below — included here as a reference South Dakota leadership may return to — applies three perspectives to selected initiatives. The Complement column identifies where the marketplace adds capabilities current State investments do not provide. The Bridge column identifies where the marketplace connects presently separate systems. The Interoperability column describes how the marketplace is designed to work alongside existing South Dakota platforms.

If the State were to find this conversation worth continuing, three paths forward suggest themselves — each with discrete decision points and none requiring the State to commit beyond the step in front of it. The first is a discovery brief: a joint presentation to the South Dakota Department of Labor and Regulation, the newly established state office of apprenticeship, the South Dakota Workforce Development Council, the South Dakota Department of Education, the Board of Regents, the four public technical colleges, and — where the State considers it useful — Dakota State University and Northern State University leadership (given their Teacher Apprenticeship Pathway role), Career Launch SD employer partners, and registered apprenticeship sponsor representatives, outlining the marketplace’s open-standards architecture, the at-no-cost foundation, and what a small first cohort could look like. The second is a sector pilot: subject to a State decision to proceed, a focused cohort drawn from one of South Dakota’s strategic sectors — education (with Teacher Apprenticeship Pathway cohorts), construction trades, healthcare, manufacturing, or municipal/public-sector careers are natural candidates — in which Teacher Apprenticeship Pathway participants, SD UpSkill recipients, Career Launch SD participants, or Registered Apprenticeship completers receive a Comprehensive Learner Record made available through the EBSCOed marketplace. The third path would, only at the State’s direction, layer in optional subscription services that integrate the marketplace with DLR’s job exchange, the Eligible Training Provider List, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act case management, the new state office of apprenticeship’s sponsor records, the Teacher Apprenticeship Pathway data infrastructure, and SD UpSkill program data. Any eligibility automation South Dakota wished to pursue for Workforce Pell, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, or registered apprenticeship would live in this phase. State funds engage only here, and only to the extent the State chooses to procure subscription services. The first two phases require no new State appropriation.

Several considerations may inform South Dakota’s thinking about the partnership. The marketplace’s open-standards foundation ensures the State’s prior investments in DLR’s job exchange and the credentialing work of the four technical colleges, the six Board of Regents institutions, and the State’s private nonprofit colleges continue to operate as they do today; the marketplace exchanges data with those systems rather than displacing them. The no-cost foundation means that the early phases require no new State appropriation; State funding considerations arise only in the third phase, and only for services the State elects to procure. South Dakota’s distinctive achievement — the Teacher Apprenticeship Pathway’s measurable impact on reducing statewide unfilled-teaching-positions counts, combined with the recently established state office of apprenticeship — may make South Dakota a particularly natural fit for a learner-side marketplace that demonstrates how apprenticeship-based pathways translate into long-term in-State career retention.

A further consideration may be relevant to the State’s long-term planning. As the marketplace becomes the trusted system of record for skills and credentials across South Dakota, states often find that certain point solutions they currently maintain — case management tooling supporting Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants, Eligible Training Provider List eligibility workflows, standalone skills-assessment platforms, district- or institution-level credential wallets that today operate in isolation, and the patchwork of employer-side job-board and applicant-tracking subscriptions that result when many platforms each serve a slice of the same workforce — become candidates for consolidation or retirement, with associated reductions in ongoing licensing and maintenance costs. EBSCOed offers no opinion on which systems South Dakota may wish to retain and which it may wish to consolidate; those decisions belong to the State and the relevant agencies, on the State’s own timeline. We mention the possibility only because the cost-of-ownership story is one states have asked us to address, and because we are glad to support evaluations of that kind when the State considers them useful.

We recognize that South Dakota has earned the right to be deliberate. The State’s coordination among the Department of Labor and Regulation, the newly established state office of apprenticeship, the South Dakota Workforce Development Council, the Department of Education, the Board of Regents, the four public technical colleges, Dakota State University, Northern State University, and the employer community participating in Career Launch SD and Registered Apprenticeship reflects years of careful institution-building under Governor Rhoden’s leadership and the legislative work of SB 63. EBSCOed has no interest in disrupting that coordination. Our interest is in offering a free, open-standards layer that makes South Dakota’s existing investments — particularly SB 63, the Teacher Apprenticeship Pathway, SD UpSkill, Career Launch SD, and the State’s 100+ Registered Apprenticeship programs — more useful to the South Dakotans they serve.

If any of this is worth a conversation, we would welcome one — at the convenience of whoever the State considers the right convening authority, in whatever form would be most useful, and on whatever timeline the State prefers. The contact information below is the appropriate first point of contact. The QR codes that follow provide direct access to the current EBSCOed ecosystem overview, which is kept current as capabilities evolve, and to LER.me itself, where any South Dakotan may today create a free Learning and Employment Record in a few minutes.

With great respect for the work South Dakota is already doing, and with hope that the next chapter may be written together,

Tennessee has, for more than a decade, modeled what disciplined education-to-workforce strategy can look like. The Drive to 55 attainment goal gave the State a shared destination. Tennessee Promise and Tennessee Reconnect opened the front door for high school graduates and adult learners alike, and the State’s 13 community colleges and 27 Tennessee Colleges of Applied Technology have made postsecondary attainment within practical reach of every Tennessean. The Governor’s Investment in Vocational Education has anchored regional partnerships among TCATs, K-12 districts, and employers, expanding dual enrollment, work-based learning, and registered apprenticeship. The joint Supply and Demand Report published by the Tennessee Higher Education Commission, the Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development, and the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development represents one of the most thoughtful credential-to-occupation alignment efforts in the country. Few states have built so much, so deliberately, in service of their workers.

This letter is written in admiration of that work, and with a specific proposition: that the next chapter of Tennessee’s education-to-workforce strategy may benefit from a learner-held layer that the State has not yet had occasion to build. EBSCOed is the division of EBSCO Information Services that has spent the last several years constructing that layer — the LER talent marketplace — and offering LER.me to states, learners, educators, and employers at no cost. We write to share what it is, where it complements Tennessee’s investments, where it bridges systems that today operate in parallel, and how it is designed to extend rather than disturb the credential infrastructure Tennessee has already built.

LER.me is an open-standards platform that gives each individual a portable digital wallet containing their verified learning and employment records. The marketplace is built on the IEEE Learning and Employment Record standard, Open Badges 3.0, and Comprehensive Learner Record 2.0 — the same open standards on which Tennessee’s own Comprehensive Learner Record work rests — so the data Tennessee already publishes to the Credential Engine Registry, and the credentials TBR is already issuing through TBR Cred, remain authoritative and continue to operate exactly as they do today. The marketplace exchanges with those systems; it does not replace them. The platform itself is free to learners, to educators, and to employers, with optional subscription services available to states and large institutions that want deeper integration or custom analytics. The foundation is the foundation, and the foundation is free.

Four capabilities are most relevant to Tennessee’s context. The first is free credential issuance: any approved Tennessee institution, apprenticeship sponsor, or employer can issue verifiable credentials into learner-held wallets without licensing fees, supporting institutions of every size and budget on equal footing. The second is an open employer marketplace, in which Tennessee employers post opportunities and discover qualified candidates based on verified skills and credentials, again at no cost. The third is public workforce intelligence — dashboards that aggregate credential issuance and labor demand data as linked open data, available to State agencies for planning, reporting, and informing future revisions of the Supply and Demand Report. The fourth is the contributor framework, which crosswalks issued credentials to occupational standards and to State-defined high-demand categories at the point of issuance, so the demand signal Tennessee has invested years in defining is operationalized at the individual level, automatically.

Tennessee and EBSCOed are, in important respects, already partners. Through the Southeastern Regional Talent Ecosystem Pilot — a multi-state initiative facilitated by the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers and supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation — graduates of TCAT Advanced Manufacturing programs already receive a Comprehensive Learner Record that may be stored in the TBR Cred wallet. The pilot also enables cross-state portability: a TCAT student residing in Alabama can establish a MyEBSCOed wallet and transfer their TCAT credential into it, and Alabama residents holding credentials in MyEBSCOed wallets can transfer those credentials into the TBR Cred environment. This bidirectional interoperability has been validated and is operating today. It provides Tennessee with a tested foundation on which broader collaboration may be evaluated, on the State’s own terms and at the State’s own pace.

There are three lenses through which we have found it useful to discuss this marketplace with state leadership, and we offer them here in the same spirit. The first is complement — where the marketplace adds capability Tennessee has not yet had reason to build. Drive to 55, by design, measures and supports attainment at the State level; the marketplace adds the learner-side artifact, a verifiable record each Tennessean carries with them. The GIVE-funded regional partnerships produce work-based learning hours, dual-credit attainments, and industry certifications that today travel in many different forms; the marketplace gives every TCAT, high school, and employer partner a free way to issue those credentials as verifiable Open Badges directly into learner wallets. Apprenticeship TN and Tennessee’s registered apprenticeship sponsors face the same opportunity at the milestone level. None of this displaces Tennessee’s current investments. All of it makes them more visible, more durable, and more useful to the Tennesseans who earn them.

The second lens is bridge — where the marketplace connects systems that today operate in parallel. A Tennessean who completes Tennessee Promise, earns a TCAT certificate, completes Apprenticeship TN milestones, and gains employer-issued microcredentials currently has those attainments living in different places. The marketplace allows them to travel together in one learner-owned record — including across the Tennessee–Alabama border through the existing pilot. American Job Center navigators serving Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants can see a complete skill picture rather than reconstructing it from a paper trail. The connective tissue exists, but it lives in the learner, where it belongs.

The third lens is interoperability — where existing Tennessee platforms occupy adjacent space and where it is essential that the State’s investments be respected. TBR Cred serves the Tennessee Board of Regents institutional population through Tennessee’s own wallet investment, and it should continue to do so. The EBSCOed LER marketplace is designed to operate as a complementary, population-wide layer that serves learners outside the TBR institutional footprint — University of Tennessee System graduates, independent college graduates, K-12 students, military veterans, and unaffiliated jobseekers — while remaining fully interoperable with TBR Cred through the shared open standards. Jobs4TN.gov remains Tennessee’s official labor exchange; the marketplace acts as a complementary skills-and-credentials profile layer that posts to Jobs4TN-style systems through standard application programming interfaces. The TDLWD Eligible Training Provider List remains authoritative; approved providers may issue credentials as marketplace contributors, with crosswalks to Tennessee’s high-demand career signals built in. The State’s prior investments are preserved and extended, not displaced.

The matrix below — included here as a reference Tennessee leadership may return to — applies three perspectives to selected initiatives. The Complement column identifies where the marketplace adds capabilities current State investments do not provide. The Bridge column identifies where the marketplace connects presently separate systems. The Interoperability column describes how the marketplace is designed to work alongside existing Tennessee platforms.

If the State were to find this conversation worth continuing, three paths forward suggest themselves — each with discrete decision points and none requiring the State to commit beyond the step in front of it. The first is to extend the existing pilot: a joint progress brief to THEC, TDLWD, and TNECD leadership presenting outcomes from the first cohort of advanced manufacturing graduates, followed, if the State chooses, by extension of the pilot’s scope to one additional sector aligned with the High-Demand Occupations List. Healthcare and information technology are natural candidates given current Supply and Demand Report priorities. The interoperability pattern between TBR Cred and the EBSCOed LER marketplace would remain the same.

The second is broader availability: subject to a State decision to proceed, the marketplace may be made available at no cost to Tennesseans outside the TBR institutional footprint. This phase preserves TBR Cred as the institutional wallet for the TBR community and positions the EBSCOed marketplace as the complementary population-wide layer — high school students, University of Tennessee System graduates, independent college graduates, military veterans, jobseekers entering American Job Centers, and the adult learner populations Tennessee Reconnect serves. The third path would, only at the State’s direction, layer in optional subscription services that integrate the marketplace with Jobs4TN.gov, the Eligible Training Provider List, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act case management, the Apprenticeship TN sponsor portal, and the joint Supply and Demand Report data pipeline. Any eligibility automation Tennessee wished to pursue for Workforce Pell, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, or registered apprenticeship would live in this phase. State funds engage only here, and only to the extent the State chooses to procure subscription services. The first two phases require no new State appropriation.

Several considerations may inform Tennessee’s thinking about the partnership. The marketplace’s open-standards foundation ensures the State’s prior investments in the Credential Engine Registry, TBR Cred, and Parchment-based transcript exchange continue to operate as they do today; the marketplace exchanges data with those systems rather than displacing them. The no-cost foundation means that the early phases require no new State appropriation; State funding considerations arise only in the third phase, and only for services the State elects to procure. The decentralized structure of Tennessee’s Local Workforce Development Areas may benefit from engagement at both the State and Area level during any broader rollout, and EBSCOed welcomes the opportunity to participate in such conversations at the State’s direction, in whatever forum the State considers most useful.

A further consideration may be relevant to the State’s long-term planning. As the marketplace becomes the trusted system of record for skills and credentials across Tennessee, states often find that certain point solutions they currently maintain — case management tooling supporting Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants, Eligible Training Provider List eligibility workflows, standalone skills-assessment platforms, district- or institution-level credential wallets that today operate in isolation, and the patchwork of employer-side job-board and applicant-tracking subscriptions that result when many platforms each serve a slice of the same workforce — become candidates for consolidation or retirement, with associated reductions in ongoing licensing and maintenance costs. EBSCOed offers no opinion on which systems Tennessee may wish to retain and which it may wish to consolidate; those decisions belong to the State and the relevant agencies, on the State’s own timeline. We mention the possibility only because the cost-of-ownership story is one states have asked us to address, and because we are glad to support evaluations of that kind when the State considers them useful.

