As technology advances and new generations reach working age, there is a clear need for timely, accurate, and relevant workforce and education data. Over time, CODE has worked with partners at the U.S. Department of Labor, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, and the T3 Innovation Network to explore the current state of workforce data and support future efforts around data collection, standardization, and connection. This work fits into a larger movement to identify ways to fully integrate education and workforce data from Kindergarten through retirement, allowing learners and workers to better align with the needs of employers and more easily find jobs that fit their skills or gain new credentials necessary to succeed in the modern workforce.
One of CODE’s first projects was a Roundtable with the U.S. Department of Labor on Open Data for the Labor Market, which brought together business, academic, and government leaders working to improve employment opportunity. The Roundtable focused on the need to improve data on new and emerging occupations and skills, to update O*NET (the Department of Labor’s source of data on occupational characteristics and requirements), and to better link O*NET with other occupational data sources. It produced recommendations for advancement in each of those areas.
More recently, CODE partnered with the T3 Innovation Network and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation to explore models of public-private standards development and use by the U.S. Government, and the ways that those models could be applied to workforce data. This work set the stage for the T3 Network’s larger efforts to align data workforce and education data standards across the private sector, federal, state, and local governments, and educational institutions.
