Funded by the: JISC Flexible Service Delivery programme.
Lead Institution: University of Nottingham.
Partner Organisations: Aimhigher in the East Midlands, Derby College, New College Nottingham, Winona eSolutions Ltd.
Key Words: Getting more from existing investments and shared services.
Background
Aims and Objectives
The SALAMI Project has spent the last year identifying and testing a variety of datasets relating to the Labour Market and Information used by individuals to make decisions about their work and careers in order to establish a set of stakeholder requirements, and explore suitability of data and its presentation to different user groups. SALAMI has proved that there is demand from a wide range of stakeholders for accessible and streamlined information to support decision making about careers and curriculum. Through extensive consultation and practical investigation of data and application development, SALAMI has demonstrated the need for a Service Layer between the data and the applications, in order to join and clean datasets before they are presented to applications via a set of APIs (Application Programme Interfaces) and/or web services. Even where data is available and open, SALAMI has shown that it is not always fit for purpose in terms of interpretation and comparability. Whilst there are a range of openly available datasets covering the domain, much of it is in a very raw state, incomplete or in very different format therefore unsuitable to present to users directly. Furthermore, much Labour Market Information (LMI) requires caveats and presentation alongside other datasets to avoid misleading users. Further information is presented in this accompanying paper ' (Clark 2011) .
Proving demand for an LMI service
The SALAMI project has provided a starting point in delivering and presenting available and accessible information. The project has proved that there is demand for this service from a wide range of stakeholders who have identified the business case and benefits for their users and organisations. A Service Layer would present data to data.gov.uk for other enterprises, organisations and individuals (such as career software companies, universities, colleges, local government, planners, individuals, and Job Centre Plus) to make use of. It needs to be centrally supported and further developed, ensuring persistence in the standardisation of key codes and information sets.
Identifying LMI use
Labour Market Information is used by educational providers, deliverers of careers advice and guidance, local/regional planners, employers and indivudals for various purposes, these include:
- Reduce the duplication of effort collating and using Labour Market intelligence
- Improve the efficiency of curriculum development processes, enabling a more agile and employer responsive curriculum
- Enhance information about learning provision for learners, employers and wider stakeholders
- Enhance/improve accessibility to LMI, and facilitate interpretation/understanding of this data to wider audience
- Provide information to form the basis for local/regional skills planning
- Plan targeted curriculum and training in alignment with the local/regional economy
'More for less' - responding to new challenges
Throughout the course of the project, changes in government and policy brought both challenges and opportunities. As the project progressed, the Comprehensive Spending Review plus the introduction of new policy from the Browne Review, the HE White Paper and the Wolf Report, to name a few, challenged all providers of education and careers advice to provide 'more for less'. The introduction of new funding regimes in further and higher education has introduced further complexity for learners in choosing and comparing courses and employment opportunities, and in the same way that people have become used to finding and comparing information on commercial sites such as Amazon, learners expect to be able to see more in depth information about their course, and to be able to see examples of where it may lead them in terms of career opportunities. While the Key Information Set will go some way to address this for traditional higher education courses, there are still many caveats to be presented to users in terms of data source, accuracy and currency.
Recommending a service layer
SALAMI has demonstrated that a flexible API-based set of tools using existing information accessed through a Service Layer is a cost-effective and efficient way forward for all users of LMI, offering a potential user-focussed response to these challenges.
Demonstrating a flexible solution
The SALAMI project has followed these policy changes closely, and with the project's focus on scoping and delivering efficient and value-added services has proved extremely relevant in providing flexible and agile services to cater for the needs of a large range of stakeholders in accessing timely, verified and joined-up data about the labour market and information for choice.
Test and trial of LMI data sources
SALAMI investigated a wide range of data already 'out there' and available on the web which has the potential to be combined and accessed in different ways. The full analysis is available here. This document provides a bank of knowledge of LMI currently available, as well as an analysis of the usefulness and suitability of this data.
