Open Skills Can’t Be “Open” If They Can Be Paywalled Overnight

If your “open” skills language can be restricted with very little warning, you never truly owned the ground you built your talent foundation on.

A widely used Open Skills API, regarded as a shared building block by researchers, developers, HR tech teams, and workforce planners, is no longer open in practice. Access terms have changed, and the free entry point that fueled experimentation and integration has vanished. I am not here to contest anyone’s commercial strategy. Companies can set product prices however they choose.

I am here to highlight the structural risk.

Skills language is infrastructure. It shapes how we hire, promote, design roles, fund learning, and communicate workforce risk and resilience to leadership.

When “open” becomes conditional, you realize you weren’t building on a solid foundation. You were building on a service. Services evolve.

If you need proof that “trust us” is not a governance model, look no further than 23andMe. The company invited people to mail in their DNA, promising access and insight, but ended up in bankruptcy court with its genetic database treated as an asset to be sold. The premise, initially open and empowering, became a cautionary tale about what happens when foundational infrastructure is merely a service, vulnerable to sudden reversal. If something as personal as genetic identity can be commodified and auctioned off, imagine the risk of building the world’s skills infrastructure on the same unstable ground.

We can’t let the future of skills, hiring, learning, and economic mobility rely on the same logic. The 23andMe episode is a warning: what appears open and empowering today can turn into a liability tomorrow.

“It was open until it was not.”

This is where the skills taxonomy space has quietly let us down. The market has shifted toward a numbers game. Larger lists, more terms, more “coverage.” Some models include over 30,000 skill terms. That scale seems advanced until you try to translate it into actual learning paths and real competence results. Volume is not the same as precision. Precision is what develops capability.

Because here’s the truth nobody wants to admit: you cannot build credible learning pathways on unstable language. You cannot measure progress against shifting definitions. You cannot prove competence with a word cloud.

You need a standard. You need responsibility levels. You need evidence-based credentialing. You need a reliable system of record for skills and capabilities.

This is why the world needs to start paying attention to SFIA (the Skills Framework for the Information Age) and the SFIA Foundation now.

SFIA is intentionally simple, with 147 professional skills that are clearly defined and described across seven levels of responsibility, so we can differentiate basic awareness from accountable performance.

This design choice transforms “skills” from mere keywords into an operational model. It offers organizations a stable target for workforce learning pathways and provides individuals with a clear roadmap for progression that aligns with real work.

Now add the part that matters more than most people realize. SFIA is managed by a global not-for-profit organization launched in 2000 and supported through open consultation and volunteer efforts from industry and government. That governance model is why SFIA has become the worldwide standard for skills and workforce assurance, and why the language has remained shared, stable, and trusted over decades.

In the age of AI, knowledge is cheap. The differentiator is evidence. Observable, standards-aligned, role-relevant proof that capability exists.

The future belongs to open standards, clear responsibility levels, and evidence-based credentials. SFIA has been part of this journey all along.

Now is the time to choose a solid foundation over unstable ground, to rebuild trust, capability, and mobility on something that cannot be turned off. This is not just about technology or HR; it is about shaping the future we want. If you care about a resilient, fair, and innovative workforce, SFIA is the standard to support.

Let us make this the foundation for a new era where what we build endures.