We recognize that Tennessee has earned the right to be deliberate. The State’s coordination among THEC, TDLWD, TNECD, the Tennessee Board of Regents, the University of Tennessee System, the Local Workforce Development Boards, and the Tennessee Independent Colleges and Universities Association reflects years of careful institution-building. EBSCOed has no interest in disrupting that coordination. Our interest is in offering a free, open-standards layer that makes Tennessee’s existing investments more useful to the Tennesseans they serve, and in continuing the partnership the Southeastern Regional Talent Ecosystem Pilot has already begun.

If any of this is worth a conversation, we would welcome one — at the convenience of whoever the State considers the right convening authority, in whatever form would be most useful, and on whatever timeline the State prefers. The contact information below is the appropriate first point of contact. The QR codes that follow provide direct access to the current EBSCOed ecosystem overview, which is kept current as capabilities evolve, and to LER.me itself, where any Tennessean may today create a free Learning and Employment Record in a few minutes.

With great respect for the work Tennessee is already doing, and with hope that the next chapter may be written together,

Texas has, through the Tri-Agency Workforce Initiative, built one of the most coordinated State workforce frameworks in the country. Created by Governor Abbott in March 2016, the Tri-Agency Workforce Initiative brings together the Texas Workforce Commission (TWC), the Texas Education Agency (TEA), and the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) under joint commitment to develop strong links between education and industry. The Texas Credential Library — supported by Credential Engine and now housing more than 16,000 credentials along with learning opportunities, occupations, and outcomes — establishes Texas’s first State-coordinated public credential transparency infrastructure, with all credentials delivered, issued, funded, or governed by the State made transparently available to Texans. Building a Talent Strong Texas, THECB’s strategic plan, sets a goal that at least 60 percent of Texans ages 25-64 earn a degree, certificate, or other postsecondary credential of value by 2030, with three measurable goals: attainment of postsecondary credentials, postsecondary credentials of value, and research, development, and innovation. ApprenticeshipTexas, administered through TWC’s Office of Apprenticeship, provides dedicated funding streams including a $4 million Critical Skills Initiative supporting middle-skills career apprenticeships and a $15 million Healthcare Initiative supporting registered nurse and healthcare professional career pathways. The TWC Apprenticeship Training Program funds classroom instruction in registered apprenticeship through local education agencies under Texas Education Code Chapter 133. Texas State Technical College, the State’s 50 community college districts, the Texas Workforce Solutions network of Local Workforce Development Boards, and the 2025 Inventory of Industry-Recognized Credentials for high school CTE programs together extend the system from K-12 through post-secondary and into employment. Few states have built so much, so deliberately, in service of their workers.

This letter is written in admiration of that work, and with a specific proposition: that the next chapter of Texas’s education-to-workforce strategy may benefit from a learner-held layer that the State has not yet had occasion to build. EBSCOed is the division of EBSCO Information Services that has spent the last several years constructing that layer — the LER talent marketplace — and offering LER.me to states, learners, educators, and employers at no cost. We write to share what it is, where it complements Texas’s investments, where it bridges systems that today operate in parallel, and how it is designed to extend rather than disturb the credential infrastructure Texas has already built.

LER.me is an open-standards platform that gives each individual a portable digital wallet containing their verified learning and employment records. The marketplace is built on the IEEE Learning and Employment Record standard, Open Badges 3.0, and Comprehensive Learner Record 2.0 — the same open standards used across the credentialing field — so the data Texas already publishes to the Credential Engine Registry through the Texas Credential Library, and the credentials issued by the Texas State University System, the University of Texas System, the Texas A&M University System, the Texas Tech University System, Texas State Technical College, the 50 community college districts, K-12 independent school districts, and registered apprenticeship sponsors, remain authoritative and continue to operate exactly as they do today. The marketplace exchanges with those systems; it does not replace them. The platform itself is free to learners, to educators, and to employers, with optional subscription services available to states and large institutions that want deeper integration or custom analytics. The foundation is the foundation, and the foundation is free.

Four capabilities are most relevant to Texas’s context. The first is free credential issuance: any approved Texas institution, ISD, apprenticeship sponsor, or employer can issue verifiable credentials into learner-held wallets without licensing fees, supporting institutions of every size and budget on equal footing. The second is an open employer marketplace, in which Texas employers post opportunities and discover qualified candidates based on verified skills and credentials, again at no cost. The third is public workforce intelligence — dashboards that aggregate credential issuance and labor demand data as linked open data, available to State agencies for planning, reporting, and supporting Tri-Agency Workforce Initiative and Building a Talent Strong Texas reporting missions. The fourth is the contributor framework, which crosswalks issued credentials to occupational standards and to Texas Credential Library and 2025 Inventory of Industry-Recognized Credentials designations at the point of issuance, so the demand signal Texas has invested years in defining is operationalized at the individual level, automatically.

Texas’s distinctive achievement is the Tri-Agency Workforce Initiative’s coordinated authority across TWC, TEA, and THECB and the resulting Texas Credential Library. With more than 16,000 credentials registered, Texas has built one of the largest State-coordinated credential registries in the country, and the 2025 Inventory of Industry-Recognized Credentials and Certificates for high school CTE programs operationalizes the State’s commitment to credential transparency from grades 9-12 through postsecondary and into employment. Building a Talent Strong Texas anchors the State’s 60-percent-by-2030 attainment goal in measurable data-driven goals. What sits underneath every one of those structures is the same need: a verifiable, portable, learner-held record that lets each Texan carry their ISD CTE attainments, their Industry-Recognized Credential, their community college credential, their TSTC certificate or degree, their Texas State University System or UT System or Texas A&M System or Texas Tech System degree, their ApprenticeshipTexas-supported Registered Apprenticeship milestones, their Healthcare Initiative or Critical Skills Initiative attainment, their Workforce Solutions-supported credential, and their employer-issued microcredentials in one place, recognized by employers, transferable across institutions, and durable beyond any one platform. That record is what the LER marketplace provides, at no cost, on the open standards Texas already uses. EBSCOed is not asking Texas to alter the Tri-Agency Workforce Initiative or the Texas Credential Library — we are offering the learner-side layer that lets the credentials Texas has already cataloged travel with each Texan in a verifiable wallet.

There are three lenses through which we have found it useful to discuss this marketplace with State leadership, and we offer them here in the same spirit. The first is complement — where the marketplace adds capability Texas has not yet had reason to build at the individual level. The Texas Credential Library catalogs more than 16,000 credentials and their associated competencies; the marketplace adds the learner-side artifact, a verifiable record each Texan carries with them, populated with the same credential metadata Texas has already published. The 50 community college districts, TSTC campuses, ISDs participating in the 2025 Inventory of Industry-Recognized Credentials, university-system institutions, ApprenticeshipTexas sponsors, and Workforce Solutions partners all produce credentials that today travel through institutional transcripts; the marketplace gives each institution a free way to issue those credentials as verifiable Open Badges directly into learner wallets, with Texas Credential Library, ApprenticeshipTexas Critical Skills Initiative, Healthcare Initiative, or 2025 Inventory designation embedded in the badge metadata at issuance where applicable. None of this displaces Texas’s current investments. All of it makes them more visible, more durable, and more useful to the Texans who earn them.

The second lens is bridge — where the marketplace connects systems that today operate in parallel. A Texan who completes ISD CTE earning Industry-Recognized Credentials from the State Inventory, transfers to a community college district or TSTC for an associate degree or technical certificate, enters an ApprenticeshipTexas-supported Registered Apprenticeship in healthcare or middle skills, transfers to a Texas State University System, UT System, Texas A&M System, or Texas Tech System institution for a bachelor’s degree, gains Workforce Solutions-supported credentials, and accumulates employer-issued microcredentials currently has those attainments living in different places. The marketplace allows them to travel together in one learner-owned record. Workforce Solutions navigators serving Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants across the State’s Local Workforce Development Boards can see a complete skill picture rather than reconstructing it from a paper trail. The connective tissue the Tri-Agency Workforce Initiative provides at the State level can be operationalized at the learner level through a credential wallet that travels with each Texan.

The third lens is interoperability — where existing Texas platforms occupy adjacent space and where it is essential that the State’s investments be respected. The Texas Workforce Commission remains the State’s authoritative workforce agency; the marketplace operates as a learner-side complement that supports TWC’s mission. The Texas Education Agency continues exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives credentials from ISDs and the 2025 Inventory of Industry-Recognized Credentials with State designation preserved at issuance. The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board continues exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives credentials from public and private higher education institutions with Building a Talent Strong Texas alignment preserved. The Texas Credential Library continues exactly as it operates today; the marketplace ingests Library-published credentials and presents them in learner wallets. WorkInTexas remains Texas’s official labor exchange; the marketplace acts as a complementary skills-and-credentials profile layer that posts to WorkInTexas through standard application programming interfaces.

The matrix below — included here as a reference Texas leadership may return to — applies three perspectives to selected initiatives. The Complement column identifies where the marketplace adds capabilities current State investments do not provide. The Bridge column identifies where the marketplace connects presently separate systems. The Interoperability column describes how the marketplace is designed to work alongside existing Texas platforms.

If the State were to find this conversation worth continuing, three paths forward suggest themselves — each with discrete decision points and none requiring the State to commit beyond the step in front of it. The first is a discovery brief: a joint presentation to the Texas Workforce Commission, the Texas Education Agency, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, the Texas State University System, the University of Texas System, the Texas A&M University System, the Texas Tech University System, Texas State Technical College, and — where the State considers it useful — community college district presidents, Local Workforce Development Board leadership, and ApprenticeshipTexas employer partners, outlining the marketplace’s open-standards architecture, the at-no-cost foundation, and what a small first cohort could look like. The second is a sector pilot: subject to a State decision to proceed, a focused cohort drawn from one of ApprenticeshipTexas’s priority sectors — healthcare (with Healthcare Initiative partners), advanced manufacturing, construction trades, IT, or energy are natural candidates — in which Critical Skills or Healthcare Initiative participants, 2025 Inventory-credentialed ISD CTE completers, or community college and TSTC graduates receive a Comprehensive Learner Record aligned with Texas Credential Library and ApprenticeshipTexas designations and made available through the EBSCOed marketplace. The third path would, only at the State’s direction, layer in optional subscription services that integrate the marketplace with WorkInTexas, the statewide Eligible Training Provider List, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act case management, registered apprenticeship sponsor records, the Texas Credential Library publication pipeline, and the 2025 Inventory of Industry-Recognized Credentials application workflow. Any eligibility automation Texas wished to pursue for Workforce Pell, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, or registered apprenticeship would live in this phase. State funds engage only here, and only to the extent the State chooses to procure subscription services. The first two phases require no new State appropriation.

Several considerations may inform Texas’s thinking about the partnership. The marketplace’s open-standards foundation ensures the State’s prior investments in the Texas Credential Library, WorkInTexas, the 2025 Inventory of Industry-Recognized Credentials, and the credentialing work of the 50 community college districts, Texas State Technical College, the four public university systems, the State’s private nonprofit colleges, and registered apprenticeship sponsors continue to operate as they do today; the marketplace exchanges data with those systems rather than displacing them. The no-cost foundation means that the early phases require no new State appropriation; State funding considerations arise only in the third phase, and only for services the State elects to procure. Texas’s distinctive scale — 50 community college districts, 1,200+ ISDs, four major public university systems, and the largest State-coordinated credential registry in the country — may make Texas a particularly informative State for demonstrating that a learner-side marketplace can scale alongside an existing public credential infrastructure rather than competing with it.

A further consideration may be relevant to the State’s long-term planning. As the marketplace becomes the trusted system of record for skills and credentials across Texas, states often find that certain point solutions they currently maintain — case management tooling supporting Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants, Eligible Training Provider List eligibility workflows, standalone skills-assessment platforms, district- or institution-level credential wallets that today operate in isolation, and the patchwork of employer-side job-board and applicant-tracking subscriptions that result when many platforms each serve a slice of the same workforce — become candidates for consolidation or retirement, with associated reductions in ongoing licensing and maintenance costs. EBSCOed offers no opinion on which systems Texas may wish to retain and which it may wish to consolidate; those decisions belong to the State and the relevant agencies, on the State’s own timeline. We mention the possibility only because the cost-of-ownership story is one states have asked us to address, and because we are glad to support evaluations of that kind when the State considers them useful.

We recognize that Texas has earned the right to be deliberate. The State’s coordination among the Texas Workforce Commission, the Texas Education Agency, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, the Texas State University System, the University of Texas System, the Texas A&M University System, the Texas Tech University System, Texas State Technical College, the 50 community college districts, the State’s 1,200+ Independent School Districts, the Local Workforce Development Boards, and the ApprenticeshipTexas employer partner community reflects years of careful institution-building under the Tri-Agency Workforce Initiative framework. EBSCOed has no interest in disrupting that coordination. Our interest is in offering a free, open-standards layer that makes Texas’s existing investments — particularly the Tri-Agency Workforce Initiative, the Texas Credential Library, the 2025 Inventory of Industry-Recognized Credentials, ApprenticeshipTexas’s Critical Skills and Healthcare Initiatives, and Building a Talent Strong Texas — more useful to the Texans they serve.

If any of this is worth a conversation, we would welcome one — at the convenience of whoever the State considers the right convening authority, in whatever form would be most useful, and on whatever timeline the State prefers. The contact information below is the appropriate first point of contact. The QR codes that follow provide direct access to the current EBSCOed ecosystem overview, which is kept current as capabilities evolve, and to LER.me itself, where any Texan may today create a free Learning and Employment Record in a few minutes.

With great respect for the work Texas is already doing, and with hope that the next chapter may be written together,

Utah has, through the 2025 General Session, advanced one of the most coherent credential-attainment legislative packages in the country. HB 260 — the First Credential Program, sponsored by Representative Val Peterson — replaces the prior PRIME program and ensures each Utah student has the opportunity to graduate from high school with a meaningful, industry-aligned credential supporting college credit, career readiness, and lifelong learning. HB 260 established the First Credential Oversight Committee, co-chaired by the Commissioner of Higher Education, the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, and the Governor’s Education Advisor, with industry, technical college, Talent Ready Utah, and workforce development representatives at the table. The Committee is, with NCEE facilitation, developing the First Credential Master Plan and the First Credential Master List. HB 447 — the Statewide Catalyst Campus Model — creates the Catalyst Center Grant Program to support Local Education Agencies in establishing or expanding catalyst centers aligned with labor market needs and State CTE goals. HB 265 — Higher Education Strategic Reinvestment — codifies a redesigned performance funding model tied to enrollment, completion, professional outcomes (placement, employment, licensure, wage), and workforce demand. Talent Ready Utah, legislatively created in 2018 and now reporting to the Commissioner of Higher Education, convenes industry, education, and workforce partners through Talent Advisory Councils tied to high-demand sectors. The Utah System of Higher Education’s degree-granting institutions and technical colleges together with the Department of Workforce Services anchor delivery. Few states have built so much, so deliberately, in service of their workers.

This letter is written in admiration of that work, and with a specific proposition: that the next chapter of Utah’s education-to-workforce strategy may benefit from a learner-held layer that the State has not yet had occasion to build. EBSCOed is the division of EBSCO Information Services that has spent the last several years constructing that layer — the LER talent marketplace — and offering LER.me to states, learners, educators, and employers at no cost. We write to share what it is, where it complements Utah’s investments, where it bridges systems that today operate in parallel, and how it is designed to extend rather than disturb the credential infrastructure Utah has already built.

LER.me is an open-standards platform that gives each individual a portable digital wallet containing their verified learning and employment records. The marketplace is built on the IEEE Learning and Employment Record standard, Open Badges 3.0, and Comprehensive Learner Record 2.0 — the same open standards used across the credentialing field — so the data Utah already publishes to the Credential Engine Registry, and the credentials issued by USHE degree-granting institutions, Utah technical colleges, K-12 districts, and registered apprenticeship sponsors, remain authoritative and continue to operate exactly as they do today. The marketplace exchanges with those systems; it does not replace them. The platform itself is free to learners, to educators, and to employers, with optional subscription services available to states and large institutions that want deeper integration or custom analytics. The foundation is the foundation, and the foundation is free.

Four capabilities are most relevant to Utah’s context. The first is free credential issuance: any approved Utah institution, technical college, apprenticeship sponsor, or employer can issue verifiable credentials into learner-held wallets without licensing fees, supporting institutions of every size and budget on equal footing. The second is an open employer marketplace, in which Utah employers post opportunities and discover qualified candidates based on verified skills and credentials, again at no cost. The third is public workforce intelligence — dashboards that aggregate credential issuance and labor demand data as linked open data, available to State agencies for planning, reporting, and supporting the First Credential Oversight Committee’s analytic mission. The fourth is the contributor framework, which crosswalks issued credentials to occupational standards and to State-defined high-demand categories — including the First Credential Master List as it is developed — at the point of issuance, so the demand signal Utah has invested years in defining is operationalized at the individual level, automatically.

Utah’s distinctive achievement in 2025 was the legislative pairing of HB 260, HB 447, and HB 265 — a coherent three-part redesign of how the State produces, supports, and rewards credential attainment. HB 260 establishes a State commitment to graduate every Utah high school student with at least one industry-aligned credential. HB 447 scales the LEA infrastructure to deliver. HB 265 ties USHE performance funding to outcomes including placement, employment, licensure, and wage. The First Credential Master List that the Oversight Committee is now developing will become Utah’s authoritative State list of credentials of value. What sits underneath every one of those structures is the same need: a verifiable, portable, learner-held record that lets each Utahn carry their First Credential, their USHE degree, their technical college certification, their registered apprenticeship milestones, and their employer-issued microcredentials in one place, recognized by employers, transferable across institutions, and durable beyond high school graduation. That record is what the LER marketplace provides, at no cost, on the open standards the State already uses. EBSCOed is not asking Utah to add another State program — we are offering the learner-side layer that makes the First Credential, the catalyst center system, and the redesigned USHE outcomes visible at each Utahn’s hand.

There are three lenses through which we have found it useful to discuss this marketplace with state leadership, and we offer them here in the same spirit. The first is complement — where the marketplace adds capability Utah has not yet had reason to build. HB 260’s First Credential Program measures attainment at the LEA and State level; the marketplace adds the learner-side artifact, a verifiable record each Utahn carries with them from high school onward. The First Credential Master List, as the Oversight Committee develops it, will define what counts as a Utah industry-aligned credential; the marketplace gives every LEA, technical college, USHE institution, and approved provider a free way to issue First Credential-aligned credentials as verifiable Open Badges directly into learner wallets, with First Credential designation embedded in the badge metadata at issuance. HB 447’s catalyst centers, once funded, will produce work-based learning experiences that today travel inconsistently; verifiable issuance makes them durable. None of this displaces Utah’s current investments. All of it makes them more visible, more durable, and more useful to the Utahns who earn them.

The second lens is bridge — where the marketplace connects systems that today operate in parallel. A Utahn who earns a First Credential in high school, attends a USHE degree-granting institution or Utah technical college, completes a Talent Ready Utah-aligned program, finishes a registered apprenticeship, and gains employer-issued microcredentials currently has those attainments living in different places. The marketplace allows them to travel together in one learner-owned record. Utah Department of Workforce Services navigators serving Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants can see a complete skill picture rather than reconstructing it from a paper trail. The connective tissue HB 260’s First Credential Oversight Committee is building at the State level — the coordination of industry, technical colleges, K-12, USHE, and Talent Ready Utah — can be operationalized at the learner level through a credential wallet that travels with each Utahn.

The third lens is interoperability — where existing Utah platforms occupy adjacent space and where it is essential that the State’s investments be respected. The First Credential Oversight Committee, established by HB 260 and co-chaired by USHE, USBE, and the Governor’s Education Advisor, remains the State’s authoritative body for First Credential Master Plan and Master List decisions; the marketplace operates alongside by inviting approved providers to issue First Credential-aligned credentials as marketplace contributors. Talent Ready Utah remains USHE’s industry-facing convening body; the marketplace receives credentials produced through Talent Ready Utah-aligned programs without altering Talent Ready Utah’s industry-facing function. jobs.utah.gov, operated by the Department of Workforce Services, remains Utah’s official labor exchange and Workforce Pell processing channel; the marketplace acts as a complementary skills-and-credentials profile layer that posts to jobs.utah.gov and similar systems through standard application programming interfaces. USHE institutions' credential issuance systems continue unchanged; the marketplace ingests issued credentials as Open Badges.

The matrix below — included here as a reference Utah leadership may return to — applies three perspectives to selected initiatives. The Complement column identifies where the marketplace adds capabilities current State investments do not provide. The Bridge column identifies where the marketplace connects presently separate systems. The Interoperability column describes how the marketplace is designed to work alongside existing Utah platforms.

If the State were to find this conversation worth continuing, three paths forward suggest themselves — each with discrete decision points and none requiring the State to commit beyond the step in front of it. The first is a discovery brief: a joint presentation to the Utah System of Higher Education Commissioner’s Office, the Utah State Board of Education, the Department of Workforce Services, the Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity, Talent Ready Utah, the First Credential Oversight Committee, and — where the State considers it useful — the Utah Board of Higher Education, outlining the marketplace’s open-standards architecture, the at-no-cost foundation, and what a small first cohort could look like. The second is a sector pilot: subject to a State decision to proceed, a focused cohort drawn from one of Talent Ready Utah’s Talent Advisory Council priority sectors — health care, advanced manufacturing, engineering and computer technology, or the trades are natural candidates — in which First Credential graduates or USHE technical college completers receive a Comprehensive Learner Record aligned with First Credential Master List designation and made available through the EBSCOed marketplace. A catalyst-center pilot tied to one HB 447-funded LEA is another natural starting shape. The third path would, only at the State’s direction, layer in optional subscription services that integrate the marketplace with jobs.utah.gov, the Eligible Training Provider List, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act case management, registered apprenticeship sponsor records, Talent Ready Utah program data, and the First Credential Master Plan implementation infrastructure. Any eligibility automation Utah wished to pursue for Workforce Pell, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, or registered apprenticeship would live in this phase. State funds engage only here, and only to the extent the State chooses to procure subscription services. The first two phases require no new State appropriation.

Several considerations may inform Utah’s thinking about the partnership. The marketplace’s open-standards foundation ensures the State’s prior investments in the Credential Engine Registry, jobs.utah.gov, Talent Ready Utah, and the credentialing work of USHE degree-granting institutions and the eight Utah technical colleges continue to operate as they do today; the marketplace exchanges data with those systems rather than displacing them. The no-cost foundation means that the early phases require no new State appropriation; State funding considerations arise only in the third phase, and only for services the State elects to procure. Utah’s distinctive 2025 legislative achievement — HB 260, HB 447, and HB 265 advancing together — may make the present an opportune time to engage with a learner-side credential layer aligned with the First Credential Program’s stated direction.

A further consideration may be relevant to the State’s long-term planning. As the marketplace becomes the trusted system of record for skills and credentials across Utah, states often find that certain point solutions they currently maintain — case management tooling supporting Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants, Eligible Training Provider List eligibility workflows, standalone skills-assessment platforms, district- or institution-level credential wallets that today operate in isolation, and the patchwork of employer-side job-board and applicant-tracking subscriptions that result when many platforms each serve a slice of the same workforce — become candidates for consolidation or retirement, with associated reductions in ongoing licensing and maintenance costs. EBSCOed offers no opinion on which systems Utah may wish to retain and which it may wish to consolidate; those decisions belong to the State and the relevant agencies, on the State’s own timeline. We mention the possibility only because the cost-of-ownership story is one states have asked us to address, and because we are glad to support evaluations of that kind when the State considers them useful.

We recognize that Utah has earned the right to be deliberate. The State’s coordination among the Utah System of Higher Education and the Utah Board of Higher Education, the Utah State Board of Education, the Department of Workforce Services, the Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity, Talent Ready Utah, the First Credential Oversight Committee, the eight Utah technical colleges, USHE degree-granting institutions, and the State’s LEAs reflects years of careful institution-building — and the 2025 legislative package represents one of the most coherent multi-bill workforce commitments any state has made in recent memory. EBSCOed has no interest in disrupting that coordination. Our interest is in offering a free, open-standards layer that makes Utah’s existing investments — particularly the First Credential Program, the Catalyst Center Grant Program, the redesigned USHE performance funding model, and Talent Ready Utah’s industry alignment work — more useful to the Utahns they serve.

If any of this is worth a conversation, we would welcome one — at the convenience of whoever the State considers the right convening authority, in whatever form would be most useful, and on whatever timeline the State prefers. The contact information below is the appropriate first point of contact. The QR codes that follow provide direct access to the current EBSCOed ecosystem overview, which is kept current as capabilities evolve, and to LER.me itself, where any Utahn may today create a free Learning and Employment Record in a few minutes.

With great respect for the work Utah is already doing, and with hope that the next chapter may be written together,

Vermont has, through statute, established one of the most explicit State-level commitments to credential-of-value attainment in the country. Vermont law sets a goal that not less than 70 percent of working-age Vermonters will hold a credential of value — as defined by the State Workforce Development Board — by the year 2025. The Department of Labor (under Commissioner Lindsay Kurrle) and the Office of Workforce Strategy and Development jointly lead the State’s workforce education and employment and training coordination. The State Workforce Development Board has authority to approve State-endorsed and industry-recognized credentials and certificates aligned with Vermont’s State-endorsed Career Pathways, with the Career Pathway designations publicly available through the Agency of Education, Department of Labor, and Department of Economic Development. The Vermont Department of Labor operates 11 regional Job Center Network offices delivering workforce development services, with the Burlington office serving as the State’s federally-recognized One-Stop Job Center within the American Job Center Network. Vermont State University — VTSU, formed through the consolidation of the former Vermont Technical College, Castleton University, and Northern Vermont University — has, since 1999, partnered with the Vermont Department of Labor to manage the related instruction component of the Registered Electrical and Plumbing Apprenticeship programs. Vermont has nearly 700 active apprentices in more than 25 different occupations. The Vermont Training Program offsets a portion of customized training cost for employers. The Workforce Education and Training Fund, administered by VDOL, supports additional training opportunities. Few states have built so much, so deliberately, in service of their workers.

This letter is written in admiration of that work, and with a specific proposition: that the next chapter of Vermont’s education-to-workforce strategy may benefit from a learner-held layer that the State has not yet had occasion to build. EBSCOed is the division of EBSCO Information Services that has spent the last several years constructing that layer — the LER talent marketplace — and offering LER.me to states, learners, educators, and employers at no cost. We write to share what it is, where it complements Vermont’s investments, where it bridges systems that today operate in parallel, and how it is designed to extend rather than disturb the credential infrastructure Vermont has already built.

LER.me is an open-standards platform that gives each individual a portable digital wallet containing their verified learning and employment records. The marketplace is built on the IEEE Learning and Employment Record standard, Open Badges 3.0, and Comprehensive Learner Record 2.0 — the same open standards used across the credentialing field — so the data Vermont already publishes to the Credential Engine Registry, and the credentials issued by Vermont State University, the Community College of Vermont, the University of Vermont, K-12 districts, regional Career Technical Education centers, and registered apprenticeship sponsors, remain authoritative and continue to operate exactly as they do today. The marketplace exchanges with those systems; it does not replace them. The platform itself is free to learners, to educators, and to employers, with optional subscription services available to states and large institutions that want deeper integration or custom analytics. The foundation is the foundation, and the foundation is free.

