The City of Brussels is taking a new step in its skills development strategy by deploying a modern, high-performing digital learning platform.
Working alongside its Learning & Development team, the i-City department, and its partner ACT-ON BELGIUM, the City has deployed Cornerstone OnDemand Learn (CSOD) to deliver an innovative learning experience to all staff members.
THE NEED: MODERNIZE DIGITAL LEARNING AND ENGAGE EMPLOYEES
As part of its digital transformation, the City of Brussels wanted to thoroughly rethink its approach to learning and development, turning it into a true driver of performance and engagement.
Several strategic challenges were identified:
- Replace an outdated platform: implement a modern, high-performing LMS aligned with current digital learning standards.
- Improve the user experience: offer an intuitive, user-friendly environment that is accessible to all staff members.
- Empower employees: encourage autonomy in learning pathways and upskilling.
- Engage managers: strengthen their role in monitoring, supporting, and recommending training.
OUR RESPONSE: DEPLOYMENT OF CORNERSTONE ONDEMAND LEARN
To address these challenges, ACT-ON BELGIUM designed and deployed a tailored solution by implementing Cornerstone OnDemand Learn, while providing end-to-end support from configuration to platform structuring.
- Implementation of a customized digital learning portal: full LMS configuration to deliver an optimal user experience tailored to business needs.
- Translation of internal processes into efficient workflows: structuring learning paths, automating flows, and optimizing training management.
- Definition of a clear governance framework: establishing roles, responsibilities, and management rules to ensure the long-term sustainability of the program.
- Designing a scalable architecture: putting a robust framework in place to support future learning needs as they evolve.
CLIENT BENEFITS: A TRANSFORMED EXPERIENCE AND EMPOWERED TEAMS
Thanks to this digital transformation and the implementation of Cornerstone OnDemand Learn, the City of Brussels now benefits from a high-performing solution that supports both its employees and its skills development strategy:
- A modernized user experience: an intuitive, accessible, and engaging portal that drives adoption of digital learning.
- Easier access to learning: a well-structured catalog that all employees can use with ease.
- An adaptable platform: a strong architecture built to evolve with future transformations and business needs.
- Greater team autonomy: a trained team of administrators able to manage the platform independently.
🎥 Watch the City of Brussels share its experience with this project:
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A frank, self-critical look at Tech’s pitfalls - and a few tips to tackle some major problems: the weight of collective unconscious in Tech’s mythical story, the difficulty in developing new talent from diverse backgrounds and the near-absence of women.
MOVING BEYOND RHETORIC… TOWARD CONCRETE ACTION!
In 2023, hiring developers remains challenging. This job is booming, profiles are in high demand and the market still struggles to match supply with demand.
Moreover, the field has yet to inspire vocations among more atypical backgrounds and the female population remains underrepresented.
If we want to change this situation - which hurts businesses and society - we must move past attempts to fix the digital problem at school purely by focusing on technology: for example, just loading up middle schools and high schools with gadgets.
Let’s consider other approaches - like teaching “language skills” to code, and thereby inspiring budding developers in the process…
Questions abound: how do we teach programming? Who does the teaching? How do we spark career interest? These are far more relevant issues that we need to address now.
CHANGING OUR PERSPECTIVE… TO DISCOVER AND REVEAL NEW TALENTS
This is ultimately about humans - their biases, identification needs, individual and collective imaginations, representations, and projections…
It seems logical, then, to bring in the social sciences and humanities: history, sociology, psychology, anthropology, ethnology. The idea is to bring in more unconventional profiles, to tap different learning and life journeys and thereby grow a new generation of developers.
One example is the work of Georges Balandier, who introduced the concept of “techno-imaginary” (the importance of machines in our contemporary imagination, shaped by mythical stories), and of Pascal Plantard - a digital anthropology researcher at Rennes 2 University (and, by the way, let’s not just focus on Paris for our reflections).
Plantard reminds us that techno-imaginaries form the foundational material of representations, fueling and guiding digital practices.
Studying this could help us figure out why young women self-censor. And we can move past “geek shut-in” clichés - because IT projects are often team efforts.
Indeed, research on techno-centrism encourages us to analyze these imaginary narratives, mostly shaped by Anglo-Saxon, male-dominated references. Part of our answer may lie there…
DRAWING ON REALITY… AND GIVING WOMEN THE PLACE THEY DESERVE…
Yet France - and other countries - boast numerous historical success stories and entrepreneurial models in research and industry that could match any Anglo-Saxon achievements (or those of Asia).
