Australia is moving toward a major rethink of how skills, qualifications and workplace capability are recognised, with a new national initiative arguing that the next phase of productivity growth will depend on treating human capability, not just technology, as critical infrastructure in the AI era.
A coalition of universities, employers and professional bodies has begun the discovery phase of the Human Capability Record under the MortarCAPS Data Standard, a portable, learner-owned digital record designed to follow individuals across jobs, industries and stages of life. The system is being positioned as a new kind of labour market infrastructure, one that captures not only formal qualifications but also micro credentials, workplace experience, informal learning and employer verified capability.
The timing is of the essence. The Productivity Commission has projected that artificial intelligence could add up to 116 billion dollars to Australia’s GDP over the next decade, while the Reserve Bank has warned that the transition could be painful without systems that support faster workforce mobility. Against that backdrop, MortarCAPS argues Australia has a rare opportunity to build what it calls the “capability infrastructure” of an AI driven economy, where productivity gains depend less on static credentials and more on how quickly people can move, adapt and have their skills recognised across different contexts.
At the centre is a simple but disruptive idea: the worker, not the institution, platform or vendor, owns their verified record of capability. A coalition of universities, employers and professional bodies has begun the discovery phase of the Human Capability Record, a portable, learner-owned digital record designed to follow individuals across jobs, industries and stages of life. It captures not only formal qualifications but micro-credentials, workplace experience, informal learning and employer-verified capability, the kinds of value that traditional transcripts and CV systems fail to make visible.
MortarCAPS chief executive Charlsey Pearce said the intention is to make visible the kinds of value that traditional transcripts and CV systems often fail to capture. She said the system is being designed around a Charter of Rights co-created with learners, covering ownership, consent, transparency, fairness and protection from commercial exploitation. In her view, the shift is not simply technical but structural, changing who controls the narrative of a person’s skills and how that narrative moves through the economy.
The coalition behind the discovery phase includes major institutions such as the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, KPMG, the Australian Computer Society, the Victorian Tertiary Admissions Centre, the University of Sydney, the University of Technology Sydney and Western Sydney University. They are joined by infrastructure and trust partners including the Australian Access Federation, Higher Ed Services and CAUDIT, as well as implementation and design partners Cevo and Ingenuity Partners. Together, they are working to translate a previously co-designed sector framework into a buildable specification under the MortarCAPS Data Standard.
For employers, the appeal lies in reducing friction in hiring and workforce mobility. Instead of relying solely on degrees or keyword based CV screening, organisations would be able to assess verified capability directly, including evidence of applied skills and contextual performance. For universities, the system offers a way to extend the visibility of learning outcomes beyond graduation and into working life, where skills are continuously developed and applied.
Jane Adams, Executive General Manager Human Resources at Commonwealth Bank, said approaches that make capability easier and safer to share could support workforce mobility over time, provided they are designed in a way that is practical and trusted. KPMG’s National Managing Partner for People and Inclusion, Dorothy Hisgrove, said the labour market is already being rewritten by artificial intelligence faster than institutions can adapt, arguing that the protection for workers and employers lies in portability rather than fragmented credential silos.
The Australian Computer Society also backed the shift. President Beau Tydd said the value of skills has historically been locked inside the institutions that first recognised them, and that a learner owned approach would allow professionals to carry verifiable capability across employers, jurisdictions and stages of life. From the university sector, Professor Adam Bridgeman of the University of Sydney said the model reflects growing recognition that capabilities such as communication, leadership and adaptability are not fully captured by traditional transcripts, even though they are increasingly central in an AI influenced labour market.
The architecture of the Human Capability Record is also framed as a response to structural weaknesses in existing systems. MortarCAPS points to the limitations of centralised learner data platforms, which have become widespread across education systems globally. Those concerns were intensified earlier this year following a major breach of a global learning platform that affected hundreds of millions of users across thousands of institutions, including Australian universities and a state education department. In contrast, the HCR is designed around decentralised ownership, consent and portability, with a Charter of Rights intended to ensure individuals maintain control over how their data is used and shared.
While the Human Capability Record is still in its discovery phase, the underlying MortarCAPS Data Standard is already in operation. Now at version 2.1.1, the standard spans 24 domains and more than 5,400 entities across curriculum, student management, finance, HR and research administration systems. It is currently live across more than 160 institutions in Australia, New Zealand and Canada, supported by a community of around 700 participants and backed by major technology partners including AWS, Microsoft, Salesforce, Ellucian, TechnologyOne and Workato.
This existing infrastructure is seen as the foundation on which the Human Capability Record can be built. In effect, the data plumbing is already in place, and the new initiative focuses on creating a human-facing layer that allows individuals to access, control and present their verified capability in a consistent and portable way.
The policy environment is also moving in a similar direction. The 2026 to 27 Federal Budget includes measures aimed at improving recognition of skills across education and employment systems, including expanded credit recognition pathways between TAFE and universities, funding for improved trade skills assessment, accelerated recognition of migrant qualifications, expansion of Digital ID infrastructure and the establishment of the Australian Tertiary Education Commission. Each of these initiatives addresses long-standing bottlenecks in skills recognition and workforce mobility, and each implicitly relies on the ability to standardise and share information about capability across institutions.
VTAC Chief Executive Teresa Tija said a shared approach to recognising skills would support learners and employers by making transitions between study and work more seamless. She argued that education is increasingly a lifelong process and that streamlined recognition of skills developed across workplaces, communities and formal learning environments would enable more confident and flexible movement through careers.
Taken together, these developments suggest a convergence of education policy, workforce planning and digital infrastructure around a single challenge, how to make human capability visible, portable and trusted in a rapidly changing labour market. MortarCAPS frames this as the foundation of what it calls the “capability economy”, where economic productivity depends not just on technology adoption but on how effectively human skills can be deployed and redeployed across the system.
David Reeve, Chief Information Officer at the University of Technology Sydney, described this as a defining infrastructure question of the current era. He compared it to the role played by transport, energy and water infrastructure in previous generations, arguing that trusted, portable capability data will play a similar role in enabling growth and mobility in an AI-enabled economy.
For MortarCAPS chief executive Charlsey Pearce, the broader implication is that Australia is close to a turning point in how it understands productivity. She argues that the country has an opportunity to build systems that reflect how people actually learn and work in the modern economy, rather than forcing them through fragmented and institution-bound records of achievement. In her view, the choice is whether to continue refining existing credential systems or to build a new layer of infrastructure that treats human capability as a national asset in its own right.
