The Secretariat of the SBB

The SBB office helps the foundation to execute its tasks. The SBB office will be assigned the following tasks:

• Offer specific support to the board and the theme advisory commissions in the development of frameworks, guidelines and benchmarks in the four themes (qualification, examination, PVT and effectiveness of offered training programmes).
• Support the board with other topics allocated to the SBB by the cabinet, such as international credentials evaluation, stagemarkt.nl as well as a Youth Unemployment Action Plan.
• Support the board with requested and unrequested advice for the minister and cabinet.
• Examine whether products presented to the board by expertise centres comply with the frameworks and whether a careful process has been followed (sufficient focus on cross-sector interests, sufficient attention paid to allocation of responsibilities, etc.).
• Support mediation between parties, in situations where it is determined that one or multiple involved parties have breached the agreed frameworks and a mutual agreement cannot be reached.
• Support the independent dispute commissions in situations where mediation by SBB has not resulted in the encountered stand-off being resolved.
• Support the board meeting in offering requested and unrequested advice to the SBB board, concerning tasks that expertise centres perform under the supervision and responsibility of SBB.

One of the main tasks of the SBB office involves evaluating the sector products of expertise centres against the frameworks established by the SBB, potentially followed by explicit confirmation by the minister. When performing this task, the benchmark is the method currently used by the Coordination centre to evaluate qualification files presented by expertise centres. An important feature in the layout of the SBB office is the relatively autonomous position of the department responsible for the evaluation within the office.