CASE and EASEC: Making Competency Frameworks Machine-Readable and Interoperable Across Systems
About this framework
CASE (Competency and Academic Standards Exchange) is the 1EdTech Consortium standard that defines how systems exchange and manage information about learning standards and competencies in a consistent, machine-readable format. It replaces static PDFs and spreadsheets with structured, digitally referenceable data that can be shared, aligned and linked across institutions, platforms and national boundaries.
Why CASE Matters
Competency frameworks today exist largely as static documents. A university publishes its programme competences in a PDF. A government ministry issues its occupational standards in a spreadsheet. A certification body describes its assessment criteria in a web page. None of these formats allows a learning management system, a student information system, or a digital credential platform to automatically read, reference, or align those competences with other frameworks.
CASE solves this problem. It provides a universal format for encoding competency frameworks as structured data with persistent identifiers, so that any system that supports CASE can import, display, align and cross-reference competencies from any source — without manual re-entry, interpretation, or translation.
The adoption trajectory is significant. CASE-publishing states in the United States grew from 7 in 2023 to 21 in 2026, with over 1,100 frameworks now hosted publicly on the Satchel Rosetta Exchange. CASE consumer registrations from companies have increased 40% since 2024, and free public registrations have risen 70%. Major platform providers including Google Classroom, Canvas, PowerSchool and Infinite Campus now support CASE natively.
Google for Education announced in 2025 that it would adopt CASE to power learning standards alignment features in Google Classroom, enabling teachers to find, select and tag relevant standards directly within assignments. This signals mainstream adoption at a scale that transforms CASE from a niche interoperability standard into core education technology infrastructure.
For any organisation that publishes a competency framework — whether for academic standards, professional certifications, or transversal skills — CASE is the standard that makes that framework part of the connected digital learning ecosystem rather than an isolated document.
How CASE Works
The Core Concept
CASE encodes competency frameworks as structured data objects called CFDocuments (Competency Framework Documents). Each CFDocument contains CFItems (individual competency statements), organised hierarchically and linked by CFAssociations (relationships between items — such as "is part of," "is related to," or "is equivalent to").
Every element receives a globally unique identifier (a UUID), making it permanently referenceable across systems. When a learning platform, a credential issuer or a student information system references a CASE-encoded competency, it uses that identifier — ensuring that everyone is pointing to the same, unambiguous definition.
Key Properties
A CFDocument includes: a title identifying the framework, the creator (the authoritative source of the competency definitions), the publisher (the entity encoding the framework in CASE format — which may or may not be the same as the creator), a description, and the structured hierarchy of competency items.
Each CFItem includes: the competency statement, an identifier, a human-readable code, notes, and its position in the hierarchy.
CFAssociations enable cross-framework alignment. A competency from one framework can be associated with an equivalent competency in another framework using relationship types such as exactMatchOf, isRelatedTo, precedes, or isPartOf. This is the mechanism that makes CASE a network standard, not just a publishing format — frameworks published in CASE can be linked together in a web of aligned competencies.
CASE and Other 1EdTech Standards
CASE operates within a broader ecosystem of 1EdTech standards:
Open Badges 3.0 uses competency alignment properties to reference the specific skills or standards a badge certifies. When those skills are published in CASE format, the reference is machine-readable and unambiguous.
LTI 1.3 (Learning Tools Interoperability) enables learning tools to exchange data with learning platforms. When competencies are encoded in CASE, learning tools can automatically align content and assessments with the applicable standards.
CLR 2.0 (Comprehensive Learner Record) aggregates credentials and achievements across multiple sources. CASE-encoded competencies provide the common reference points that make aggregation meaningful.
Together, these standards create a connected infrastructure where competency frameworks (CASE) are referenced by credentials (Open Badges 3.0), integrated into learning platforms (LTI 1.3) and aggregated into learner records (CLR 2.0).
Who Uses CASE
State education agencies
Governmentin the United States are the largest publishers of CASE-encoded frameworks. Twenty-one states now publish their K-12 academic standards in CASE format, making them directly consumable by any compatible learning platform or content provider.
Learning platform providers
Platformsincluding Google Classroom, Canvas (Instructure), PowerSchool and Infinite Campus consume CASE data to enable standards-aligned features in their products — allowing teachers to tag assignments to specific competency standards and track student progress against defined learning outcomes.
Digital content providers
Contentuse CASE to align educational resources with multiple competency frameworks simultaneously, ensuring that a textbook, a lesson plan or an assessment is tagged to the correct standard in every jurisdiction where it is used.
Higher education institutions
Higher Educationadopting competency-based education models use CASE to manage their competency structures digitally — linking competencies to programmes, courses, assessments, learning materials and learner records.
Professional certification bodies
Certificationcan use CASE to publish their competency frameworks in machine-readable format, enabling learning platforms and credential systems to reference specific competencies from those frameworks directly.
How EASEC Aligns with CASE
EASEC's alignment with CASE ensures that its competency framework is not a static document but a structured, digitally referenceable dataset that can be consumed, referenced and aligned by any CASE-compatible system in the global education technology ecosystem.
Publishing EASEC's Competency Framework in CASE Format
EASEC's 32 transversal competencies can be encoded as a CFDocument with each competency as a CFItem, organised by EASEC's classification structure (Intellectual, Laboral, Social), with proficiency level descriptors for each competency.
This publication makes the EASEC framework available as structured data that any platform, institution or credential system can reference using persistent identifiers.
Enabling Cross-Framework Alignment
Through CASE's CFAssociation mechanism, EASEC competencies can be formally linked to equivalent competencies in other CASE-published frameworks using standardised relationship types. For instance, EASEC's "Problem Solving" can carry an exactMatchOf association to the corresponding ESCO transversal skill, a closeMatch to the relevant O*NET element, and an isRelatedTo link to a university's programme competency published in the same format.
When a learning platform processes an EASEC credential or references an EASEC competency, it can automatically trace the connections to ESCO, O*NET and any other CASE-published framework — creating a single, interoperable network of aligned competencies.
Connecting Credentials to Competencies
When EASEC issues an Open Badge 3.0, the badge's alignment property can reference the specific CASE-encoded competency item by its persistent identifier. This creates a direct, machine-readable link between the credential (what was earned) and the competency definition (what it means).
Verifiers, platforms and institutions that consume the badge can follow that link to the authoritative competency definition, eliminating ambiguity about what the badge certifies.
Why This Matters
Most competency frameworks in the world today exist as PDFs, web pages or spreadsheets. They are human-readable but not machine-processable.
CASE alignment transforms EASEC's framework from a static reference into a connected data asset that participates in the same digital infrastructure as Google Classroom, Canvas, PowerSchool and the growing ecosystem of standards-aligned education technology.
What This Means for You
For Education Institutions
If your institution uses a CASE-compatible LMS or student information system, EASEC's competency framework can be imported and referenced directly — no manual re-entry of competency definitions needed. Your faculty can align assessments and learning activities to EASEC competencies within the same system they already use, and student achievement data can be tracked against those competencies automatically.
For Employers
CASE interoperability means that EASEC competencies are defined in the same machine-readable format used by major education platforms. When your workforce development systems consume competency data, EASEC's framework can integrate natively — enabling you to align internal training, assess competency gaps and track achievement using a universally referenceable standard.
For Technology Providers
If you build or operate learning platforms, HR technology, or credential management systems, EASEC's CASE-compatible competency framework can be consumed via standard APIs and referenced by persistent identifiers. This enables seamless integration of EASEC's transversal competency definitions into your product's competency management features.
Frequently Asked Questions About CASE
Certify the Competencies That Matter Most
The World Economic Forum identifies the skills. EASEC verifies them. Explore how EASEC's psychometric assessments and internationally recognised certifications can help your organisation, institution or career align with the skills priorities shaping the global labour market.
Related Frameworks
Discover how EASEC aligns with other international standards: