Open Data Transition Report: An Action Plan for the Next Administration

Goal II: Deliver direct benefits to citizens and communities
Recommendation 11: Standardize and update the government's public data on occupations and required skills to help Americans find jobs
First Year
U.S. Department of Labor & National Institute of Standards and Technology
Action Plan:
  • • The Department of Labor (DOL) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) should work together to standardize job skills data and make that data easily available to improve information for job-seekers, job skills trainers, and employers.
  • • By January 2018 DOL and NIST should convene key public and private sector stakeholders to develop a Skills Data Standard for the Occupational Information Network (O*NET), the government’s centralized resource on occupational and skills data.
  • • DOL and NIST should develop a Skills Network Protocol for applying those standards together with key metadata.
  • • DOL should then use these standards to incorporate new data into O*NET, including enabling the O*NET database to automatically incorporate jobs posted online using these standards.
  • • DOL should revamp the O*NET website and O*NET data services with an improved user interface, a more scalable API, and better developer documentation, developed with 18F, USDS, or other government resources.
  • • The President’s budget should include funding for O*NET improvement.
  • • DOL, together with the White House, should explore opportunities for public-private collaboration to fund and implement the continued improvement of jobs-related data.

Despite improvement in the unemployment rate over the past several years,  too many Americans still struggle to find good jobs to provide for themselves and their families. As of August 2016, 7.8 million Americans were unemployed,  including nearly half a million veterans.  Finding a job is challenging: The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports unemployed Americans spend a median of 11 weeks between jobs,  and job-hunting is especially difficult for the 2 million Americans who have been unemployed for more than 6 months.   High-quality, timely open data can help job seekers and reduce the unemployment rate.

The federal government’s Occupational Information Network (O*NET) is a centralized resource for employers, job-seekers, and job skills trainers to help the unemployed find work and plan their careers. O*NET’s database includes annually updated information on 974  occupations,  including associated skills, trainings, and experiences. Job seekers can explore the occupational data and then link to one of the 2,500 American Job Centers to identify specific opportunities.  

An Open Data Roundtable held by the Department of Labor (DOL) and the Center for Open Data Enterprise examined O*NET’s current use and opportunities for improvement.  While job seekers, academics, and others who interact with O*NET consider it the definitive source for jobs information, they also believe it should incorporate new information from additional sources. DOL updates O*NET through an annual survey that cannot capture rapid changes in job definitions and skills requirements.  For this reason, DOL, the White House, and others have been exploring ways to update O*NET regularly with jobs and skills data from the private sector and other sources.

To make it possible to update O*NET with data from diverse sources, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) should work with DOL, and with key public and private sector stakeholders, to develop a Skills Data Standard for O*NET. NIST should also detail a mechanism for quarterly updates and a set of standard, minimum metadata and language for job postings that link to those skills.  The data and metadata standards, and guidelines for using them, can then be applied widely through a Skills Network Protocol developed by NIST and DOL. By clearly defining and standardizing the skills that O*NET uses to describe occupations and providing consistent metadata with job postings through a Skills Network Protocol, DOL can more easily update the skills associated with occupations.

DOL should also revamp the O*NET website and O*NET data services with an improved user interface, a more scalable API, and better developer documentation. O*NET is currently underutilized: The O*NET site has only 4 million visits per month,  compared to 180 million unique visitors to Indeed, a job posting company,  and 100 million active monthly users for LinkedIn, a private sector professional networking website.  Work to improve O*NET could be supported by 18F, the U.S. Digital Service, or other government resources.

DOL has recognized O*NET's current limitations and requested $5 million in fiscal year 2017 to modernize the system.  Congress did not authorize this budget request. Given the potential economic value of improving O*NET, the President’s budget should include funding for O*NET improvement going forward.

The White House and DOL should also convene industry and philanthropic leaders to establish a public-private commitment to develop and use the Skills Data Standards and the Skills Network Protocol. As employers, business leaders have a vested interest in improving jobs and skills information that can help the hiring process. The private sector can play several important roles, including:

  • Helping to fund the technical work of standards development and O*NET improvement.
  • Contributing data using those standards from employment-related websites.
  • Collaborating with DOL or federal research agencies to support research on automatically extracting skills data from text in job postings.
Additional Reading: