Clearinghouse strategy document

Citizenship and Immigration Canada’s Foreign Credential Referral Office (CIC-FCRO) were developing a Community of Practice website named the “IQ Network” (IQN) to stimulate and support the continuous of improvement of immigrant service delivery.

FCRO staff wished to explore the feasibility of developing of a comprehensive and searchable directory of Foreign Credential Recognition (FCR) resources.

As a first step, CIC-FCRO commissioned this consulting project to develop a model for the clearinghouse which can be validated and used as a guide for the development of the tool. The model needed to be able to accommodate multiple media and, in the spirit of the IQ Network, easily welcome user contributions.

Activities for the planning project included:

1. Research and analyze clearinghouse websites such as www.canadabusiness.ca
2. Produce a short strategy report that summarizes findings of the research and analysis and makes recommendations to develop an FCR document clearinghouse database
3. Collect a sampling of the records for such a database
4. Develop an interactive wireframe model of the database, showing how search can be directed by such criteria as:
   1. Role (e.g. employer, regulator, immigrant, educator, service provider)
   2. Location
   3. Occupation
5. Show in the model how FCR-related webinars, webcasts and other multimedia content can be presented alongside text documents in the database
6. Validate the model in one or more focus sessions with CIC and stakeholders nominated by CIC
7. Revise the strategy report based on the validation findings, including recommendations for next steps