Starter Kit. Idea 465 of 500. Cluster 24
A public register of every trade certificate issued, checkable online by an employer abroad
The mechanism, from the book
The one thing. A country where people do not expect the rules to hold cannot build anything else, and proof can be manufactured by private people, one published record at a time.
The first step
With the agreement of one training centre and its past students, put the certificates it issued last year on a simple web page, each checkable by its number and showing the name, the trade and the date. Send the link to 3 recruitment agents abroad and ask them to check one. If an agent says a checkable certificate makes a worker easier to place, offer the same to 2 more centres for a yearly fee.
- Who pays first
- A training centre that wants its certificates trusted abroad, and pays a yearly fee so that any employer can check them online.
- What leaves today
- A certificate nobody abroad can check is treated as worth nothing, so a skilled worker is hired as unskilled; a public register lets the skill be paid at its real price.
Ask first
- Tertiary and Vocational Education Commission. Ask which trade certificates are issued nationally and whether their records could be checked online.
- Data Protection Authority. Ask what consent holders must give before their certificate appears on a public register.
Check before you spend
That each issuing body agrees to share its records, that every holder consents to being listed, and how a wrong entry is corrected quickly.
Find out these three numbers
- What would an employer abroad pay to check one certificate?
- How many certificates does one training centre issue a year?
- How many employers abroad say they distrust certificates now?
A comparison from the book
The fridge by the road. Chapter Six
"It is not character. It is accumulated proof."
A certificate anyone can check builds proof one record at a time, and employers pay for proof.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.