Four capabilities are most relevant to Vermont’s context. The first is free credential issuance: any approved Vermont institution, regional CTE center, apprenticeship sponsor, or employer can issue verifiable credentials into learner-held wallets without licensing fees, supporting institutions of every size and budget on equal footing. The second is an open employer marketplace, in which Vermont employers post opportunities and discover qualified candidates based on verified skills and credentials, again at no cost. The third is public workforce intelligence — dashboards that aggregate credential issuance and labor demand data as linked open data, available to State agencies for planning, reporting, and supporting the State Workforce Development Board’s biennial reporting on credentials awarded. The fourth is the contributor framework, which crosswalks issued credentials to occupational standards and to State-endorsed Career Pathways at the point of issuance, so the demand signal Vermont has invested years in defining is operationalized at the individual level, automatically.

Vermont’s distinctive structural achievement is the statutorily-defined credential-of-value goal and the State Workforce Development Board’s authority to approve State-endorsed and industry-recognized credentials. Few states have legislated both an attainment goal and a credential approval authority at the Board level. The Office of Workforce Strategy and Development, established within the Executive Branch alongside the Department of Labor, gives Vermont a coordinated workforce coordination architecture proportional to the State’s size. What sits underneath every one of those structures is the same need: a verifiable, portable, learner-held record that lets each Vermonter carry their VTSU degree or certificate, their Community College of Vermont attainment, their UVM degree, their State-endorsed Career Pathway-aligned credential, their VTSU-managed Registered Electrical or Plumbing Apprenticeship attainment, their Vermont Training Program-funded credential, their regional CTE center attainment, and their employer-issued microcredentials in one place, recognized by employers, transferable across institutions, and durable beyond any one platform. That record is what the LER marketplace provides, at no cost, on the open standards the State already uses. EBSCOed is not asking Vermont to alter the statutory credential-of-value framework — we are offering the learner-side layer that lets the credentials of value Vermont has defined travel with each Vermonter in a verifiable wallet.

There are three lenses through which we have found it useful to discuss this marketplace with State leadership, and we offer them here in the same spirit. The first is complement — where the marketplace adds capability Vermont has not yet had reason to build. The State Workforce Development Board’s biennial credential reporting tracks the supply of State-endorsed credentials; the marketplace adds the learner-side artifact, a verifiable record each Vermonter carries with them. Vermont State University, the Community College of Vermont, UVM, the State’s regional CTE centers, and registered apprenticeship sponsors all produce credentials that today travel through institutional transcripts; the marketplace gives each institution a free way to issue those credentials as verifiable Open Badges directly into learner wallets, with State-endorsed Career Pathway designation embedded in the badge metadata at issuance where applicable. None of this displaces Vermont’s current investments. All of it makes them more visible, more durable, and more useful to the Vermonters who earn them.

The second lens is bridge — where the marketplace connects systems that today operate in parallel. A Vermonter who completes career and technical education at a regional CTE center, earns a VTSU or Community College of Vermont credential, transfers to UVM or another four-year institution, completes a VTSU-managed Registered Electrical or Plumbing Apprenticeship or another sector apprenticeship, completes Vermont Training Program-funded employer-customized training, and gains employer-issued microcredentials currently has those attainments living in different places. The marketplace allows them to travel together in one learner-owned record. Vermont Department of Labor Job Center navigators serving Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants across the State’s 11 regional offices can see a complete skill picture rather than reconstructing it from a paper trail. The connective tissue OWSD and VDOL provide at the State level can be operationalized at the learner level through a credential wallet that travels with each Vermonter.

The third lens is interoperability — where existing Vermont platforms occupy adjacent space and where it is essential that the State’s investments be respected. The Vermont Department of Labor remains the State’s authoritative workforce agency and the State Workforce Agency for WIOA purposes; the marketplace operates as a learner-side complement that supports VDOL’s mission. The Office of Workforce Strategy and Development continues exactly as it operates today within the Executive Branch; the marketplace receives credentials produced through OWSD-coordinated programs. The State Workforce Development Board continues exactly as it operates today, including its statutory authority to approve State-endorsed credentials and Career Pathways; the marketplace receives credentials with State-endorsed designation preserved at issuance. Vermont JobLink remains Vermont’s official labor exchange; the marketplace acts as a complementary skills-and-credentials profile layer that posts to Vermont JobLink through standard application programming interfaces.

The matrix below — included here as a reference Vermont leadership may return to — applies three perspectives to selected initiatives. The Complement column identifies where the marketplace adds capabilities current State investments do not provide. The Bridge column identifies where the marketplace connects presently separate systems. The Interoperability column describes how the marketplace is designed to work alongside existing Vermont platforms.

If the State were to find this conversation worth continuing, three paths forward suggest themselves — each with discrete decision points and none requiring the State to commit beyond the step in front of it. The first is a discovery brief: a joint presentation to the Vermont Department of Labor, the Office of Workforce Strategy and Development, the State Workforce Development Board, Vermont State University, the Community College of Vermont, the University of Vermont, the Agency of Education, the Department of Economic Development, and — where the State considers it useful — regional CTE center leadership, outlining the marketplace’s open-standards architecture, the at-no-cost foundation, and what a small first cohort could look like. The second is a sector pilot: subject to a State decision to proceed, a focused cohort drawn from one of Vermont’s strategic credential areas — healthcare, manufacturing, construction and trades (including the VTSU-managed Electrical and Plumbing apprenticeship programs), education, or clean energy are natural candidates — in which registered apprenticeship completers, VTSU or CCV graduates, or Vermont Training Program participants receive a Comprehensive Learner Record aligned with State-endorsed Career Pathway designations and made available through the EBSCOed marketplace. The third path would, only at the State’s direction, layer in optional subscription services that integrate the marketplace with Vermont JobLink, the Eligible Training Provider List, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act case management, registered apprenticeship sponsor records, the Vermont Training Program data pipeline, and the State Workforce Development Board’s credential approval workflow. Any eligibility automation Vermont wished to pursue for Workforce Pell, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, or registered apprenticeship would live in this phase. State funds engage only here, and only to the extent the State chooses to procure subscription services. The first two phases require no new State appropriation.

Several considerations may inform Vermont’s thinking about the partnership. The marketplace’s open-standards foundation ensures the State’s prior investments in the Credential Engine Registry, Vermont JobLink, and the credentialing work of Vermont State University, the Community College of Vermont, the University of Vermont, regional CTE centers, and the State’s independent institutions continue to operate as they do today; the marketplace exchanges data with those systems rather than displacing them. The no-cost foundation means that the early phases require no new State appropriation; State funding considerations arise only in the third phase, and only for services the State elects to procure. Vermont’s distinctive statutory framework — the 70-percent credential-of-value goal and the State Workforce Development Board’s authority to approve State-endorsed credentials and Career Pathways — may make a learner-side marketplace that preserves State-endorsed designation at issuance a particularly natural fit.

A further consideration may be relevant to the State’s long-term planning. As the marketplace becomes the trusted system of record for skills and credentials across Vermont, states often find that certain point solutions they currently maintain — case management tooling supporting Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants, Eligible Training Provider List eligibility workflows, standalone skills-assessment platforms, district- or institution-level credential wallets that today operate in isolation, and the patchwork of employer-side job-board and applicant-tracking subscriptions that result when many platforms each serve a slice of the same workforce — become candidates for consolidation or retirement, with associated reductions in ongoing licensing and maintenance costs. EBSCOed offers no opinion on which systems Vermont may wish to retain and which it may wish to consolidate; those decisions belong to the State and the relevant agencies, on the State’s own timeline. We mention the possibility only because the cost-of-ownership story is one states have asked us to address, and because we are glad to support evaluations of that kind when the State considers them useful.

We recognize that Vermont has earned the right to be deliberate. The State’s coordination among the Department of Labor, the Office of Workforce Strategy and Development, the State Workforce Development Board, Vermont State University, the Community College of Vermont, the University of Vermont, the Agency of Education, the Department of Economic Development, the regional CTE centers, and the State’s registered apprenticeship sponsor community reflects years of careful institution-building under a statutorily-grounded credential-of-value framework. EBSCOed has no interest in disrupting that coordination. Our interest is in offering a free, open-standards layer that makes Vermont’s existing investments — particularly the State-endorsed Career Pathways, the VTSU apprenticeship related instruction partnership, the Vermont Training Program, and the Workforce Education and Training Fund — more useful to the Vermonters they serve.

If any of this is worth a conversation, we would welcome one — at the convenience of whoever the State considers the right convening authority, in whatever form would be most useful, and on whatever timeline the State prefers. The contact information below is the appropriate first point of contact. The QR codes that follow provide direct access to the current EBSCOed ecosystem overview, which is kept current as capabilities evolve, and to LER.me itself, where any Vermonter may today create a free Learning and Employment Record in a few minutes.

With great respect for the work Vermont is already doing, and with hope that the next chapter may be written together,

Virginia has spent the last decade building one of the most disciplined education-to-workforce systems in the country. The 23 colleges of the Virginia Community College System reach every region of the Commonwealth and serve more than 200,000 credit-seeking students plus tens of thousands more in workforce training. FastForward — known in the Code of Virginia as the New Economy Workforce Credential Grant Program — has produced more than 64,000 industry-recognized credentials since 2016 through its pay-for-performance funding model, and Get Skilled, Get a Job, Get Ahead (G3) has scaled to roughly $34.5 million in last-dollar tuition assistance covering six high-demand industries: education, healthcare, information technology, public safety, manufacturing and skilled trades, and hospitality and culinary arts. Virginia Works coordinates workforce services across the Commonwealth’s local workforce development areas, administers the Eligible Training Provider List under the authority of the Virginia Board of Workforce Development, and stewards initiatives including Apprenticeship Pathways for CTE Centers and the Returnship Program. The Virginia Office of Education Economics produces the High Demand Occupations List and Dashboard that ties G3, FastForward, registered apprenticeship, and STEM workforce signals to occupational data. The Department of Labor and Industry administers registered apprenticeship through regional service offices, and the Department of Education’s 3E Readiness Framework — employment, enlistment, or enrollment — has integrated High-Quality Work-Based Learning into the graduation experience for every Virginia high school student. Few states have built so much, so deliberately, in service of their workers.

This letter is written in admiration of that work, and with a specific proposition: that the next chapter of Virginia’s education-to-workforce strategy may benefit from a learner-held layer that the Commonwealth has not yet had occasion to build. EBSCOed is the division of EBSCO Information Services that has spent the last several years constructing that layer — the LER talent marketplace — and offering LER.me to states, learners, educators, and employers at no cost. We write to share what it is, where it complements Virginia’s investments, where it bridges systems that today operate in parallel, and how it is designed to extend rather than disturb the credential infrastructure Virginia has already built.

LER.me is an open-standards platform that gives each individual a portable digital wallet containing their verified learning and employment records. The marketplace is built on the IEEE Learning and Employment Record standard, Open Badges 3.0, and Comprehensive Learner Record 2.0 — the same open standards used across the credentialing field — so the data Virginia already publishes to the Credential Engine Registry, and the credentials issued by VCCS colleges, four-year institutions, K-12 CTE programs, and registered apprenticeship sponsors, remain authoritative and continue to operate exactly as they do today. The marketplace exchanges with those systems; it does not replace them. The platform itself is free to learners, to educators, and to employers, with optional subscription services available to states and large institutions that want deeper integration or custom analytics. The foundation is the foundation, and the foundation is free.

Four capabilities are most relevant to Virginia’s context. The first is free credential issuance: any approved Virginia institution, apprenticeship sponsor, or employer can issue verifiable credentials into learner-held wallets without licensing fees, supporting institutions of every size and budget on equal footing. The second is an open employer marketplace, in which Virginia employers post opportunities and discover qualified candidates based on verified skills and credentials, again at no cost. The third is public workforce intelligence — dashboards that aggregate credential issuance and labor demand data as linked open data, available to State agencies for planning, reporting, and informing future revisions of the High Demand Occupations List. The fourth is the contributor framework, which crosswalks issued credentials to occupational standards and to Commonwealth-defined high-demand categories at the point of issuance, so the demand signal Virginia has invested years in defining — through the Virginia Office of Education Economics and the Virginia Board of Workforce Development — is operationalized at the individual level, automatically.

Virginia is, in important respects, ahead of most states on the structural questions. FastForward demonstrates that pay-for-performance credentialing works at scale when the State, the student, and the institution share risk and reward. G3 demonstrates that targeted last-dollar funding aligned to State-defined high-demand industries can move credential production. The High Demand Occupations Dashboard demonstrates that Virginia can publish credential-to-occupation alignment data as a public asset. The 3E Readiness Framework demonstrates that work-based learning can be made a graduation-relevant outcome at scale. What sits underneath every one of those investments is the same need: a verifiable, portable, learner-held record that lets each Virginian carry their FastForward credentials, G3-funded degree progress, registered apprenticeship milestones, CTE HQWBL completions, and employer-issued microcredentials in one place, recognized by employers, transferable across institutions, and durable beyond any one platform. That record is what the LER marketplace provides, at no cost, on the open standards the Commonwealth already uses. EBSCOed is not asking Virginia to redesign what it has built — we are offering to operate the layer that makes Virginia’s existing investments visible at the learner level.

There are three lenses through which we have found it useful to discuss this marketplace with state leadership, and we offer them here in the same spirit. The first is complement — where the marketplace adds capability Virginia has not yet had reason to build. FastForward and G3 measure credential production at the program and Commonwealth level; the marketplace adds the learner-side artifact, a verifiable record each Virginian carries with them. The High Demand Occupations List defines what counts as a credential of value to Virginia’s economy; the marketplace lets every VCCS college, four-year institution, registered apprenticeship sponsor, CTE center, and employer issue those credentials as verifiable Open Badges directly into learner wallets, with the high-demand designation embedded in the badge metadata at issuance. Apprenticeship Pathways grants funded under Virginia Works produce work-based learning experiences at CTE centers across the Commonwealth; the marketplace gives those centers a free way to make every milestone visible. None of this displaces Virginia’s current investments. All of it makes them more visible, more durable, and more useful to the Virginians who earn them.

The second lens is bridge — where the marketplace connects systems that today operate in parallel. A Virginian who uses G3 funding for tuition, earns FastForward credentials for short-term workforce training, completes a registered apprenticeship through the Department of Labor and Industry, satisfies a 3E Readiness HQWBL experience in high school, and gains employer-issued microcredentials currently has those attainments living in different places. The marketplace allows them to travel together in one learner-owned record. Virginia Career Works center navigators serving Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants can see a complete skill picture rather than reconstructing it from a paper trail. The relationship between FastForward, G3, the Workforce Credential Grant, and the High Demand Occupations List is one of Virginia’s distinctive strengths — but the connective tissue today lives in agencies and institutions, not in the learner. The marketplace puts it in the learner, where it belongs.

The third lens is interoperability — where existing Virginia platforms occupy adjacent space and where it is essential that the Commonwealth’s investments be respected. FastForward’s pay-for-performance grant administration, run through VCCS, remains exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives credentials issued by FastForward providers and presents them in learner wallets without altering the underlying grant process. The G3 program continues to run through community college financial aid offices unchanged; the marketplace receives the credentials that G3-funded programs produce. The Eligible Training Provider List remains the Commonwealth’s authoritative list of approved training providers; the marketplace operates alongside the ETPL by inviting approved providers to issue credentials as marketplace contributors. The Virginia Employment Commission’s labor exchange and VirginiaHasJobs.com remain Virginia’s official employment channels; the marketplace acts as a complementary skills-and-credentials profile layer that posts to those systems through standard application programming interfaces. The High Demand Occupations Dashboard remains the Commonwealth’s authoritative view of credential-to-occupation alignment; the marketplace’s public workforce intelligence dashboards complement that view at the credential-issuance level.

The matrix below — included here as a reference Virginia leadership may return to — applies three perspectives to selected initiatives. The Complement column identifies where the marketplace adds capabilities current Commonwealth investments do not provide. The Bridge column identifies where the marketplace connects presently separate systems. The Interoperability column describes how the marketplace is designed to work alongside existing Virginia platforms.

If the Commonwealth were to find this conversation worth continuing, three paths forward suggest themselves — each with discrete decision points and none requiring the Commonwealth to commit beyond the step in front of it. The first is a discovery brief: a joint presentation to Virginia Works, the Virginia Board of Workforce Development, VCCS leadership, the Virginia Office of Education Economics, and the Virginia Economic Development Partnership outlining the marketplace’s open-standards architecture, the at-no-cost foundation, and what a small first cohort could look like. The second is a sector pilot: subject to a Commonwealth decision to proceed, a focused cohort drawn from one of the six G3 industries or one of the High Demand Occupations List priority areas — healthcare, advanced manufacturing, information technology, or skilled trades are natural candidates — in which graduates receive a Comprehensive Learner Record aligned with the High Demand Occupations designation and made available through the EBSCOed marketplace. The third path would, only at the Commonwealth’s direction, layer in optional subscription services that integrate the marketplace with the Virginia Employment Commission’s labor exchange, the Eligible Training Provider List, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act case management, the registered apprenticeship sponsor records administered by DOLI, and the High Demand Occupations Dashboard data pipeline. Any eligibility automation Virginia wished to pursue for Workforce Pell, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, or registered apprenticeship would live in this phase. Commonwealth funds engage only here, and only to the extent the Commonwealth chooses to procure subscription services. The first two phases require no new Commonwealth appropriation.

Several considerations may inform Virginia’s thinking about the partnership. The marketplace’s open-standards foundation ensures the Commonwealth’s prior investments in the Credential Engine Registry, FastForward, G3, the High Demand Occupations Dashboard, and the credentialing work of VCCS and the four-year institutions continue to operate as they do today; the marketplace exchanges data with those systems rather than displacing them. The no-cost foundation means that the early phases require no new Commonwealth appropriation; State funding considerations arise only in the third phase, and only for services the Commonwealth elects to procure. The structure of Virginia’s Local Workforce Development Areas — each with substantial discretion in implementation, as the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission has noted — may benefit from engagement at both the Commonwealth and local Area level during any broader rollout, and EBSCOed welcomes the opportunity to participate in such conversations at the Commonwealth’s direction, in whatever forum the Commonwealth considers most useful.

A further consideration may be relevant to the Commonwealth’s long-term planning. As the marketplace becomes the trusted system of record for skills and credentials across Virginia, states often find that certain point solutions they currently maintain — case management tooling supporting Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants, Eligible Training Provider List eligibility workflows, standalone skills-assessment platforms, district- or institution-level credential wallets that today operate in isolation, and the patchwork of employer-side job-board and applicant-tracking subscriptions that result when many platforms each serve a slice of the same workforce — become candidates for consolidation or retirement, with associated reductions in ongoing licensing and maintenance costs. EBSCOed offers no opinion on which systems Virginia may wish to retain and which it may wish to consolidate; those decisions belong to the Commonwealth and the relevant agencies, on the Commonwealth’s own timeline. We mention the possibility only because the cost-of-ownership story is one states have asked us to address, and because we are glad to support evaluations of that kind when the Commonwealth considers them useful.

We recognize that Virginia has earned the right to be deliberate. The Commonwealth’s coordination among Virginia Works, the Virginia Board of Workforce Development, VCCS, the Department of Education, the Department of Labor and Industry, the Virginia Employment Commission, the Virginia Office of Education Economics, the Virginia Economic Development Partnership, the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia, and the Local Workforce Development Boards reflects years of careful institution-building. EBSCOed has no interest in disrupting that coordination. Our interest is in offering a free, open-standards layer that makes Virginia’s existing investments — particularly the credential-production engines of FastForward and G3 — more useful to the Virginians who earn the credentials those programs fund.

If any of this is worth a conversation, we would welcome one — at the convenience of whoever the Commonwealth considers the right convening authority, in whatever form would be most useful, and on whatever timeline the Commonwealth prefers. The contact information below is the appropriate first point of contact. The QR codes that follow provide direct access to the current EBSCOed ecosystem overview, which is kept current as capabilities evolve, and to LER.me itself, where any Virginian may today create a free Learning and Employment Record in a few minutes.

With great respect for the work Virginia is already doing, and with hope that the next chapter may be written together,

Washington has, through Career Connect Washington and the State’s coordinated workforce architecture, built one of the most ambitious tiered career-connected learning systems in the country. CCW — convening employers, labor, education, and community leaders — organizes the State’s youth career pipeline through Career Explore (introduction), Career Prep (preparation and pre-apprenticeship), and Career Launch (registered apprenticeship and equivalent work-and-learn). Washington has helped more than 9,000 young people complete Career Launch and Registered Apprenticeship programs through CCW, with a goal of 60 percent of the class of 2030 participating in Career Launch programs and a 70 percent credential attainment goal for the same class. The Washington Jobs Initiative — built on CCW and supported by a $23.5 million Good Jobs Challenge grant — targets training for 5,000 Washingtonians and placement of 3,150 in living-wage jobs by September 2026; as of June 2025, WJI had enrolled 4,184 and placed 1,639. The Workforce Training and Education Coordinating Board, with Governor Ferguson’s recently appointed co-chairs April Sims (Washington State Labor Council) and Morgan Irwin (Association of Washington Business), serves as the State’s lead policy agency for workforce development, overseeing 16 education and training programs. The State Board for Community and Technical Colleges coordinates 34 colleges, the Washington Student Achievement Council coordinates CCW implementation, and the State’s nine Educational Service Districts provide regional backbone. The Washington College Grant — HB 2158 (2019) — provides the State’s largest financial aid program. Few states have built so much, so deliberately, in service of their workers.

This letter is written in admiration of that work, and with a specific proposition: that the next chapter of Washington’s education-to-workforce strategy may benefit from a learner-held layer that the State has not yet had occasion to build. EBSCOed is the division of EBSCO Information Services that has spent the last several years constructing that layer — the LER talent marketplace — and offering LER.me to states, learners, educators, and employers at no cost. We write to share what it is, where it complements Washington’s investments, where it bridges systems that today operate in parallel, and how it is designed to extend rather than disturb the credential infrastructure Washington has already built.

LER.me is an open-standards platform that gives each individual a portable digital wallet containing their verified learning and employment records. The marketplace is built on the IEEE Learning and Employment Record standard, Open Badges 3.0, and Comprehensive Learner Record 2.0 — the same open standards used across the credentialing field — so the data Washington already publishes to the Credential Engine Registry, and the credentials issued by the 34 SBCTC colleges, the State’s public universities, K-12 districts, and registered apprenticeship sponsors, remain authoritative and continue to operate exactly as they do today. The marketplace exchanges with those systems; it does not replace them. The platform itself is free to learners, to educators, and to employers, with optional subscription services available to states and large institutions that want deeper integration or custom analytics. The foundation is the foundation, and the foundation is free.

Four capabilities are most relevant to Washington’s context. The first is free credential issuance: any approved Washington institution, apprenticeship sponsor, or employer can issue verifiable credentials into learner-held wallets without licensing fees, supporting institutions of every size and budget on equal footing. The second is an open employer marketplace, in which Washington employers post opportunities and discover qualified candidates based on verified skills and credentials, again at no cost. The third is public workforce intelligence — dashboards that aggregate credential issuance and labor demand data as linked open data, available to State agencies for planning, reporting, and supporting the WSAC, WEIAOB, and Workforce Board reporting missions. The fourth is the contributor framework, which crosswalks issued credentials to occupational standards and to State-defined IRC List designations at the point of issuance, so the demand signal Washington has invested years in defining is operationalized at the individual level, automatically.

Washington’s distinctive achievement is the structural tiering of career-connected learning under Career Connect Washington — Career Explore, Career Prep, and Career Launch — and the State’s 70 percent credential attainment goal for the class of 2030, paired with the 60 percent Career Launch participation goal for the same class. The Washington Jobs Initiative’s sector partnerships in advanced manufacturing, construction, clean energy, healthcare, and IT/cybersecurity demonstrate that the State has built credible credential production at scale. What sits underneath every one of those tiered programs is the same need: a verifiable, portable, learner-held record that lets each Washingtonian carry their CCW Career Launch endorsement, their SBCTC credential, their CTE Dual Credit attainment, their registered apprenticeship milestones, their Workforce Pell-funded short-term training credential when it launches in 2026, and their employer-issued microcredentials in one place, recognized by employers, transferable across institutions, and durable beyond any one platform. That record is what the LER marketplace provides, at no cost, on the open standards the State already uses. EBSCOed is not asking Washington to change the CCW tiering structure — we are offering the learner-side layer that lets every Career Launch, Career Prep, and Career Explore graduate carry their credentials in a verifiable wallet from K-12 onward.

There are three lenses through which we have found it useful to discuss this marketplace with state leadership, and we offer them here in the same spirit. The first is complement — where the marketplace adds capability Washington has not yet had reason to build. CCW measures program participation, endorsement status, and outcomes at the State and regional level; the marketplace adds the learner-side artifact, a verifiable record each Washingtonian carries with them. The Workforce Board’s IRC List — refreshed for 2025-26 with 14 new IRCs added — defines what counts as an industry-recognized credential in Washington; the marketplace gives every SBCTC college, K-12 district, CCW Program Builder, registered apprenticeship sponsor, and Workforce Pell-approved provider a free way to issue IRC List credentials as verifiable Open Badges directly into learner wallets, with IRC designation embedded in the badge metadata at issuance. CTE Dual Credit attainments, Passport to Careers participants, WA Grant for Apprenticeship recipients, and WAVE Scholarship recipients face the same opportunity. None of this displaces Washington’s current investments. All of it makes them more visible, more durable, and more useful to the Washingtonians who earn them.

The second lens is bridge — where the marketplace connects systems that today operate in parallel. A Washingtonian who participates in Career Explore in middle school, completes Career Prep in high school, earns a Career Launch endorsement through an SBCTC college or registered apprenticeship, uses the Washington College Grant for additional credentialing, completes a Workforce Pell-funded short-term program once Workforce Pell launches in July 2026, and gains employer-issued microcredentials currently has those attainments living in different places. The marketplace allows them to travel together in one learner-owned record. WorkSource centers and Local Workforce Development Council navigators serving Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants can see a complete skill picture rather than reconstructing it from a paper trail. The connective tissue WSAC, WEIAOB, and the Workforce Board provide at the State level can be operationalized at the learner level through a credential wallet that travels with each Washingtonian.

The third lens is interoperability — where existing Washington platforms occupy adjacent space and where it is essential that the State’s investments be respected. The Workforce Training and Education Coordinating Board remains the State’s authoritative workforce policy agency and the steward of the IRC List; the marketplace operates alongside by inviting approved providers to issue IRC List credentials as marketplace contributors with IRC designation preserved at issuance. The CCW Program Directory remains the State’s authoritative directory of endorsed Career Explore, Career Prep, and Career Launch programs; the marketplace receives credentials produced through Directory-listed programs. The State Board for Community and Technical Colleges' workforce education function continues exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives credentials issued by SBCTC colleges. WorkSourceWA remains Washington’s official labor exchange; the marketplace acts as a complementary skills-and-credentials profile layer that posts to WorkSourceWA and similar systems through standard application programming interfaces.

The matrix below — included here as a reference Washington leadership may return to — applies three perspectives to selected initiatives. The Complement column identifies where the marketplace adds capabilities current State investments do not provide. The Bridge column identifies where the marketplace connects presently separate systems. The Interoperability column describes how the marketplace is designed to work alongside existing Washington platforms.

If the State were to find this conversation worth continuing, three paths forward suggest themselves — each with discrete decision points and none requiring the State to commit beyond the step in front of it. The first is a discovery brief: a joint presentation to the Workforce Training and Education Coordinating Board, the State Board for Community and Technical Colleges, the Washington Student Achievement Council, the Workforce Education Investment Accountability and Oversight Board, Career Connect Washington, the Washington Jobs Initiative leadership, the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, and — where the State considers it useful — the public university and Educational Service District representatives, outlining the marketplace’s open-standards architecture, the at-no-cost foundation, and what a small first cohort could look like. The second is a sector pilot: subject to a State decision to proceed, a focused cohort drawn from one of the Washington Jobs Initiative sector partnerships — advanced manufacturing (with Manufacturing WORKS), construction (with Construct A Career), clean energy (with JumpStart), healthcare (with the Healthcare Talent Pipeline), or IT/cybersecurity (with the Washington Technology Workforce Coalition) — in which Career Launch graduates and WJI program completers receive a Comprehensive Learner Record aligned with IRC List designations and made available through the EBSCOed marketplace. The third path would, only at the State’s direction, layer in optional subscription services that integrate the marketplace with WorkSourceWA, the Eligible Training Provider List, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act case management, registered apprenticeship sponsor records, the CCW Program Directory, and the IRC List administration pipeline, and that integrate with the Workforce Pell processing pipeline once Workforce Pell launches in July 2026. Any eligibility automation Washington wished to pursue for Workforce Pell, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, or registered apprenticeship would live in this phase. State funds engage only here, and only to the extent the State chooses to procure subscription services. The first two phases require no new State appropriation.

Several considerations may inform Washington’s thinking about the partnership. The marketplace’s open-standards foundation ensures the State’s prior investments in the Credential Engine Registry, WorkSourceWA, the CCW Program Directory, the IRC List infrastructure, and the credentialing work of the 34 SBCTC colleges and public universities continue to operate as they do today; the marketplace exchanges data with those systems rather than displacing them. The no-cost foundation means that the early phases require no new State appropriation; State funding considerations arise only in the third phase, and only for services the State elects to procure. Washington’s distinctive tiered career-connected learning architecture and the State’s first-in-the-nation Workforce Pell preparation work may benefit from engagement at both the State and regional Educational Service District level during any broader rollout.

A further consideration may be relevant to the State’s long-term planning. As the marketplace becomes the trusted system of record for skills and credentials across Washington, states often find that certain point solutions they currently maintain — case management tooling supporting Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants, Eligible Training Provider List eligibility workflows, standalone skills-assessment platforms, district- or institution-level credential wallets that today operate in isolation, and the patchwork of employer-side job-board and applicant-tracking subscriptions that result when many platforms each serve a slice of the same workforce — become candidates for consolidation or retirement, with associated reductions in ongoing licensing and maintenance costs. EBSCOed offers no opinion on which systems Washington may wish to retain and which it may wish to consolidate; those decisions belong to the State and the relevant agencies, on the State’s own timeline. We mention the possibility only because the cost-of-ownership story is one states have asked us to address, and because we are glad to support evaluations of that kind when the State considers them useful.

We recognize that Washington has earned the right to be deliberate. The State’s coordination among the Workforce Training and Education Coordinating Board, the State Board for Community and Technical Colleges, the Washington Student Achievement Council, the Workforce Education Investment Accountability and Oversight Board, Career Connect Washington, the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, the public universities, the nine Educational Service Districts, and the Local Workforce Development Councils reflects years of careful institution-building. EBSCOed has no interest in disrupting that coordination. Our interest is in offering a free, open-standards layer that makes Washington’s existing investments — particularly the CCW tiered architecture, the Washington Jobs Initiative, the IRC List, and the Washington College Grant — more useful to the Washingtonians they serve.

If any of this is worth a conversation, we would welcome one — at the convenience of whoever the State considers the right convening authority, in whatever form would be most useful, and on whatever timeline the State prefers. The contact information below is the appropriate first point of contact. The QR codes that follow provide direct access to the current EBSCOed ecosystem overview, which is kept current as capabilities evolve, and to LER.me itself, where any Washingtonian may today create a free Learning and Employment Record in a few minutes.

With great respect for the work Washington is already doing, and with hope that the next chapter may be written together,

West Virginia has, since 2018, organized its workforce attainment work around West Virginia’s Climb — the campaign to have 60 percent of the State’s working-age population hold a high-quality postsecondary credential by 2030. The Climb is a cross-sector commitment: the Higher Education Policy Commission, the Council for Community and Technical College Education, the West Virginia Department of Education, WorkForce West Virginia, and private-sector partners share responsibility for it. The nine colleges and 20 campuses of the West Virginia Community and Technical College System reach every county. The WV Invests Grant, the State’s last-dollar-in financial aid program, covers tuition and fees for certificate and associate degree programs in high-demand fields at participating public two-year and four-year institutions. Open Learning West Virginia has saved students more than seven million dollars in textbook costs through Open Educational Resources. The Learn and Earn Program provides a 50-50 wage match for paid student internships through CTC partnerships with employers. West Virginia EDGE and Advanced Career Education provide seamless secondary-to-postsecondary programs of study leading to industry-recognized credentials. WorkForce West Virginia administers WIOA programs across seven regions and 18 local offices, and the Workforce Development Board has committed to a Blue Ribbon Franchise Model designed to deliver a consistent customer experience across the State. The annual Champion of College Access and Success awards, jointly issued by the Higher Education Policy Commission and the Council for Community and Technical College Education, recognize high schools that build a culture of college and career readiness. Few states have built so much, so deliberately, in service of their workers.

This letter is written in admiration of that work, and with a specific proposition: that the next chapter of West Virginia’s education-to-workforce strategy may benefit from a learner-held layer that the State has not yet had occasion to build. EBSCOed is the division of EBSCO Information Services that has spent the last several years constructing that layer — the LER talent marketplace — and offering LER.me to states, learners, educators, and employers at no cost. We write to share what it is, where it complements West Virginia’s investments, where it bridges systems that today operate in parallel, and how it is designed to extend rather than disturb the credential infrastructure West Virginia has already built.

LER.me is an open-standards platform that gives each individual a portable digital wallet containing their verified learning and employment records. The marketplace is built on the IEEE Learning and Employment Record standard, Open Badges 3.0, and Comprehensive Learner Record 2.0 — the same open standards used across the credentialing field — so the data West Virginia already publishes to the Credential Engine Registry, and the credentials issued by community and technical colleges, four-year institutions, K-12 districts, and registered apprenticeship sponsors, remain authoritative and continue to operate exactly as they do today. The marketplace exchanges with those systems; it does not replace them. The platform itself is free to learners, to educators, and to employers, with optional subscription services available to states and large institutions that want deeper integration or custom analytics. The foundation is the foundation, and the foundation is free.

Four capabilities are most relevant to West Virginia’s context. The first is free credential issuance: any approved West Virginia institution, apprenticeship sponsor, or employer can issue verifiable credentials into learner-held wallets without licensing fees, supporting institutions of every size and budget on equal footing — a particular benefit in a state where many institutions and employers operate on tight margins. The second is an open employer marketplace, in which West Virginia employers post opportunities and discover qualified candidates based on verified skills and credentials, again at no cost. The third is public workforce intelligence — dashboards that aggregate credential issuance and labor demand data as linked open data, available to State agencies for planning, reporting, and supporting the Climb attainment dashboard. The fourth is the contributor framework, which crosswalks issued credentials to occupational standards and to State-defined high-demand categories — including the high-demand, high-wage occupations identified by the Department of Commerce that drive WV Invests Grant eligibility — at the point of issuance, so the demand signal West Virginia has invested years in defining is operationalized at the individual level, automatically.

West Virginia’s circumstance is, in important respects, ahead of where the conversation usually starts. The Climb is one of the few state attainment campaigns that explicitly counts certificates and workforce-relevant credentials in the goal, not only degrees. The community and technical college consortia codified in state law are statutorily required to identify high-demand, high-wage occupations in their districts and to develop programs of study leading to industry-recognized credentials, certificates of applied science, and associate degrees — meaning the credential-to-occupation alignment work is built into how the State organizes its CTC system. The Learn and Earn Program already pays half the wages of paid student interns, and West Virginia EDGE already lets students earn college credit while still in high school. What sits underneath every one of those structures is the same need: a verifiable, portable, learner-held record that lets each West Virginian carry their CTC certificate, their WV Invests-funded degree, their West Virginia EDGE college credit, their Learn and Earn internship completion, their registered apprenticeship milestones, and their employer-issued microcredentials in one place, recognized by employers, transferable across institutions, and durable beyond any one platform. That record is what the LER marketplace provides, at no cost, on the open standards the State already uses. EBSCOed is not asking West Virginia to add anything to the Climb — we are offering to operate the learner-side layer that makes the Climb’s gains visible at the individual level.

There are three lenses through which we have found it useful to discuss this marketplace with state leadership, and we offer them here in the same spirit. The first is complement — where the marketplace adds capability West Virginia has not yet had reason to build. The Climb measures attainment at the State and county level; the marketplace adds the learner-side artifact, a verifiable record each West Virginian carries with them. The WV Invests Grant funds credentials in high-demand fields determined by the Department of Commerce; the marketplace gives every participating community and technical college, four-year institution, and employer partner a free way to issue those credentials as verifiable Open Badges directly into learner wallets, with the high-demand field designation embedded at issuance. West Virginia EDGE and Advanced Career Education produce dual-credit college coursework at the high school level; the marketplace gives schools a free way to make every EDGE credit visible to community colleges and four-year institutions as the student moves through the system. Registered apprenticeship sponsors face the same opportunity at the milestone level. None of this displaces West Virginia’s current investments. All of it makes them more visible, more durable, and more useful to the West Virginians who earn them.

The second lens is bridge — where the marketplace connects systems that today operate in parallel. A West Virginian who earns West Virginia EDGE credits in high school, uses the WV Invests Grant for a CTC certificate, completes a Learn and Earn internship, finishes a registered apprenticeship, and gains employer-issued microcredentials currently has those attainments living in different places. The marketplace allows them to travel together in one learner-owned record. WorkForce West Virginia navigators serving Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants across the State’s seven regional WIOA areas can see a complete skill picture rather than reconstructing it from a paper trail. The Blue Ribbon Franchise Model the Workforce Development Board has committed to depends on consistent customer experience across local offices; the marketplace gives every local office the same learner-held record to work with, regardless of which of the State’s 18 local offices a job seeker walks into first.

The third lens is interoperability — where existing West Virginia platforms occupy adjacent space and where it is essential that the State’s investments be respected. The WV Invests Grant administration, run through the Higher Education Policy Commission with eligibility tied to high-demand fields identified by the Department of Commerce, remains exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives credentials issued by WV Invests-eligible programs and presents them in learner wallets without altering the grant process. The Climb’s strategic framework — the joint work of the Higher Education Policy Commission, the Council for Community and Technical College Education, the Department of Education, WorkForce West Virginia, and the private sector — remains the State’s authoritative coordination structure; the marketplace operates as a learner-side complement to that framework. WorkForce West Virginia’s labor exchange functions remain the State’s official employment channel; the marketplace acts as a complementary skills-and-credentials profile layer that posts to those systems through standard application programming interfaces. The Workforce Pell process, as it is implemented in West Virginia, will continue to be governed by the State’s WIOA structure; the marketplace receives Workforce Pell-completed credentials as Open Badges.

The matrix below — included here as a reference West Virginia leadership may return to — applies three perspectives to selected initiatives. The Complement column identifies where the marketplace adds capabilities current State investments do not provide. The Bridge column identifies where the marketplace connects presently separate systems. The Interoperability column describes how the marketplace is designed to work alongside existing West Virginia platforms.

If the State were to find this conversation worth continuing, three paths forward suggest themselves — each with discrete decision points and none requiring the State to commit beyond the step in front of it. The first is a discovery brief: a joint presentation to the Higher Education Policy Commission, the Council for Community and Technical College Education, WorkForce West Virginia, the Workforce Development Board, the Department of Education, and the Department of Commerce outlining the marketplace’s open-standards architecture, the at-no-cost foundation, and what a small first cohort could look like. The second is a sector pilot: subject to a State decision to proceed, a focused cohort drawn from one of West Virginia’s high-demand sectors — healthcare, energy and energy transition, advanced manufacturing, construction, or technology are natural candidates — in which graduates receive a Comprehensive Learner Record aligned with the high-demand designation and made available through the EBSCOed marketplace. A regional pilot tied to one or two CTC consortia districts is another natural shape. The third path would, only at the State’s direction, layer in optional subscription services that integrate the marketplace with WorkForce West Virginia labor exchange systems, the Eligible Training Provider List, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act case management, registered apprenticeship sponsor records, and the data pipeline that informs the Climb attainment dashboard. Any eligibility automation West Virginia wished to pursue for Workforce Pell, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, or registered apprenticeship would live in this phase. State funds engage only here, and only to the extent the State chooses to procure subscription services. The first two phases require no new State appropriation.

Several considerations may inform West Virginia’s thinking about the partnership. The marketplace’s open-standards foundation ensures the State’s prior investments in the Credential Engine Registry, the WV Invests Grant, the Climb, Open Learning West Virginia, the Learn and Earn Program, and the credentialing work of the CTC system and the four-year institutions continue to operate as they do today; the marketplace exchanges data with those systems rather than displacing them. The no-cost foundation means that the early phases require no new State appropriation; State funding considerations arise only in the third phase, and only for services the State elects to procure. West Virginia’s geography — predominantly rural, with attainment levels varying widely by county, where credential portability and learner-held records carry particular value — may also inform how the State considers a broader rollout, and EBSCOed welcomes the opportunity to participate in such conversations at the State’s direction, in whatever forum the State considers most useful.

A further consideration may be relevant to the State’s long-term planning. As the marketplace becomes the trusted system of record for skills and credentials across West Virginia, states often find that certain point solutions they currently maintain — case management tooling supporting Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants, Eligible Training Provider List eligibility workflows, standalone skills-assessment platforms, district- or institution-level credential wallets that today operate in isolation, and the patchwork of employer-side job-board and applicant-tracking subscriptions that result when many platforms each serve a slice of the same workforce — become candidates for consolidation or retirement, with associated reductions in ongoing licensing and maintenance costs. EBSCOed offers no opinion on which systems West Virginia may wish to retain and which it may wish to consolidate; those decisions belong to the State and the relevant agencies, on the State’s own timeline. We mention the possibility only because the cost-of-ownership story is one states have asked us to address, and because we are glad to support evaluations of that kind when the State considers them useful.

We recognize that West Virginia has earned the right to be deliberate. The State’s coordination among the Higher Education Policy Commission, the Council for Community and Technical College Education, the Community and Technical College System, the Department of Education, WorkForce West Virginia, the Workforce Development Board, the Department of Commerce, the Office of the Governor, the local Workforce Development Boards across the State’s seven regions, and the private-sector partners of West Virginia’s Climb reflects years of careful institution-building — and the cross-sector character of the Climb is one of the things that distinguishes it from attainment campaigns in other states. EBSCOed has no interest in disrupting that coordination. Our interest is in offering a free, open-standards layer that makes West Virginia’s existing investments — particularly the WV Invests Grant and the CTC system’s high-demand credentialing work — more useful to the West Virginians they serve.

If any of this is worth a conversation, we would welcome one — at the convenience of whoever the State considers the right convening authority, in whatever form would be most useful, and on whatever timeline the State prefers. The contact information below is the appropriate first point of contact. The QR codes that follow provide direct access to the current EBSCOed ecosystem overview, which is kept current as capabilities evolve, and to LER.me itself, where any West Virginian may today create a free Learning and Employment Record in a few minutes.

With great respect for the work West Virginia is already doing, and with hope that the next chapter may be written together,

Wisconsin has, for more than a century, been the national leader in apprenticeship — and continues to be. The State launched the country’s first Registered Apprenticeship program in 1911 and the country’s first Youth Apprenticeship program in 1991, founding the Wisconsin Technical College System and the Wisconsin apprenticeship system together. Today, Wisconsin’s Youth Apprenticeship reached a record 11,344 student enrollees and 7,447 employer sponsors during the 2024-25 school year, spanning more than 80 occupational pathways across 16 career clusters. The Wisconsin Technical College System’s 16 technical colleges deliver the related instruction for most apprenticeship programs and — through a 2026 system-wide policy — now review apprenticeship-related learning from all sources to count as credit for prior learning, fast-tracking apprentices toward an Applied Associate Science degree. Wisconsin Fast Forward, administered by the Department of Workforce Development, provides employer-driven training grants and dual-enrollment academy support tied to high-demand sectors. The DWD Bureau of Apprenticeship Standards continues to register and oversee Registered Apprenticeship, Youth Apprenticeship, and Pre-Apprenticeship programs, and the Department of Public Instruction publishes Regional Career Pathways mapping high-demand industries to training. Few states have built so much, so deliberately, in service of their workers — and few states can claim Wisconsin’s founding role in the apprenticeship tradition.

This letter is written in admiration of that work, and with a specific proposition: that the next chapter of Wisconsin’s education-to-workforce strategy may benefit from a learner-held layer that the State has not yet had occasion to build. EBSCOed is the division of EBSCO Information Services that has spent the last several years constructing that layer — the LER talent marketplace — and offering LER.me to states, learners, educators, and employers at no cost. We write to share what it is, where it complements Wisconsin’s investments, where it bridges systems that today operate in parallel, and how it is designed to extend rather than disturb the credential infrastructure Wisconsin has already built.

LER.me is an open-standards platform that gives each individual a portable digital wallet containing their verified learning and employment records. The marketplace is built on the IEEE Learning and Employment Record standard, Open Badges 3.0, and Comprehensive Learner Record 2.0 — the same open standards used across the credentialing field — so the data Wisconsin already publishes to the Credential Engine Registry, and the credentials issued by the 16 WTCS colleges, the University of Wisconsin System, the Wisconsin Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, K-12 districts, and registered apprenticeship sponsors, remain authoritative and continue to operate exactly as they do today. The marketplace exchanges with those systems; it does not replace them. The platform itself is free to learners, to educators, and to employers, with optional subscription services available to states and large institutions that want deeper integration or custom analytics. The foundation is the foundation, and the foundation is free.

Four capabilities are most relevant to Wisconsin’s context. The first is free credential issuance: any approved Wisconsin institution, apprenticeship sponsor, or employer can issue verifiable credentials into learner-held wallets without licensing fees, supporting institutions of every size and budget on equal footing — a particular benefit in a state where apprenticeship-style credentialing is the predominant pathway and where Pre-Apprenticeship, Youth Apprenticeship, and Registered Apprenticeship credentials matter more than in most states. The second is an open employer marketplace, in which Wisconsin employers post opportunities and discover qualified candidates based on verified skills and credentials, again at no cost. The third is public workforce intelligence — dashboards that aggregate credential issuance and labor demand data as linked open data, available to State agencies for planning, reporting, and supporting the DPI Regional Career Pathways analytic work. The fourth is the contributor framework, which crosswalks issued credentials to occupational standards and to State-defined high-demand categories — including the 16 career clusters and 80+ occupational pathways the Youth Apprenticeship system already structures — at the point of issuance, so the demand signal Wisconsin has invested years in defining is operationalized at the individual level, automatically.

Wisconsin’s distinctive position is the depth and continuity of its apprenticeship tradition. With Registered Apprenticeship dating to 1911 and Youth Apprenticeship dating to 1991, Wisconsin has more institutional knowledge of apprenticeship as a credential-producing pathway than any other state. The recent WTCS policy allowing apprenticeship-related learning from all sources to count toward an Applied Associate Science degree demonstrates that the State continues to deepen its commitment. What sits underneath every one of those structures is the same need: a verifiable, portable, learner-held record that lets each Wisconsinite carry their Pre-Apprenticeship credential, their Youth Apprenticeship occupational pathway completion, their Registered Apprenticeship journeyworker credential, their WTCS Applied Associate Science degree, their Wisconsin Fast Forward-funded training, and their employer-issued microcredentials in one place, recognized by employers, transferable across institutions, and durable beyond any one platform. That record is what the LER marketplace provides, at no cost, on the open standards the State already uses. EBSCOed is not asking Wisconsin to redesign its apprenticeship system — we are offering the learner-side layer that makes Wisconsin’s century-long apprenticeship tradition portable in each Wisconsinite’s hand.

There are three lenses through which we have found it useful to discuss this marketplace with state leadership, and we offer them here in the same spirit. The first is complement — where the marketplace adds capability Wisconsin has not yet had reason to build. Wisconsin’s Youth Apprenticeship, Registered Apprenticeship, and Pre-Apprenticeship systems together produce credentials and journeyworker certifications at scale; the marketplace adds the learner-side artifact, a verifiable record each Wisconsinite carries with them — particularly valuable now that WTCS has established the policy of converting journeyworker credentials into Applied Associate Science degrees. The 16 WTCS colleges, the University of Wisconsin System, and the State’s independent institutions issue credentials that travel today through transcripts; the marketplace lets them also travel as verifiable Open Badges. Wisconsin Fast Forward-funded training credentials face the same opportunity. The marketplace gives every WTCS college, registered apprenticeship sponsor, Youth Apprenticeship employer sponsor, and Fast Forward grantee a free way to issue those credentials directly into learner wallets. None of this displaces Wisconsin’s current investments. All of it makes them more visible, more durable, and more useful to the Wisconsinites who earn them.

The second lens is bridge — where the marketplace connects systems that today operate in parallel. A Wisconsinite who participates in Youth Apprenticeship in high school, transitions into Registered Apprenticeship as an adult, completes Pre-Apprenticeship preparation if needed, earns the journeyworker credential, converts it under the new WTCS policy into an Applied Associate Science degree, and gains employer-issued microcredentials currently has those attainments living in different places — DWD-BAS records cover apprenticeship, WTCS transcripts cover the degree path, and employer records cover microcredentials. The marketplace allows all of those attainments to travel together in one learner-owned record. WIOA navigators serving Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants can see a complete skill picture rather than reconstructing it from a paper trail. Wisconsin Career Pathways navigation, supported by DPI’s Regional Career Pathways tools, can work from a learner-held credential view rather than from separate institutional records.

The third lens is interoperability — where existing Wisconsin platforms occupy adjacent space and where it is essential that the State’s investments be respected. The DWD Bureau of Apprenticeship Standards remains Wisconsin’s authoritative registrar for Registered Apprenticeship, Youth Apprenticeship, and Pre-Apprenticeship; the marketplace operates alongside DWD-BAS by receiving apprenticeship credentials at milestone completion without altering registration. The Wisconsin Technical College System’s 16 colleges continue to deliver related instruction and to administer the new credit-for-prior-learning policy converting journeyworker credentials into Applied Associate Science degrees; the marketplace receives credentials issued by WTCS colleges. Wisconsin Fast Forward grant administration remains exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives credentials issued through Fast Forward-funded programs. The DWD JobCenterofWisconsin.com labor exchange remains the State’s official employment channel; the marketplace acts as a complementary skills-and-credentials profile layer that posts to JobCenterofWisconsin and similar systems through standard application programming interfaces.

The matrix below — included here as a reference Wisconsin leadership may return to — applies three perspectives to selected initiatives. The Complement column identifies where the marketplace adds capabilities current State investments do not provide. The Bridge column identifies where the marketplace connects presently separate systems. The Interoperability column describes how the marketplace is designed to work alongside existing Wisconsin platforms.

If the State were to find this conversation worth continuing, three paths forward suggest themselves — each with discrete decision points and none requiring the State to commit beyond the step in front of it. The first is a discovery brief: a joint presentation to the Department of Workforce Development, the Bureau of Apprenticeship Standards, the Wisconsin Technical College System, the Department of Public Instruction, the Higher Educational Aids Board, and — where the State considers it useful — the University of Wisconsin System and the Wisconsin Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, outlining the marketplace’s open-standards architecture, the at-no-cost foundation, and what a small first cohort could look like. The second is a sector pilot: subject to a State decision to proceed, a focused cohort drawn from one of Wisconsin’s apprenticeship-strong sectors — advanced manufacturing, healthcare, construction trades, or information technology are natural candidates — in which Youth Apprenticeship and Registered Apprenticeship completers receive a Comprehensive Learner Record aligned with Wisconsin’s 16 career clusters and 80+ occupational pathways and made available through the EBSCOed marketplace. A WTCS-region pilot tied to the new credit-for-prior-learning policy is another natural starting shape. The third path would, only at the State’s direction, layer in optional subscription services that integrate the marketplace with JobCenterofWisconsin.com, the Eligible Training Provider List, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act case management, DWD-BAS apprenticeship sponsor records, Wisconsin Fast Forward grant data, and WTCS institutional credential pipelines. Any eligibility automation Wisconsin wished to pursue for Workforce Pell, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, or registered apprenticeship would live in this phase. State funds engage only here, and only to the extent the State chooses to procure subscription services. The first two phases require no new State appropriation.

Several considerations may inform Wisconsin’s thinking about the partnership. The marketplace’s open-standards foundation ensures the State’s prior investments in the Credential Engine Registry, the DWD-BAS apprenticeship infrastructure, Wisconsin Fast Forward, JobCenterofWisconsin.com, and the credentialing work of WTCS and the UW System continue to operate as they do today; the marketplace exchanges data with those systems rather than displacing them. The no-cost foundation means that the early phases require no new State appropriation; State funding considerations arise only in the third phase, and only for services the State elects to procure. Wisconsin’s founding role in the American apprenticeship tradition may inform how the State thinks about a marketplace whose contributor framework is explicitly designed to make apprenticeship credentials visible and portable.

A further consideration may be relevant to the State’s long-term planning. As the marketplace becomes the trusted system of record for skills and credentials across Wisconsin, states often find that certain point solutions they currently maintain — case management tooling supporting Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants, Eligible Training Provider List eligibility workflows, standalone skills-assessment platforms, district- or institution-level credential wallets that today operate in isolation, and the patchwork of employer-side job-board and applicant-tracking subscriptions that result when many platforms each serve a slice of the same workforce — become candidates for consolidation or retirement, with associated reductions in ongoing licensing and maintenance costs. EBSCOed offers no opinion on which systems Wisconsin may wish to retain and which it may wish to consolidate; those decisions belong to the State and the relevant agencies, on the State’s own timeline. We mention the possibility only because the cost-of-ownership story is one states have asked us to address, and because we are glad to support evaluations of that kind when the State considers them useful.

We recognize that Wisconsin has earned the right to be deliberate. The State’s coordination among the Department of Workforce Development, the Bureau of Apprenticeship Standards, the Wisconsin Technical College System, the Department of Public Instruction, the Higher Educational Aids Board, the University of Wisconsin System, the Wisconsin Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, and Wisconsin’s Workforce Development Areas reflects more than a century of careful institution-building — and Wisconsin’s founding role in American apprenticeship is one of the things that distinguishes the State’s workforce posture from anywhere else in the country. EBSCOed has no interest in disrupting that coordination. Our interest is in offering a free, open-standards layer that makes Wisconsin’s existing investments — particularly the apprenticeship system the State pioneered and the new WTCS journeyworker-to-AAS conversion policy — more useful to the Wisconsinites they serve.

If any of this is worth a conversation, we would welcome one — at the convenience of whoever the State considers the right convening authority, in whatever form would be most useful, and on whatever timeline the State prefers. The contact information below is the appropriate first point of contact. The QR codes that follow provide direct access to the current EBSCOed ecosystem overview, which is kept current as capabilities evolve, and to LER.me itself, where any Wisconsinite may today create a free Learning and Employment Record in a few minutes.

