How can open data help people get better jobs and create new jobs?

This might seem like a rather abstract question, but to those in the know, open data is sometimes considered to be the most exciting raw material of the 21st century.

There are a growing number of examples of open data being used to prompt innovation and create greater transparency/efficiency - like the apps that tell you when the next bus is coming and advice on which area meets your needs best when you’re house hunting. Just check out the winners of previous Open Data Challenges.

Drawing on prior work in the area, including Nesta’s Living Map of Jobs Innovators, the Open Data Institute and Nesta believe that the jobs sector could be the next area to benefit from the application of open data. So we have put this question at the heart of the Jobs Open Data Challenge, and provided a £50,000 prize as an incentive to encourage you to join in.

Each Challenge invites individuals to create products and services that respond to the challenge question, using open data. However, we realise that open data isn’t a raw material that many people have come across or used before, and that even if they have used it, there aren’t many ‘jobs open data specialists’ in the sector. So we’ve invested some time and effort into preparing a list of relevant datasets, assessing their quality in terms of ‘how open’ they are and presenting the vital information all in one place.

We want to enable data novices and data specialists alike to participate in the challenge so we also put together some broad guidance on what it means to ‘use open data’ in a challenge like this. In this associated blog, we outline what kind of open data you need to use, how you might want to use it and where you could find more.

The LMI (labour market intelligence) for All API deserves first mention as it scored highest on our assessment. This API is managed by the UK Commission for Employment and Skills and is a combination of datasets that have been cleaned, refined and prepared with a simple access point through the API. Bringing together data from four different sources, this API provides the most comprehensive insight into the UK labour market.

It includes:

• Two key products from the Office for National Statistics: the Labour Force Survey and the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings;
• Data from two products from the UK Commission for Employment and Skills: the Employer Skills Survey and Working Futures.
• Vacancy data from Universal JobMatch
• Data on skills, interests and abilities from the US O*NET database

To note, this data source was at the centre of the 2013 Careerhack, a competition which invited developers around the globe to use LMI for All to develop apps.

In joint second place according to our assessment, were a number of datasets from a range of data publishers:

1. Public Sector Employment - Office of National Statistics - a data release which is updated quarterly and includes headcount and full-time equivalent employment by sector and industry. Public Sector is defined as for the UK national accounts (central government, local government and public corporations).
    
2. Northern Ireland census of jobs and employment (2013) - Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency - the total number of employee jobs in Northern Ireland broken down by industry and geography (note: only non-agricultural businesses).
    
3. Nomis - Office of National Statistics - Detailed and up-to-date labour market statistics drawing on a variety of sources including the national census and Labour Force Survey. This data source facilitates access to a number of datasets through thematic links e.g. population estimates, DWP benefits and jobcentre plus vacancies.
    
4. Free Company Data - Companies House - A downloadable snapshot containing basic company data of live companies on the register, provided monthly.

So what could you do with all this data? We have pulled together a list of potential ideas for adoption on our hackpad so that you can get a sense of what is possible.