3s contribution at Cedefop Brussels Seminar ‘Labour market and skills information systems for VET policies’

On 26 June 2018, Cedefop (European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training) together with the Bulgarian Presidency of the Council of the EU organised the 5th Cedefop Brussels-based seminar.

These seminars, organised in cooperation with the rotating EU-Presidencies, build on Cedefop’s research and analyses and address issues relevant to European debates on vocational education and training (VET) and employment.

The seminar’s objective was to highlight the importance of a ‘blended’ approach, taking into consideration the latest developments in big data and AI-based tools for developing labour market and skills intelligence. Cedefop and external experts from pioneering public and private organisations (e.g. OECD, IBM, VDAB) debated promising approaches in effectively integrating new big data or AI-based data analytics within existing skills anticipation/matching processes of EU countries. As part of the event.

Claudia Plaimauer (3s, Austria) reported about a pilot project performed on behalf of the Austrian Public Employment Service: testing vacancy mining for validating and supplementing Austria’s labour market taxonomies. She underlined that vacancy mining proved to be a highly effective method for identifying evidence-based amendment needs; nevertheless AI-based methods currently can only complement but not completely replace existing editorial methods in taxonomy management.

Further information on the event can be found here.