With great respect for the work Wisconsin is already doing, and with hope that the next chapter may be written together,

Wyoming has, under Governor Mark Gordon, built one of the most distinctive State-level workforce financial aid and apprenticeship frameworks in the Mountain West. The Hathaway Scholarship — established in the name of former Governor Stan Hathaway and funded primarily through an endowment with a formal buffer mechanism — provides four levels of merit-based awards (Honors, Performance, Opportunity, and Provisional Opportunity) alongside need-based Hathaway Need grants for Wyoming residents attending the University of Wyoming or any of the State’s seven community colleges. Governor Gordon signed legislation on February 27, 2026 increasing Hathaway award levels effective Fall 2026, with the maximum Need Grant for non-Honors levels increasing from $1,575 to $2,120. Wyoming’s Tomorrow Scholarship — designed for nontraditional adult students 24 and older without a bachelor’s degree — bridges adult re-entry with applicable training assistance registration through the Department of Workforce Services. Wyoming Works supports targeted workforce acceleration credentials. The Wyoming Community College Commission (WCCC), under Executive Director Sandy Caldwell, coordinates the seven community colleges (Laramie County, Western Wyoming, Casper, Central Wyoming, Eastern Wyoming, Northwest, and Sheridan) with systemwide credit enrollment of 24,295 students. The Wyoming Department of Workforce Services administers Wyoming Apprenticeships (WyApprenticeships.com), pre-apprenticeship pathways for youth ages 16-24, the Workforce Development Training Fund (Apprenticeship Training Grants, Business Training Grants, Internship Grants, Pre-Hire Economic Development Grants), the Forge Your Future career exploration tool, and the Business Occupational Outlook Tool Set (BOOTS). The Wyoming Joint Electrical Apprenticeship Committee (WYOJATC) delivers a paid, four-year, 8,000-hour program with Journey-level Electrician License preparation and nationally recognized credentialing. Laramie County Community College’s apprenticeship programs in HVAC/R and plumbing trades use National Center for Construction Education and Research curriculum, with apprentices sitting for the ICC National Standard exam. The WyIN nursing loan program, the University of Wyoming, the State’s tribal college (Wind River Tribal College), and the broader Wyoming workforce infrastructure together represent a workforce ecosystem proportional to the State’s population. Few states have built so much, so deliberately, in service of their workers.

This letter is written in admiration of that work, and with a specific proposition: that the next chapter of Wyoming’s education-to-workforce strategy may benefit from a learner-held layer that the State has not yet had occasion to build. EBSCOed is the division of EBSCO Information Services that has spent the last several years constructing that layer — the LER talent marketplace — and offering LER.me to states, learners, educators, and employers at no cost. We write to share what it is, where it complements Wyoming’s investments, where it bridges systems that today operate in parallel, and how it is designed to extend rather than disturb the credential infrastructure Wyoming has already built.

LER.me is an open-standards platform that gives each individual a portable digital wallet containing their verified learning and employment records. The marketplace is built on the IEEE Learning and Employment Record standard, Open Badges 3.0, and Comprehensive Learner Record 2.0 — the same open standards used across the credentialing field — so the data Wyoming already publishes to the Credential Engine Registry, and the credentials issued by the University of Wyoming, the seven Wyoming community colleges, Wind River Tribal College, K-12 districts, and registered apprenticeship sponsors, remain authoritative and continue to operate exactly as they do today. The marketplace exchanges with those systems; it does not replace them. The platform itself is free to learners, to educators, and to employers, with optional subscription services available to states and large institutions that want deeper integration or custom analytics. The foundation is the foundation, and the foundation is free.

Four capabilities are most relevant to Wyoming’s context. The first is free credential issuance: any approved Wyoming institution, apprenticeship sponsor, or employer can issue verifiable credentials into learner-held wallets without licensing fees, supporting institutions of every size and budget on equal footing. The second is an open employer marketplace, in which Wyoming employers post opportunities and discover qualified candidates based on verified skills and credentials, again at no cost. The third is public workforce intelligence — dashboards that aggregate credential issuance and labor demand data as linked open data, available to State agencies for planning, reporting, and supporting Wyoming Community College Commission and Department of Workforce Services reporting missions. The fourth is the contributor framework, which crosswalks issued credentials to occupational standards and to Forge Your Future and BOOTS-identified high-demand designations at the point of issuance, so the demand signal Wyoming has invested years in defining is operationalized at the individual level, automatically.

Wyoming’s distinctive achievement is the Hathaway Scholarship endowment model — funded primarily through an endowment with a formal buffer mechanism, with the Endowment Account’s investment earnings exceeding Expenditure Account distributions in all but three years since the program’s establishment. The model represents an unusually disciplined fiscal architecture for State-level workforce financial aid. Wyoming’s Tomorrow Scholarship’s targeted adult re-entry focus (24+, no bachelor’s, mandatory DWS registration for training assistance), Wyoming Works’s workforce credential acceleration, the substantial 2026 Hathaway award increases signed by Governor Gordon, and WyApprenticeships.com’s coordinated pre-apprenticeship and apprenticeship infrastructure together represent a workforce framework tailored to Wyoming’s distinctive geography and economy. The Workforce Development Training Fund’s diverse grant categories — Apprenticeship Training, Business Training, Internship, Pre-Hire Economic Development, and Pre-Obligation grants — operationalize Wyoming’s commitment to employer-engaged credentialing. What sits underneath every one of those investments is the same need: a verifiable, portable, learner-held record that lets each Wyomingite carry their community college credential, their University of Wyoming degree, their Hathaway-supported attainment, their Wyoming’s Tomorrow Scholarship completion, their Wyoming Works credential, their WyApprenticeships milestone (including the four-year WYOJATC electrical apprenticeship and LCCC’s HVAC/R and plumbing trade programs), their Workforce Development Training Fund-supported credential, their pre-apprenticeship pathway attainment, and their employer-issued microcredentials in one place, recognized by employers, transferable across institutions, and durable beyond any one platform. That record is what the LER marketplace provides, at no cost, on the open standards the State already uses. EBSCOed is not asking Wyoming to alter the Hathaway endowment model or the WyApprenticeships framework — we are offering the learner-side layer that lets the credentials Wyoming has built infrastructure to produce travel with each Wyomingite in a verifiable wallet.

There are three lenses through which we have found it useful to discuss this marketplace with State leadership, and we offer them here in the same spirit. The first is complement — where the marketplace adds capability Wyoming has not yet had reason to build at scale. The Wyoming Community College Commission and Department of Workforce Services track scholarship distribution and program completion at the State level; the marketplace adds the learner-side artifact, a verifiable record each Wyomingite carries with them. The University of Wyoming, the seven community colleges, Wind River Tribal College, WyApprenticeships sponsors (including WYOJATC, Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 192, and other registered programs), Workforce Development Training Fund grantees, and employer partners all produce credentials that today travel through institutional transcripts; the marketplace gives each issuer a free way to issue those credentials as verifiable Open Badges directly into learner wallets, with Hathaway, Wyoming’s Tomorrow, Wyoming Works, or WyApprenticeships designation embedded in the badge metadata at issuance where applicable. None of this displaces Wyoming’s current investments. All of it makes them more visible, more durable, and more useful to the Wyomingites who earn them.

The second lens is bridge — where the marketplace connects systems that today operate in parallel. A Wyomingite who completes career and technical education at a Wyoming high school, earns a Hathaway-supported community college credential at Laramie County, Western Wyoming, Casper, Central Wyoming, Eastern Wyoming, Northwest, or Sheridan Community College, participates in a pre-apprenticeship pathway through WyApprenticeships, completes a four-year WYOJATC electrical apprenticeship or an LCCC HVAC/R or plumbing apprenticeship using NCCER curriculum, transitions to the University of Wyoming, completes a Wyoming’s Tomorrow Scholarship-funded credential as a returning adult, completes Wyoming Works targeted training, and gains employer-issued microcredentials currently has those attainments living in different places. The marketplace allows them to travel together in one learner-owned record. Wyoming Workforce Center career navigators serving WIOA participants can see a complete skill picture rather than reconstructing it from a paper trail. The connective tissue WCCC and DWS provide at the State level can be operationalized at the learner level through a credential wallet that travels with each Wyomingite.

The third lens is interoperability — where existing Wyoming platforms occupy adjacent space and where it is essential that the State’s investments be respected. The Wyoming Community College Commission remains the State’s authoritative coordinating body for the seven community colleges and the Hathaway Scholarship infrastructure; the marketplace operates as a learner-side complement that supports WCCC’s mission. The Wyoming Department of Workforce Services continues exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives credentials produced through DWS-overseen programs including Wyoming Apprenticeships and the Workforce Development Training Fund. The University of Wyoming continues exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives credentials issued by UW. The Wyoming Department of Education continues exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives K-12 attainments and CTE credentials. WyApprenticeships.com continues exactly as it operates today; the marketplace receives WyApprenticeships-supported credentials with State apprenticeship designation preserved. Wyoming at Work remains Wyoming’s official labor exchange; the marketplace acts as a complementary skills-and-credentials profile layer that posts to Wyoming at Work through standard application programming interfaces.

The matrix below — included here as a reference Wyoming leadership may return to — applies three perspectives to selected initiatives. The Complement column identifies where the marketplace adds capabilities current State investments do not provide. The Bridge column identifies where the marketplace connects presently separate systems. The Interoperability column describes how the marketplace is designed to work alongside existing Wyoming platforms.

If the State were to find this conversation worth continuing, three paths forward suggest themselves — each with discrete decision points and none requiring the State to commit beyond the step in front of it. The first is a discovery brief: a joint presentation to the Wyoming Community College Commission, the Wyoming Department of Workforce Services, the University of Wyoming, the Wyoming Department of Education, and — where the State considers it useful — Wyoming’s seven community college presidents, Wind River Tribal College leadership, WyApprenticeships sponsor representatives (including WYOJATC and Local 192), and Wyoming Business Council partners, outlining the marketplace’s open-standards architecture, the at-no-cost foundation, and what a small first cohort could look like. The second is a sector pilot: subject to a State decision to proceed, a focused cohort drawn from one of Wyoming’s strategic sectors — energy, construction trades (with WYOJATC, Local 192, and LCCC HVAC/R and plumbing partners), healthcare (with WyIN-supported nursing students), agriculture and natural resources, or hospitality and tourism are natural candidates — in which Hathaway recipients, Wyoming’s Tomorrow Scholarship completers, Wyoming Works graduates, WyApprenticeships completers, or Workforce Development Training Fund participants receive a Comprehensive Learner Record made available through the EBSCOed marketplace. The third path would, only at the State’s direction, layer in optional subscription services that integrate the marketplace with Wyoming at Work, the Eligible Training Provider List, Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act case management, registered apprenticeship sponsor records, the Hathaway and Wyoming’s Tomorrow Scholarship data pipelines, and the Workforce Development Training Fund reporting infrastructure. Any eligibility automation Wyoming wished to pursue for Workforce Pell, the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, or registered apprenticeship would live in this phase. State funds engage only here, and only to the extent the State chooses to procure subscription services. The first two phases require no new State appropriation.

Several considerations may inform Wyoming’s thinking about the partnership. The marketplace’s open-standards foundation ensures the State’s prior investments in the Credential Engine Registry, Wyoming at Work, and the credentialing work of the University of Wyoming, the seven community colleges, Wind River Tribal College, and the State’s registered apprenticeship sponsor community continue to operate as they do today; the marketplace exchanges data with those systems rather than displacing them. The no-cost foundation means that the early phases require no new State appropriation; State funding considerations arise only in the third phase, and only for services the State elects to procure. Wyoming’s distinctive endowment-funded Hathaway Scholarship model and the State’s compact geography — seven community colleges, one comprehensive university, one tribal college — may make Wyoming a particularly good State for a learner-side marketplace pilot, where credential portability across a complete State workforce ecosystem can be demonstrated efficiently.

A further consideration may be relevant to the State’s long-term planning. As the marketplace becomes the trusted system of record for skills and credentials across Wyoming, states often find that certain point solutions they currently maintain — case management tooling supporting Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act participants, Eligible Training Provider List eligibility workflows, standalone skills-assessment platforms, district- or institution-level credential wallets that today operate in isolation, and the patchwork of employer-side job-board and applicant-tracking subscriptions that result when many platforms each serve a slice of the same workforce — become candidates for consolidation or retirement, with associated reductions in ongoing licensing and maintenance costs. EBSCOed offers no opinion on which systems Wyoming may wish to retain and which it may wish to consolidate; those decisions belong to the State and the relevant agencies, on the State’s own timeline. We mention the possibility only because the cost-of-ownership story is one states have asked us to address, and because we are glad to support evaluations of that kind when the State considers them useful.

We recognize that Wyoming has earned the right to be deliberate. The State’s coordination among the Wyoming Community College Commission, the Department of Workforce Services, the University of Wyoming, the seven community colleges, Wind River Tribal College, the Department of Education, the Wyoming Business Council, and the State’s WyApprenticeships sponsor community reflects years of careful institution-building under the Gordon Administration’s coordinated workforce direction. EBSCOed has no interest in disrupting that coordination. Our interest is in offering a free, open-standards layer that makes Wyoming’s existing investments — particularly the Hathaway Scholarship, Wyoming’s Tomorrow Scholarship, Wyoming Works, WyApprenticeships (including WYOJATC and the LCCC trade programs), and the Workforce Development Training Fund — more useful to the Wyomingites they serve.

If any of this is worth a conversation, we would welcome one — at the convenience of whoever the State considers the right convening authority, in whatever form would be most useful, and on whatever timeline the State prefers. The contact information below is the appropriate first point of contact. The QR codes that follow provide direct access to the current EBSCOed ecosystem overview, which is kept current as capabilities evolve, and to LER.me itself, where any Wyomingite may today create a free Learning and Employment Record in a few minutes.

With great respect for the work Wyoming is already doing, and with hope that the next chapter may be written together,