21. Choosing the Next Educational Pathway

Brief Description

This case addresses the challenge of having several separate public digital services for educational and career guidance – utdanning.no and karriereveiledning.no (HK-dir) and vilbli.no (county municipalities via Novari). Users – students, guardians, career counsellors and job seekers – encounter a fragmented information landscape where overlapping content and cross-linking between services creates uncertainty about which service to use.

The case highlights the need for a single, unified channel for educational and career information that provides a simple, trustworthy and neutral pathway to help with choosing the next educational step.

Who submitted this case?

Novari and HK-dir (Norwegian Directorate for Higher Education and Skills), both participants in SAMT-BU.

The Problem Today

Choosing an educational pathway or career is one of the most significant decisions a person makes. Incorrect, outdated or biased information can lead to poor choices, dropout, extended study periods, exclusion from working life, or a poor match between society’s competence needs and the individual’s choices.

Today, three separate public digital services exist for educational and career information: utdanning.no, vilbli.no and karriereveiledning.no. With separate services, users must navigate between offerings with partly overlapping content. This creates uncertainty about which service to use – and increases the risk that users turn to commercial and social media sources rather than neutral public channels.

Where do breaks in information flow or responsibility occur?

Breaks occur particularly:

• when users have no single clear entry point to public educational and career information
• when terminology and definitions vary between services
• when there is no clear connection between information about education, competence, occupations, employers and the labour market
• when editorial responsibility for overlapping content is split between different actors
• when data from county municipalities’ systems (VIGO) and HK-dir’s systems are not linked together

Actors

End users

• Pupils in primary and upper secondary school facing educational and career choices
• Students and adults in need of career guidance
• Guardians
• Job seekers and employees

Service staff

• Career counsellors in county municipalities and NAV
• Advisors and teachers in schools and upper secondary education

System vendors

• Vendors of career and educational information services
• Vendors of school administration systems connected to VIGO

Stakeholders

Directorates (professional and operational stakeholders)

• HK-dir – responsible for utdanning.no and karriereveiledning.no; national responsibility for competence policy
• Utdanningsdirektoratet – professional directorate for primary and secondary education
• Digitaliseringsdirektoratet – cross-sectoral stakeholder for digital interaction and data sharing

Ministries (political and governance stakeholders)

• Ministry of Education and Research – overall responsibility for the education sector
• Ministry of Digitalisation and Public Administration – overall responsibility for digitalisation and cross-sectoral initiatives

Service providers

• HK-dir – operates utdanning.no and karriereveiledning.no
• Novari – operates vilbli.no on behalf of county municipalities
• County municipalities – owners of vilbli.no through FKU (the county municipalities’ joint organisation for education)

Coordinating and supporting actors

• KS and KS Digital – interest organisation for the municipal sector; operational actor for shared digital solutions
• Sikt – delivers and manages shared services in the education sector

Consequences of the Current Situation

For end users (pupils, students, guardians and adults)

• Uncertainty about which public service provides the right information
• Risk of basing choices on incorrect, outdated or commercially biased information
• Increased risk of users seeking guidance on social media and commercial AI services rather than neutral public channels

For service staff

• Duplicate work related to updating overlapping content
• Lack of holistic insight into user behaviour and information needs across services

For organisations

• Inefficient use of resources through operating three parallel solutions
• Fragmented professional community and higher overall operating costs
• Unclear lines of responsibility for content quality and updates

At system level

A fragmented public information landscape makes it more difficult to direct information towards prioritised societal needs and competence policy goals. The absence of a single unified service also weakens the potential for comprehensive data and analysis of users’ choices and needs.

Desired Situation

In a desired situation, one unified public digital channel brings together all educational and career information – with shared terminology, a clear connection between education, competence, occupations, employers and the labour market, and easy access to neutral career guidance. The service is managed by a single actor with clear lines of responsibility, one editorial team and one technical solution.

Data from county municipalities’ systems (VIGO) and HK-dir’s systems are shared so that users seeking information about upper secondary education find everything in one place – without having to navigate between separate services.

Input on Solution Choices

The project proposal from Novari and HK-dir points to the following solution directions:

One unified public service – merging utdanning.no, karriereveiledning.no and vilbli.no into a single coherent channel with shared terminology, a shared editorial team and one technical solution under a unified governance model.

Data facilitation as a pilot within SAMT-BU – initially focusing on enabling data sharing from county municipalities’ systems (VIGO) and HK-dir’s systems, so that users seeking information about upper secondary education find everything in one place.

Joint investigation project – a project between Novari and HK-dir is proposed to investigate:

• the effects of a potential merger
• administrative and financial consequences
• a plan for implementation

Any governance model must ensure that county municipalities retain product ownership over relevant service areas (equivalent to their role with vilbli.no today).

Insight Work

The case builds on a project proposal developed by Novari and HK-dir in connection with SAMT-BU. The merger of career web services – utdanning.no, karriereveiledning.no and vilbli.no – has been proposed as a candidate for piloting within the project.

Relevant Project Goals

This case is particularly relevant to the following objectives:

• Simpler and more connected user journeys for pupils, guardians and staff throughout the educational pathway
• Better interaction and information flow across levels of government and sectors
• Lifelong learning as an overarching goal – from early childhood to working life
• Reusable and shared solutions that can be shared between actors
• Better data foundation for governance, analysis and competence policy