Badges for Vets

About the Challenge

Connecting Veteran Skills to Good Jobs.  Veterans rejoin the civilian community with up-to-date, cutting edge job skills developed during training and work experience in their military service.  These job skills are highly valued and desired by civilian employers.  

Veterans report challenges, however, in “translating” military job skills to their civilian counterparts and in obtaining civilian credit for military training.   The easier task is drawing direct linkages between skills acquired in the military and the duties performed in civilian jobs.  More challenging is obtaining civilian recognition of military training when formal education is a prerequisite for employment or licensure.  

With the Badges for Vets Challenge, the U.S. Departments of Veterans Affairs (VA), Education, Labor, and Energy seek a system of badges that quickly translates military training and experience into marketable credentials so employers will see Veterans as among the best qualified in any job applicant pool. 

This contest will be conducted in collaboration with the Badges for Lifelong Learning Competition, http://www.dmlcompetion.net/Competition/4/badges-competition-cfp-php, which seeks support for the creation of digital tools to identify, recognize, measure, and account for skills, competencies, knowledge, and achievements acquired during the course of lifelong learning.  The Mozilla Open Badge Infrastructure https://wiki.mozilla.org/Badges, has been selected to enable interoperability and seamless collection of badges. 

Entries must be made via the Competition web site, http://fastapps.dmlcompetition.net/application/submit/dmlc-4v.  Before submitting an entry, an entrant must create a FastApps account at http://fastapps.dmlcompetition.net/user/register. 

VA does not anticipate that it will issue badges or, except as an employer, actively participate in the resulting badges program.  Instead, VA believes it can serve Veterans and employers by acting as a catalyst for the development of meaningful badge systems. 

VA will award prizes of $25,000 to as many as three applicant teams that demonstrate they can develop and deliver an industry-recognized digital badge representing military-learned skill sets of specific interest to civilian employers.    

Badges in this contest must address one of the following priority occupational areas:

• Supply Administration and Logistics, which may include specialties such as supply chain procurement, automated logistics management and lean Six Sigma
• Law Enforcement, which may include specialties such as criminal investigation and analysis
• Medical Care and Treatment, with specific focus on Physician’s Assistants
• Motor Vehicle Operators, with specific focus on civilian occupations requiring a Commercial Driver’s License
• Automotive service and repair, with specific focus on emerging technologies such as electric –drive vehicles and alternative fuels.
• Information technology, including all phases of software and IT systems development and IT project management.

These priority occupational areas are among the largest number of Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) Codes earned by recently discharged Veterans for specific training and experience during military service, as identified by Department of Defense. Additional information about MOS Codes is available in the Appendix at http://www.dmlcompetition.net/Competition/4/badges-projects.php?id=2667.

In some of these priority occupational areas, VA anticipates that Veterans can move quickly to achieve digital badges designating specific civilian-marketable skills based solely on military training and experience (MTE).  In these cases, a successful badge system can deliver value to employers and Veterans by

• identifying specific skills and competencies desired by employers,
• verifying that Veterans can demonstrate those skills based on relevant MTE, and
• awarding and validating digital badges that Veterans can use to demonstrate job qualifications. 

In other of these priority occupational areas, badge systems will need to provide pathways by which Veterans can:

• acquire formal civilian education or other credit based on their MTE,
• civilian licensure based on MTE, or
• a combination of the two.  

In some cases, a badge system will need to support pathways by which Veterans supplement MTE with specific license- or job-oriented education needed for occupational certifications or licenses needed to be marketable in the civilian field. 

Badge Systems. VA seeks effective and sustainable badge systems built on partnerships with organizations that: 

• Are widely representative of employers who have recurring need to employ individuals with skill sets in the areas of interest. 
• Have – or demonstrate that they can develop and deliver – programs and processes that deliver validated credentials as indicators of skill or accomplishment in the areas of interest.
•  Can demonstrate they have or can develop: 
• Programs to validly assess prior learning acquired from education, training or experience and particularly MTE, 
• Articulation agreements with accredited institutions that support formal recognition of MTE through the granting of academic credit or satisfaction of prerequisites, 
• Programs that identify additional training or experience required to meet essential prerequisites for occupational certification or licensure, 
• Support for Veterans obtaining financing for such additional training or experience that makes it possible for Veterans to earn a specific badge, 
• Programs that assure a Veteran who chooses to acquire additional training and experience is prepared for success when seeking formal occupational certification or licensure. 

Proposals should suggest metrics to define successful outcomes if implemented.  Measures can include the number of issued badges or other credentials.  More meaningful metrics will include:

• Dropout and success rates for Veterans who seek additional training,
• Market share of employers that accept the badge to meet qualification requirements,
• The number of Veterans who are actually hired into positions for which a badge shows they qualify,
• Six-month retention and one-year promotion rates, and
• Measures of employer and Veteran satisfaction. 

Entries in this contest must be made through the Badges for Lifelong Learning Competition website, http://www.dmlcompeition.net/Competition/4/badges-apply.php. 

This contest and VA’s awards will be made under the America Competes Act; prize winners must meet eligibility and other requirements established by the Act and by formal contest rules