The Australian Department of Defence adopts agile learning platform for skill identification & rapid deployment

The Australian Department of Defence is a government agency with a primary role to defend Australia and its national interests, promote security and stability, and support the Australian community as directed by the Government. Defence advocates for professional mastery in the profession of arms, nurturing personnel to achieve professional excellence and contributing to the global military education community.

The Solution

Over the last several years, the Australia Federal Government has identified the need to improve the Educational Technologies it uses for the professional development and training of its employees including the need to be able to measure and utilise capability both within and across Federal Agencies. It identified the need to allow different Agencies to collaborate and for employees to be able to move between Agencies and take theory training history with them. It also identified changes in the underlying paradigms available in different Educational Technology platforms and the need to modernise and adapt these changes.

The Australian Federal Government decided to scan the Educational Technology market for replacement technologies to support professional development including skill/capability development for Australian Federal Government employees potentially across all Federal Agencies.

This procurement including requirements relevant to enterprise class Learning Management Systems and the related paradigm of institutionally curated and mandated training but also included requirements that reflect Josh Bursin’s Learning Experience Platform (LXP) paradigm such as self directed learning, social and collaborative learning, learning in the flow of work and AI supported learning.

The Results

The ability for the system to be configured in a highly flexible manner for each of the tenants was an initial highlight of the project, catering for some of the key differences in requirements, including:

• Authentication methods
• User account creation
• Course migration
• Integration methodology (using Androgogic’s AndroSync and AndroExport add-ons)
• Separate theme/GUI/UX for both tenants
• Separate LTI 1.3 integrations for 8867 LinkedIn Learning courses for each tenant, with the ability to SSO into LinkedIn and pass completion triggers back to the LXP – a seamless process for the end user, which saw a 127% increase in seats activated within IP Australia following the release of the LXP compared to their previous LMS solution.

Shared features and assets within the system between the two tenants included:

• Communities of Practice/Workspaces
• Resources via Totara Engage
• Courses for users from both agencies to complete
• Reports to assess levels of competency or specific skills acquired

A key aspect of the configuration was to leverage the built in Totara capability/competency functionality within both the Learn and Perform activities. A number of general government and specific agency frameworks have been configured as a way of validating and developing skills within each of the tenancies, with the ability for key site users to be able to report across tenancies on capability achievements. This provides the ability to critically assess skills for inter-agency tiger teams, or assess job candidates for a specific role.

On completion of the pilot, both the participating agencies made a representation to the Chief Operating Officers Committee such that the LXP platform was recommended as a technology that meets and exceeds the requirements of the trial and that it was suitable for Whole of Government.

Both IP Australia and Defence have also resolved to move ahead with full, post pilot implementation of the LXP to support each Agencies education needs.

“Defence, in partnership with IP Australia, have completed a pilot of the ‘Learn eXcel Perform (LXP)’ platform that will inform future education and training pathways. The LXP platform provides autonomous learning, the ability to identify skills across the organisation(s) and the ability to rapidly deploy learning anywhere at any time. The Committee agreed to establish a Commonwealth Agency Working Group that will consider use of the LXP platform as a Whole of Government solution to APS learning and development.” – Minutes of the Chief Operating Officers Committee Meeting: 26 July 2023

To maintain Defence’s impartiality and protect its credibility, Defence will not make any statement or provide any support that amounts to an endorsement or may be perceived as an endorsement of an external party, its products, services or personnel. The purchase of a product or service by Defence does not imply that Defence endorses that product, service or the supplier, nor should any other arrangement with a commercial entity suggest that Defence endorses that entity.