Take, for instance, the French company Jeulin, which, from the mid-1980s onward, offered educational solutions featuring touchscreens and robots for teaching computer science. Pascal Plantard highlights how this is rarely remembered.
Somehow, mainstream history remembers only the “great male programmers.” But if we go all the way back to the 1800s, we find Ada Lovelace - Lord Byron’s daughter and a friend of Charles Babbage - who invented the world’s first theoretical software algorithm!
Closer to our time, at Bletchley Park during WWII, pioneering women programmers cracked German codes. Alan Turing wasn’t alone - but he is the one widely featured in a movie…
And Margaret Hamilton was a key figure in the Apollo program, heading the flight software team. The term “software engineering” is hers. We might also mention African American women mathematicians in the US space program, as well as Grace Hopper, who - holding a Ph.D. in math - helped create COBOL in 1959.
…TO REWRITE TECH’S MYTHICAL NARRATIVES!
Though these pioneers were long overshadowed, the tide is gradually turning. That momentum is rewriting the grand mythical narratives and reshaping how we view both individual imagination and collective imagery in tech.
We should keep telling these big stories, much like France did with space exploration via Thomas Pesquet (another man!) and Claudie Haigneré - the first French woman in space - so young women no longer feel excluded from the digital universe.
WORKING LONG-TERM ON THE “EDUCATION, SOCIETY, RECRUITMENT” TRIPTYCH
Along with high-level changes, we must also tackle things at the grassroots. Specifically, our recruitment processes must be as open as possible: engineering schools, universities, short-track degrees like BTS…
The same goes for programming languages and Linux-type environments. That’s how we’ll find “tinkerers,” in the anthropological sense, where innovation is a process of borrowing, modifying or newly recombining existing elements, as paleoanthropologist Pascal Picq suggests.
Finally, let’s revisit how we engage with engineering schools, where faculty often fail to consider industrial concerns.
You see, shaking up the “education-society-recruitment” trio will take a major and extended effort to spark interest in every digital job (not just whatever’s hot right now).
In the end, the best way to train - and hire - more developers and especially women in this field might just be perseverance: picking up the pilgrim’s staff to inform and persuade countless people, for many (more) years to come!
Check out ACT-ON TECHNOLOGY job openings.
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The Federal Public Service for Policy and Support (FOD BOSA) turned to ACT-ON Belgium for the implementation of the CSOD LMS and the setup of a user-friendly catalog structure enabling users from multiple governmental organizations to learn and share resources effectively.
THE NEED...
- Replace old LMS with centralized setup for collaboration and knowledge sharing.
- Ensure smooth transition with high interconnectivity to content platform.
- Manage coaching and language training with effective tracking.
- Enable technical integrations like QR-code access to training locations.
OUR RESPONSE...
- Reviewed needs and translated requirements into technical specs.
- Rolled out tenant-based portal for each government entity.
- Set up global and tenant-based catalogues for training content.
- Organized workgroups for integrations and provided training for admins, staff, and technical teams.
CUSTOMER BENEFITS...
- Future-proof platform with ongoing support.
- Centralized learning ecosystem across multiple entities.
- User-friendly catalog for easy access to learning.
- Stronger knowledge-sharing culture and reduced duplication.
- Efficient management of coaching and language training.
- Smooth migration from legacy platform.
- QR-code-based automation for training access.
- Scalable tenant-based setup.
- Workforce prepared through targeted training.
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The Flemish government (Vlaamse Overheid) entrusted ACT-ON Belgium with the implementation of Cornerstone ATS, LMS, and Performance in order to streamline HR practices and enhance organizational efficiency.
THE NEED...
- Centralized HR platform covering recruitment, learning, and performance.
- Ensure consistency and compliance with flexibility for departments and independent entities.
- Support on requirement clarification, stakeholder alignment.
- Building a future HRIS architecture.
OUR RESPONSE...
- Guided pre-study and needs analysis into clear requirements.
- Provided strategic/advisory support during implementation.
- Developed technical integrations and support model for improvements.
CUSTOMER BENEFITS...
- Strategic alignment through pre-study and analysis.
- Implementation aligned with public sector regulations.
- Increased efficiency via technical integrations.