Engagement with national policy
SALAMI has engaged with and followed with interest the BIS-sponsored UKCES National Consultation on Information Advice and Guidance. On 13th January 2011, three members of the project team were invited to attend a national Information Advice and Guidance (IAG) Consultation and Hack Day, and the UKCES lead on the IAG work spoke and attended the second SALAMI consultation event (25 March 2011). The UKCES published it's final set of recommendations 'Helping Individuals Succeed. Transforming Career Guidance' in August 2011 (http://www.ukces.org.uk/assets/bispartners/ukces/docs/publications/helping-individuals-succeed-transforming-career-guidance.pdf ), sections of which resonate well with SALAMI's findings, in particular:
'Large data sets are often edited down so that individuals can use information effectively. However, raw data that is not interpreted or edited is the most useful to developers. A lack of standardisation and use of different definitions and terms between government departments and between national surveys makes it difficult for developers to incorporate data from different sources' p.16
A practical demonstrator - combining existing LMI in new ways
SALAMI has developed a demonstrator and used this to illustrate the technical concepts to non-technical audiences, as well as to evaluate the practicalities of using identified datasets and their usefulness to stakeholders. The demonstrator pulls job profile information, career-videos, course information, business information, Office of National Statistics job vacancy statistics and Google map and graph services together to demonstrate the potential of re-using existing information and combining visualisations to present information in different ways to the users.
Moving LMI into a web 3.0 world
SALAMI has developed, and is continuing to develop post-funding, classifications between disparate datasets based on national coding systems. For instance, mapping job profiles to the SIC/SOC codes, to educational subject classifications (JACs/LDCS) backed with a thesaurus of job profiles to increase the quality of discoverability. These look-up services are being made available to the community as web services.
Open standards to maximise efficiency
SALAMI has also developed an XML draft data standard to describe job profiles. This is in response to issues identified throughout SALAMI's investigations of the data sources, specifically the distributed nature of job profile information, issues with granularity of the information, persistence of sources and consistency/coherence of the data. Application of an open standard would go someway to improve this situation through easier aggregation, use of common terms (discoverability and searchability) and better granularity for reuse of the data by other systems and services.
Wide ranging stakeholder interest
Three well-supported consultation events, alongside wider consultations with external stakeholders provided the user-focus and rationale for the technical developments. These brought together a wide range of people from diverse organisations and backgrounds detailed more fully in section 'networks and communities'. The project has raised the profile and discourse on LMI, evidenced through the extensive feedback from the three events; it has also introduced new technical concepts to new audiences, in particular, open data and use of web services.
Recommendations
The SALAMI Project has produced recommendations for JISC as well as a set of recommendations for distribution to Government departments. The latter have been shared with UKCES prior to completion of their national IAG consultation in July 2011.
SALAMI has demonstrated the power of orchestrating data sources to provide a Service Layer buffering and contextualising the raw data for use by applications serving many different purposes. Fig 1 below illustrates how this may work:
A. Recommendations for national strategy - cutting waste and increasing value
Gaps are emerging in the market following changes in and dissolution of national/regional services such as the LSC, regional observatories, IAG services and regional development agencies.
Existing services such as the National Apprenticeship Service, next step Course Directory, UCAS, Student Loans and Skills Accounts hold amongst themselves valuable intelligence about the Labour Market and information for career choice. This information is currently 'locked in' to these systems and cannot easily be accessed by the market/a wider audience.
Service users are either duplicating work to fill these gaps, through re-entry of spreadsheet data (cf. how Apprenticeship Opportunities data is 're-used') , or are missing opportunities to draw down funding or develop demand-led and just-in-time curriculum and quality online IAG resources.
If parts of the data held was opened up (albeit in a trend-based, or anomymised format) the potential for cost savings across service users and the market in general would be significant. SALAMI makes the following set of recommendations which are both cost-effective and value-added, providing service users and the market with the information it needs whilst reducing duplication of practice. These are:
A1. A single point of access for relevant and linked datasets
Investment into the further development and national provision of a cloud-based ‘meta service layer’ providing the platform for links between key LMI and careers-related datasets via:
- Continued mapping between key datasets
- Sustained APIs delivering a data web service that organisations and individuals can develop applications from. This would be flexible and extensible, incorporating linked lookups based on key codes, and would incorporate codes such as: subject (QCA, JACS, LDCS), qualification (LAD/LARA), SIC, SOC, companies
A2. Moving towards a national LMI hub
Continue to collect and publish national and local LMI to open data standards
Fund and develop a large scale LMI information set similar to the USA o*NEt tool
A3. Funding for core tools to drive efficiencies and improve practice
Fund the development of tools/applications building on the Service Layer to support advisers within Jobcentre Plus and the Work Programme plus IAG advisers. One example, an application could be designed to determine transport costs and availability for a given role.
