ValidateSkills
Assessment Platform
The ValidateSkills Assessment Platform (VSAP) is a secure, cloud-hosted software service that enables organisations to assess, verify and manage workforce skills and capability across technical, professional and organisational frameworks.
Core Platform Capabilities
The platform supports established standards such as the Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA), the Chartered Institute of Information Security (CIISec) framework, and the Governance Competency Assurance Framework (GCAF), as well as sector-specific or fully bespoke skills taxonomies and frameworks. The service provides structured self-assessment, manager verification, evidence capture, role mapping, capability reporting and development tracking. It enables organisations to gain clear, evidence-based insight into workforce capability, skills gaps and development priorities to support operational delivery, workforce planning and assurance needs. IT Skills Analysis (ITSA), including SFIA-aligned assessment, is a custom application of the platform.
Skills Framework Management
Organisations can implement and customise any skills framework, including hybrid models combining multiple standards. Skills, responsibility levels and relevance can be configured to reflect organisational and sector-specific requirements.
Role Mapping
Job roles are mapped to defined skill profiles, enabling clear alignment between organisational needs and individual capability. Role profiles support development planning, succession planning and resource allocation.
Skills Assessment and Verification
Users complete structured self-assessments against mapped roles or skills frameworks. Evidence can be uploaded to support assessments. Manager verification workflows enable review, challenge and agreement of assessment outcomes.
Capability Reporting
The platform provides real-time reporting and dashboards, including capability indicators, skills gap analysis and organisational views across teams, departments and job families.
Development Tracking
Skills gaps can be linked to development actions, tasks and learning activities. A central skills log maintains records of qualifications, courses and development evidence.
Career Pathways
Employees and administrators can view mapped roles and career pathways, supporting internal mobility and workforce planning through transparent skills requirements and percentage fit indicators.
Service overview
The ValidateSkills IT Skills Assessment (ITSA) platform is a secure, cloud-hosted software service that enables organisations to assess, verify and manage workforce skills and capability across technical, professional and organisational frameworks.
The service is delivered as a multi-tenant SaaS platform and can be configured to operate as a fully administered service or a customer-managed environment with role-based permissions.
FAQ's
Hosting, Security and Resilience
The service is hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS) with resilient architecture designed to minimise service disruption in the event of infrastructure or hardware failures.
Regular backups are performed and retained in line with the service’s data retention policy to enable full restoration in the event of disruption.
AWS data centres are subject to independent audits against recognised standards, including ISO/IEC 27001, CSA Cloud Controls Matrix (CCM) v4.0 and SSAE-18 / ISAE 3402. Physical security controls are managed by AWS and inherited by the service.
Connectivity to the service is encrypted in transit. AWS-managed infrastructure controls include patching, hardware lifecycle management and secure media sanitisation.
Service Availability
The service is designed to provide a high level of availability supported by resilient cloud infrastructure. Guaranteed service availability is 99.5% uptime, measured monthly. Planned maintenance is scheduled outside normal business hours wherever possible and communicated in advance.
Availability is monitored continuously, with automated alerting and technical escalation to ensure service issues are identified and resolved promptly. Where availability falls below the guaranteed level, service credits are applied in accordance with the service agreement.
Identity and Access Management
Management access to the service is protected using unique user accounts with strong passwords and mandatory multi-factor authentication (MFA). Where required, access can be integrated with enterprise single sign-on (SSO) solutions such as SAML-based identity providers.
Automated and malicious access attempts are mitigated using bot-protection controls, including reCAPTCHA. Access is logged and monitored, with alerts generated for suspicious or anomalous activity.
Accessibility
The ValidateSkills Assessment Platform (VSAP) is designed to be accessible to a wide range of users and supports common assistive technologies. Users can adjust colours, contrast levels and fonts using browser or device settings, zoom content up to 400%, navigate most functionality using a keyboard, and use screen readers such as JAWS, NVDA and Voice-over.
The service is partially compliant with WCAG 2.2 AA. Some limitations are currently known, including limited control over line spacing, partial accessibility of older PDF documents and the absence of captions on live video content. These areas are reviewed as part of ongoing platform improvement.
A full Accessibility Statement is available on request or via the service website.
Support
Support is provided during UK business hours. Service issues are monitored and managed through defined incident and escalation procedures to ensure timely response and resolution.
Onboarding and Integration
The platform supports data import and integration via secure APIs and file transfer mechanisms. Integration options include HR systems, learning platforms and identity providers. Single sign-on integration is supported where required.
Service Constraints
The service availability SLA applies to the platform and core functionality. It does not apply to customer-controlled factors such as local connectivity, firewall configuration or third-party systems used for integration.
Data Protection
The service processes customer data in accordance with applicable UK data protection legislation. Data is hosted within AWS infrastructure and managed in line with defined retention and security policies.
Use cases
British Army
Royal Signals first set out to increase our knowledge of SFIA and how it could help us as we had identified a need to better track skills within our workforce.
We were aware of Assess Management Ltd’s work and through a selection process appointed Kevin as our senior advisor for SFIA approved training
Capt Neil Donaghy, CEng MIET | SO3 Plans | Project DADUCEUS | Army HQ
Ricoh Global Services
At Ricoh GS we’ve had the pleasure of working with ValidateSkills.com and using their services and products for a number years now. Initially, they helped us to map our IT roles to SFIA, enabling us to build SFIA job role profiles which highlighted the skill set we needed to run our business. They then went on to deliver a full online assessment service, which we consider to be a very useful tool for recruitment and for identifying skills gaps. Throughout all, we have found ValidateSkills.com to be helpful, creative, professional and able to understand our needs fully.
Mike Smith, Operations Director EMEA, Ricoh Global Services