- Continuous improvements ensured by support framework.
- Trusted long-term partnership.
A project in Belgium? Contact ACT-ON BELGIUM
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Talent.Brussels, a key HR institution for the Brussels Region and its partners, entrusted ACT-ON Belgium with the implementation of Cornerstone ATS, LMS, Performance, and Onboarding as part of a phased roll-out to digitalize its HR ecosystem.
THE NEED...
- Comprehensive HR digitalization across recruitment, onboarding, learning and performance.
- Recruitment services across all partners.
- Standardized onboarding with flexibility at local level.
- Accessible learning for continuous development.
- Integrated performance management.
- Centralized resources & budgets.
OUR RESPONSE...
- Designed phased roll-out across LMS, ATS, Performance, and Onboarding.
- Conducted workshops to balance local adaptability and global consistency.
- Used template-based roll-out for flexibility per entity.
- Delivered tailored training programs for adoption.
- Provided corrective and evolutive post-Go-Live support.
CUSTOMER BENEFITS...
- Centralized HR processes across entities.
- Shared budgets/resources and cost efficiency.
- Consolidated HR analytics and reporting.
- Scalable phased roll-out at entity’s own pace.
- Flexible yet standardized processes.
- Seamless integrations with HRIS systems.
- Reduced admin workload via automation.
- Improved employee experience and portal usability.
- Personalized learning and career development.
- Faster onboarding for new hires.
- Future-proof HR ecosystem with ongoing support.
- Stronger collaboration across sub-entities.
- Easier compliance tracking.
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The digital transformation of the public sector is not confined to improving services to users: it also affects human resources management.
The recently-introduced Comités Sociaux d'Administration (CSA) strengthen employee participation in the decisions that affect them.
They provide a structured forum for dialogue on working conditions, health and career paths...
For this dialogue to be constructive, it must be based on reliable, shared data.
That's what the Social Data Base (SDB) is all about: a key tool for clarifying HR decisions, objectifying situations and reinforcing transparency!
BDS: A LEVER FOR SOCIAL DIALOGUE
Managing social data in the French civil service is essential for structuring HR dialogue and supporting decision-making.
With its BDS solution, ACT-ON DATA helps public authorities centralize, analyze and distribute reliable information to all stakeholders.
- Enhance transparency and social dialogue: a clear, shared view of HR data to fuel discussions between HR teams and employee representatives.
- Improve working conditions: reliable indicators to identify levers for action in terms of quality of life at work, health and absenteeism.
- Pilot your HR policy with precision: structured, up-to-date and accessible data to inform managerial decisions and improve public performance.
This approach contributes to more transparent, clearer management that is better aligned with the realities on the ground.
DEPLOYMENT FACED WITH VARIOUS COMPLEXITIES
The deployment of Social Data Bases (SDBs) in the French civil service (FPE) faces several challenges that complicate its implementation.
Firstly, ministries often have difficulty understanding the nature of the indicators requested, which slows down the collection of accurate data.
Added to this is the absence of some crucial information, particularly on occupational health.
A void that prevents complete analyses and impacts decisions...
Human resources information systems (HRIS) are also a hindrance, often incompatible with BDS requirements, making it difficult to centralize data.
The Déclaration Sociale Nominative (DSN), although mandatory since 2022, still only covers a small fraction of the 150 indicators required.
And of course, the collection of health data remains a major challenge... an obstacle to be overcome if we really want to modernize human resources management!
In summary, here are the challenges to overcome:
- Accessing and applying the right indicators... not always easy!
- Lack of essential data, especially on occupational health.
- HR information systems not adapted to BDS production.
- DSN, which still only covers some of the necessary indicators.
- Gaps in data collection on agent health.
These challenges show that there's still a long way to go to improve data management within the FPE!
TOWARDS MORE TRANSPARENT, MODERN HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGEMENT
The challenges are there, but digitalization and the use of data are now essential to modernizing the public sector.
With BDS, administrations can improve the efficiency of their services, increase transparency and better meet the needs of their citizens!
At ACT-ON DATA, our BDS solution facilitates this transition, offering tailored tools for managing and distributing data, from HR experts to CSA members.
To find out more about how our solution can support this evolution, watch our video with Romain JAVILLIER, Senior Manager DATA, who explains our approach and its benefits for the civil service.
Contact us to explore tomorrow's solutions together!