A4. Persistence of core data infrastructure
Ensure that government/funding agencies preserve and maintain key sets of vocabularies e.g. subject classifications, qualification information (held by the SFA, LAD/LARA). Change and fragmentation resulting from disparate funding streams and Minstry objectives put consistency of practice at risk, increasing the cost and quality of services across the UK. An overarching responsibility operating across ministries, with an appropriate mandate to ensure implementation of open standards and common vocabulary sets is a potential solution.
A5. Opening up of more datasets
Making publicly funded datasets available, ensuring granular storage (e.g. splitting job profiles into their constituent parts (sector, salary, description etc.) to allow comparisons to be made) and API-based access using open standards (such as XCRI-CAP) where available. Priority examples being:
- Next Step Courses Directory
- Apprenticeship opportunities from the National Apprenticeship Service
- Anonymous trends and course data from Student Loans information
- HE Key Information Sets
- Job Profiles from Next Step
- Sector Skills Council LMI
- National Database of Accredited Qualifications
A6. Building flexibility/sustainability into IT systems from the outset - avoiding costly mistakes
Ensuring tenders for IT and data-gathering projects include use of well structured and granular data storage, use of open standards and common vocabularies and available and open web services/API to allow dynamic access for organisations to build bespoke and contextual applications. SALAMI found difficulties in accessing a universal set of job profiles. Ensuring job profiles within the Next Step service are stored and made available in a centralised, granular and standardised form will result in easier and cheaper maintenance of job profiles, plus added value to all users. A job profile data structure has been developed by SALAMI to aid this process.
A7. Encouraging use of data standards
Strongly endorsing the use of data standards where these exist, e.g. eXchanging Related Course Information (XCRI-CAP)
A8. Providing resource for research and development
Funding research into valid interpretations and visualisations of LM data, and complex computer modelling of data and future labour market trends.
B. Recommendations for JISC and the FE/HE Sector specifically
B1. Pursue a strong government endorsement of the incorporation and use of open standards, XCRI 1.2 in publically tendered IT systems
B2. Continued promotion of the use of XCRI-CAP by course providers and national aggregators
B3. Fund ‘exemplar application’ development to demonstrate and market the benefits of open standards and data. These can then be used to promote other JISC initiatives and make the business cases to non-technical managers and strategists.
B4. Continuation of SALAMI project approach. The CIePD will continue to host and provide web services for linked data mapped towards the end of the project.
B5. SALAMI provided knowledge exchange and built capacity with new non-technical audiences in particular around open data, open standards and the 'service-based approach'. Promoting the benefits of these approaches in terms of efficiencies, particularly to those not involved in running or designing process or IT systems, is an effective way to promote cultural change within an organisation or company. JISC could sponsor/run information exchange courses aimed at a top-down and wider audience.
B6. Lobby for the opening up of course-related and useful institutional datasets, including UCAS, the National Courses Directory, Key Information Set, student loans, HESA DELHE, and the National Apprenticeship service.
B7. Prioritise projects and provide more joined up funding opportunities to support projects which recognise the learner journey, progression and transition. This would support the HE agenda in terms of delivering fair access targets, widening participation, social mobility, retention and achievement, student recruitment and progression. This may involve combining funding opportunities with other funding bodies to remove the 'artificial' divisions through ring fencing e.g. 16-18/HE.
B8. Building on the employability agenda, enable new services to flourish through:
- Promoting the SALAMI-led production of a Job Profile data standard, enabling connection of XCRI/jobs/vacancy
- RSS harvesting service for vacancies/placements/internships
- Support institutions to investigate how their own data about destinations and alumni pathways could be linked to the service-layer to provide rich information services for their own purposes
- Fund cross-programme technology fertilisation projects, e.g. libraries and repositories, technologies such as XPert (for harvesting OER resources) may prove useful for the employability and careers information domain
B9. HE/FE to become collectors and providers of information (rather than leave it all to the marketplace in the long term) – e.g. work with Student Loans Company, financial incentive (to gain seed funding initially). Promote the use of existing institutional data sets, leveraging internal destination and alumni data.
B10. SALAMI has fostered an engaged, forward thinking and dynamic community from a range of stakeholders in education and skills. There are gaps in regional fora, the East Midlands Universities Association is closing, and the RDA also provided a space for the sector to meet but this is also being dismantled. Since HE/FE do not operate in isolation there is a case for JISC to fill this gap so the conversations can continue.
