Open Data Can Transform Job Training and Career Decision-Making Too

" ... Combined with our fast-paced, rapidly-evolving economy, it is becoming increasingly rare for an individual to work in one industry for an entire career. That means, as the President said in his State of the Union Address, gaining new skills and rapidly retooling is even more important in today's job market. Job training programs need to keep up with the pace and access to better data can help them do that. However, our education and training programs take too long to adapt. It can take several years to know that a new job has emerged or if the skill requirements for an existing job have dramatically changed. It can take two or three years to get a training program set up and then two to four years to get a person through that program. To aggressively get ahead of this challenge, President Obama included in his 2017 Fiscal Year budget several proposals that apply the benefits of open data to support the labor market. These proposals will give job seekers better tools to find good jobs and job training providers better information to remain nimble in today's rapid labor market. The Workforce Data Science and Innovation Fund is a $500 million proposal to deploy a best in class team of innovators at the Department of Labor (DOL) and Department of Commerce (DOC) to work collaboratively to: publish new data on jobs, skills and training for public access while protecting privacy and confidentiality; make the existing data easily accessible and machine-readable; and publicize the data and its availability to innovators who can use it as the raw material to improve labor market outcomes with new products and services designed to help job seekers, training providers, and policymakers. This Fund will generate tools that will give workers more personalized, adaptable, and rapidly evolving feedback about what jobs are available, the skills they need in order to get them, and the training and education that will lead to the outcome they want ..."