Context
Labour Market Information (LMI) and Labour Market Intelligence (LM) are crucial ingredients in the provision of high quality Information, Advice and Guidance. There is a proliferation of such information, much of which is traditionally paper based, but an increasing amount of which is now available electronically and via the web. There is a need for practitioners and providers to be able to draw information together from a variety of locations and sources in a way that allows it to be used effectively and in tandem with information which helps to place it in context. This project explored offering this via a shared service not only to enable greater take up but also to allow shared perception of the quality and value of datasets in a variety of contexts, ever important against the current backdrop of reduction in face-to-face career guidance, particularly in schools.
The project is led by the University of Nottingham's Information Services Centre for International ePortfolio Development (CIePD). The CIePD have worked for a number of years on a range of projects primarily around education, transition, interoperability, and standards developments, with diverse partners within all education sectors. The University of Nottingham's Career Development Centre are interested in how the project can enhance careers information as well as destination data.
Aimhigher in the East Midlands (AHEM) deliver a regional courses information and progression website, Your Future East Midlands, funded by the Regional Development Agency and both East Midlands Lifelong Learning Networks which incorporates courses from all FE and HE institutions in the East Midlands. Unfortunately, during the project, the Government announced the closure of Aimhigher services across the UK, which has put Your Future East Midlands at risk. The dissolution of the Regional Development Agencies and natural end of the Lifelong Learning Networks also means that there is no longer core funding to support the continuation of Your Future East Midlands in its current form. The service is unique in the UK, being the only regional courses bank offering an XCRI-CAP standardised feed available from the website for use by other applications, and would represent a great loss to the East Midlands region, and if lost for good, will be a backward step in terms of data consistency and availability. Aimhigher in the East Midlands are continuing to source a home for Your Future East Midlands.
Derby College and New College Nottingham are both significantly large colleges in the region with similar goals particularly around employer-based provision.
The CIePD have worked with AHEM as well as both Colleges for over two years to develop XCRI capacity for both colleges and AHEM (as well as for around 15 other learning and IAG providers within the East Midlands). The XCRI imports and exports form the beginnings of a significant infrastructure whereby pertinent institutional data, or data pertinent to institutions and their stakeholders, can be linked, joined and presented in numerous different ways. Development of web services around this data supports the ethos 'enter once, use many' which will cut time spent by numerous institutions and education bodies repeating the same work and duplicating services across the board. Adding LMI into this ecosystem increases the sorts of services available to stakeholders.
Prior to the project, a feasibility study was undertaken by Roger Clark and Kirstie Coolin, funded by the Leap Ahead Lifelong Learning Network, to establish whether it would be feasible to link LMI datasets with the XCRI standard with the aim of producing 'on the fly' LMI data for learners. The study, entitled 'Labour Market Information to support learners making course choices' formed the basis of the SALAMI project, establishing that there was indeed scope to pursue work in this area. In fact, SALAMI really was just the beginning, the project has demonstrated scope for providing open and linked data services to underpin IT applications for supporting progression and IAG.
The project is situated at the cutting edge of UK Government policy: it was clear from the outset that it was taking forward recommendations which were being concurrently posited by the UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES), through their national IAG consultation delivering recommendations to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.
The business case
The key drivers discussed above illustrate the case for this work, supported by the initial feasibility study to assess whether this approach is attainable. Sustainability of a set of web services, or Service Layer, would require investment.
The business case for a Service Layer can be summarised thus:
Increased efficiency and reducing tasks
Providing better information without a service cost
Leads to enhanced student experience, better choices
Potential to provide a single point of access using better linked information
Stakeholder interest and the location of a revenue source was explored throughout the project. In terms of who would pay, this could be:
Government All Age Careers Service
Private companies
API service cost to users
Application development over services
Sector Skills Councils
Below is a breakdown of the evidence collated from different stakeholders on how they could use SALAMI web services, or the applications which could be provided from a Service Layer. These come not only from the HE and FE sectors, but from other organisations involved in education, training and providing IAG for individuals.
Universities and colleges
Embed LMI into course search for students
Link into local LMI in a similar way to Derby College from courses information
Linking graduate destinations to more LMI
Use remotely for outreach careers guidance
Use for data management and comparisons with destinations data
Private companies
Incorporate into commercial products
JobCentre Plus
Inform JCP decisions on which local providers can deliver training to JCP claimants to fit skills gaps and unfilled vacancies
Inform JCP advisors of local education and training for use in the Skills Conditionality Diagnostic and mandated referrals (including transport and childcare availability)
Connexions/careers practitioners
Collect and aggregate information about foundation learning (this is currently listed in several places and circulated via email
Access to a 'young person friendly' database of job profiles
Use and promote the demonstrator (once polished) amongst local schools and colleges
Research tools for careers advisers
Local Authorities
Analyse key areas for growth in jobs and compare to local education and training
Link to economic development as well as a route for local authority data dissemination
Promote and prioritise areas of the economy to be developed locally
From a JISC perspective, these requirements represent a wider view on skills and progression addressing directly Government objectives, plus a clear use for open standards such as XCRI-CAP and more cost-effective IT processes to support those progressing into the sector.
Key drivers
The primary drivers for project partners are increasing their responsiveness to employers, retaining competitiveness and strengthening and contextualising bids to funding bodies, and offering students and potential students up to date and meaningful information to guide their choices, while at the same time increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of the resources available.
Key institutional drivers for improving how LMI is collated and presented can be summarised as:
- Intelligence gathering to deliver timely and appropriate curriculum, reducing curriculum development time
- Efficiency in systems for delivering LMI to users
- Strengthening funding bids
Throughout the duration of the project, new policies have emerged. The Browne Review and HE White Paper both highlighted the importance of good quality course information and Information Advice and Guidance. Browne states:
'We have received evidence on the critical role of information, advice and guidance for prospective students – and the variable quality of what is available.' Chapter 3, section 3.1, p.24
'Students need access to high quality information, advice and guidance in order to make the best choices. Improvements are needed. Providing students with clearer information about employment outcomes will close the gap between the skills taught by the higher education system and what employers need.' Chapter 4, Summary, p.28
'Government has a responsibility to ensure that all pupils, in all types of school, have access to high quality advice about the benefits of higher education and well informed support to ensure that they are able to make the best choices' Chapter 4, section 4.2, p.29
'There are gaps in the information available to students'
'Some of this information already exists, but it is spread across many different sources. Some of the information is not collected in a way which allows easy comparison.' Chapter 4, section 4.2, p.30
Providers of HE are responding to this primarily through the mandatory Key Information Set, however, SALAMI has shown that wider information used for making choices such as LMI, vacancies and transport/travel (to name a few) can be associated with course information where described using XCRI-CAP, based on common or associated vocabularies or locational information.
The quotes below illustrate the importance project partners placed on this activity:
'The College sees the successful exploitation of LMI as crucial to long-term business survival. Ever increasing cross-sectoral competition requires the College to remain at the cutting edge of LMI. Each year, increased amounts of public monies are put out to competitive tender, linked to identified market need and overarching strategic aims and objectives. The College must shape its provision to align with these strategies in an innovative and cost-effective way if it is to remain competitive.'
'A hosted IT service producing on the fly Labour Market Information would be of direct benefit to our employer responsive area, as well as to the Marketing and Admissions teams, in giving potential learners value-added courses information and better advice and guidance'
New College Nottingham
'our employer facing service would benefit from more detailed labour market information in terms of reducing the lead time it takes to develop new programmes and identify the suitability and viability of bespoke programmes. The costs associated with developing programmes would be reduced if the amount of time spent on developing a business case was reduced'
'Having access to a shared Labour Market Service will enable the College to plan a more targeted curriculum with greater efficiency and accuracy and avoid duplication of effort'
Derby College
'The proposed shared service for Labour Market Information (LMI) is an important piece of work for the wider community, promoting an efficient and joined-up way of using data. The University supports a service oriented approach and is currently developing its own systems and services in a flexible way'
University of Nottingham
'The provision of accurate labour market intelligence that can be linked to sectors, educational courses and pathways would add significant value and context to the website's current functions. The potential application of this work is considerable'
Aimhigher in the East Midlands
'The work detailed in the bid has the potential to be very useful in supporting the implementation of the regional skills strategy'
East Midlands Development Agency
Establishing and maintaining senior management buy-in
The project has the support and endorsement of senior management in partner organisations, established prior to the bidding process but strengthened as a consequence of it. The University of Nottingham's Information Services and the Centre for Career Development recognise the value and potential of using existing data and information, within the institution with a particular interest in the Graduate Destination Data and linking institutional data to external data sources. The project has introduced new technical concepts to the CCD and has resulted in further engagement on the CIePD's SHED and ESCAPES projects, the former, drawing on aggregation techniques developed in SALAMI.
Derby College found that SALAMI enabled new working relationships, highlighting new discussions taking place between MIS and Careers. The Senior Management Team are keen to endorse projects which support the College's objectives, specifically in SALAMI's case to 'Develop Quality Resources and People' and provide cost-effective solutions for their students. Empowering their students and improving access to information is important to Derby, and the College are embedding some of the web services developed and identified by SALAMI into their MARA (student's Individual Learning Plans) system's career section thus integrating careers into the student's learning and planning. A major focus for initial engagement with SALAMI was in using LMI to plan curriculum and develop new courses. Derby also plan to continue to merge outside data sources with their own, for instance, Derby propose to develop a SALAMI plug-in for the Open Source Joomla content management system making use of data identified throughout the project.
Fig 2. Derby College’s Mara ILP student system. Proposed layout. Derby College have also incorporated the linked Job Profiles into Mara.
New College Nottingham (NCN) were initially most interested in LMI trends and how future LMI could be presented in a more accessible way with an interest on how LMI is interpreted to support bids for funding. Breaking down the skills demands for a particular area and/or sector is a key user requirement for LMI, which requires time consuming investigation into large sets of information. To provide an automatic service to present trends is a holy grail of sorts and predicting the future is a tricky business requiring use of complex models and expert analysis. Commissioned by UKCES and produced by the Institute for Employment Research, the 'Working Futures' report provides predictions about future labour demand to 2017, and are widely used but the level of interpretation here is not to be easily replicated. NCN's focus shifted onto learner-focussed LMI and throughout the course of the project synchronised the outputs with their own project to define 'the learner journey' and learner access to IAG combined with course information prior to making their choices. SALAMI proved a timely project for NCN, being able to integrate identified and developed web services into their online course search information on their website, and through 'mycollegenottingham', their online personalised prospectus builder, thus their Senior Management, and indeed prospective learners, were able to see immediate benefits as a result of the project.
Fig 3 is a screenshot from NCN’s online course search available from their website.
For these institutions, reuse of existing external data and the reduction of repetitive processes was the key reason for continued engagement with SALAMI. Both colleges continue to build upon their initial XCRI-CAP implementations for course advertising data.
Technologies used
The project used the XCRI-CAP 1.1 standard and developed web services on an ASP.NET/Windows platform. XCRI is the UK eProspectus standard and is being used by all SALAMI project partners, as well as other East Midlands education organisations.
The project used open data APIs where available plus Google services such as openly available maps and graphs.
Outcomes
Achievements
SALAMI has delivered two sets of recommendations aimed at a wider policy context and the JISC and HE/FE sector.
SALAMI has demonstrated that a flexible API-based set of tools using existing information accessed through a Service Layer is a cost-effective and efficient way forward for all users of LMI, offering a potential user-focussed response to these challenges.
The SALAMI project has followed these policy changes closely, and with the project's focus on scoping and delivering efficient and value-added services has proved extremely relevant in providing flexible and agile services to cater for the needs of a large range of stakeholders in accessing timely, verified and joined-up data about the labour market and information for choice.
SALAMI investigated a wide range of data already "out there" and available on the web which has the potential to be combined and accessed in different ways. The full analysis is available as a paper 'Re-presenting Labour Market Information data sources: What we have learned from the SALAMI project' (Clark 2011). This document provides a bank of knowledge of LMI currently available, as well as an analysis of the usefulness and suitability of this data.
SALAMI has engaged with and followed with interest the BIS-sponsored UKCES National Consultation on Information Advice and Guidance. On 13th January 2011, three members of the project team were invited to attenda national IAG Consultation and Hack Day, and the UKCES lead on the IAG work spoke and attended the second SALAMI consultation event (25 March 2011). The UKCES published it's final set of recommendations "Helping Individuals Succeed. Transforming Career Guidance" in August 2011 (http://www.ukces.org.uk/assets/bispartners/ukces/docs/publications/helping-individuals-succeed-transforming-career-guidance.pdf ), sections of which resonate well with SALAMI's findings, in particular:
"Large data sets are often edited down so that individuals can use information effectively. However, raw data that is not interpreted or edited is the most useful to developers. A lack of standardisation and use of different definitions and terms between government departments and between national surveys makes it difficult for developers to incorporate data from different sources" p.16
SALAMI has developed a demonstrator and used this to illustrate the technical concepts to non-technical audiences, as well as to evaluate the practicalities of using identified datasets and their usefulness to stakeholders. The demonstrator pulls job profile information, career-videos, course information, business information, Office of National Statistics job vacancy statistics and Google map and graph services together to demonstrate the potential of re-using existing information and combining visualisations to present information in different ways to the users.
SALAMI has developed, and is continuing to develop post-funding, classifications between disparate datasets based on national coding systems. For instance, mapping job profiles to the SIC/SOC codes, to educational subject classifications (JACs/LDCS) backed with a thesaurus of job profiles to increase the quality of discoverability. These look-up services are being made available to the community as web services.
SALAMI has also developed an XML draft data standard to describe job profiles. This is in reponse to issues identified throughout SALAMI's investigations of the data sources, specifically the distributed nature of job profile information, issues with granularity of the information, persistence of sources and consistency/coherence of the data. Application of an open standard would go some way to improve this situation through easier aggregation, use of common terms (discoverability and searchability) and better granularity for reuse of the data by other systems and services.
Three well-supported consultation events, alongside wider consultations with external stakeholders provided the user-focus and rationale for the technical developments. These brought together a wide range of people from diverse organisations and backgrounds detailed more fully in section "networks and communities". The project has raised the profile and discourse on LMI, evidenced through the extensive feedback from the three events; it has also introduced new technical concepts to new audiences, in particular, open data and use of web services.
Benefits
Tangible
- An added-value course finder and learner tools within the project partners
- Opening up new opportunities for reusing data and services within the institutions
- Capacity building and knowledge exchange amongst a wide range of stakeholders
- Learners and potential learners have access to added-value information
- Changed institutional practice in partner colleges through enhancements to learner-facing systems, and new internal and external partnerships developing
- Skills for Justice SSC consulting with the team on opening out their LMI (previously held in inaccessible documents and Flash)
- Cross-fertilisation of ideas through dissemination events, attendees sharing practice and access to new free services, available from e.g. iCould and Career Player
Intangible
- Potential for other institutions or services to access the web services
- Facilitate the ability for regional curriculum planning and skills/course gap analysis
- Using linked data services and open standards will facilitate long term sustainability and agile services within the education and skills ecosystem
- Improvement of IAG for learners, especially important in the light of recent changes to careers guidance delivery
- Increased awareness amongst other organisations of open data through consultation events - evidenced by evaluation forms - already seen evidence that this is influencing organisations’ thinking about their own data and how to make this open - BIS, Skills for Justice
Networks and communities
Within the University of Nottingham, the project made contact with and engaged the following:
- Information Services
- Centre for Career Development (CCD) - joined the steering group later in the project with a particular interest in graduate destination data. The CCD proved invaluable in steering the team through the DELHE and internal destination data. The CIePD won funding awards for two further JISC projects during the SALAMI project, ESCAPES and SHED. The CCD are present on the board of both projects and remain interested in CIePD work in this area.
- Horizon Digital Economy Research are an internationally recognised centre of excellence on open data, delivering Opendata Masterclasses worldwide. A mutual interest developed throughout the project. Horizon presented at the second steering event, and the CIePD also presented to Horizon's postgraduates. The teams continue to pursue working together.
- Centre for Geospatial Science were consulted on the potential of adding locational data to the web services.
- Alumni & Development Office - the CIePD consulted the Senior Development Manager to gain advice on productisation of SALAMI services. The CIePD continue to liaise with the Office in this capacity.
The three events provided excellent networking and dissemination opportunities for the project. Relationships were developed with the following listed below, along with their interest in the project.
- UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES)
Synergies with their BIS sponsored IAG consultation, interested particularly in LMI and ICT
- Department of Business, Innovation and Skills
- Skills Funding Agency
Interested from the All Age Careers Service angle. How to incorporate LMI is of interest.
- Institute for Employment Research, University of Warwick
Were also investigating dynamic LMI for their EU project, interested on our XCRI angle.
- International Centre for Guidance Studies, University of Derby
Interested in the Career guidance angle, and also in careers information and web 2.0.
- Antenna
Group of small and micro businesses in Nottingham, interested in the concepts of open data and new technologies
- Sector Skills Councils
Interested in how their LMI held on their websites could be better made available through standardisation and new technology
- London Careers Group
Data and new technology, LCG are at the cutting edge of presenting HE careers information, including DELHE
- Universities
- Association of Graduate Careers Advisory Services
Graduate destination data and DELHE primarily. Provided useful insights into interpretation of LMI for graduates.
- Careers vendors, Cascaid, Career Player, iCould
Interest in the services being developed from a commercial angle, or in offering their resources to be reused alongside the LMI/SALAMI services.
- Further Education
Careers advice for their students, curriculum planning and funding applications
- Local Authority/Regional Skills
How LMI and XCRI-CAP course information could be used alongside their data to support identification of skills gaps and to aid planning.
- NOMIS (Office of National Statistics LMI service)
SALAMI approached NOMIS to see how the ONS LMI could be accessed. NOMIS provided the project with details of their web services, and were interested in how people use their LMI services.
- Open Knowledge Foundation, not for profit organisation promoting Open Knowledge
General interest in the open data angle.
Cultural and process changes
The primary cultural challenges are about sharing data, opening up data and data ownership. There are also challenges in ensuring the technical possibilities are not confined to developers and are communicated amongst those who are change agents within their own organisations.This is slow change which JISC are very much behind. The benefits to individual organisations (public or private) need to be communicated in terms of business benefits to the right audiences. Increasing the skill set and awareness of new service-based technologies, availability of data and use of APIs within FE/HE through targeted knowledge exchange events, delivered either through JISC or the Regional Support Centres may be beneficial.
From a regional perspective, a forum comprising representatives from the public and private stakeholders at both technical and strategic levels in using LMI would be an excellent way to maintain the awareness raising and cross-fertilisation of new practice focusing on reducing waste and improving access to information.
To provide long term support, development and maintenance of the SALAMI services requires resource. To smooth the processes required to host and deliver shared services thus opening up new opportunities within institutions would provide a more agile environment for entrepreneurship.
Technical Issues
SALAMI responded to “the call to reduce wastage via streamlining services in the cloud and works towards a sustainable and efficient infrastructure for the benefit of HE and FE institutions, learners and employers” in the context of Labour Market Information in its many guises.
The technical strand within the project identified relevant data sources using knowledge gained from the consultation events and discussions with those in the open data community. APIs were discovered from previously unexpected sources (such as the NOMIS and iCould APIs). Linking these disparate, but mutually beneficial groups of data sets provided the team with quite a challenge. Issues were identified around the data quality, its availability and accessibility. Raw data, presented in different contexts or in isolation is often not useful to the end user, and predicting trends from the LMI is chaotic. Providing comparisons however between data sets (e.g. job centre vacancies across different sectors/locations) can provide the user with more data for choice. Thus the distinction between Labour Market Information and Labour Market Intelligence is important, and is misleading information better than no information at all?
Also, some extremely useful data about courses, apprenticeships and careers is held currently within data silos. SALAMI has gone some way in identifying which datasets are most useful and possible ways forward for the organisations themselves. These are described in more detail in the Recommendations section.
The technical team prepared a detailed document about the data sources used, limitations and how these may be addressed. See 'Re-presenting Labour Market Information Data Sources: What we learned from SALAMI' (Clark 2011).
Dissemination
The dissemination plan stated that:
“The project would employ a targeted dissemination plan, focusing on the main stakeholders so as to maximise the potential for embedding the service.“
The initial intention was to invite representatives from key stakeholders to invite their ideas, comments and input into the development of the project. The three events held have by far surpassed the initial intentions, attracting national interest from leaders in careers and the UK Government and initiating new partnerships and both influencing national recommendations to BIS, and ensuring alignment of the project with Government policy objectives and stakeholder need. All events also raised awareness of the benefits of using and creating Opendata to deliver shared services providing a platform for rapid and contextual delivery of LMI and ‘information for choice’ applications.
These events attracted representatives from:
Higher Education
Further Education
Aimhigher
Vocational Education / Schools
National government (BIS, the Skills Funding Agency)
Local/regional partnership organisations
Local Authority
Sector Skills Councils and the Sector Skills Council Alliance (SSA)
Career software and service, providers and vendors
Independent consultants
Careers advisers and services (e.g. Connexions)
Job Centre Plus
JISC
UCAS
In addition to providing a platform for project dissemination and consultation, the events provided a rare opportunity to present some high profile speakers and new concepts, such as the power of open data, to an eclectic audience, who would not normally be present at the same event. The events hosted speakers from the UKCES, ICEGS, IER, Horizon DER, Skills for Justice, London Careers Group and more, and their success was demonstrated through the feedback gathered and the quality of the new networks and partnerships fostered at the events.
The project also presented papers at numerous conferences (listed below) as well as being invited to attend national consultation events.
Conference papers
UCISA February 2011 - "Developing a Shared Service"
“Not just a sausage” JISC 2011, March, Liverpool
EPIC, July 2011
Open Knowledge Foundation, Berlin, July 2011
DEVCSI Workshop on Open Data and the Institutional Web, Reading, July 2011
AGCAS, September 2011
ALT-C, September 2011
The project team were also asked to present and attend specifically at:
Horizon Digital Research Centre, Nottingham
UKCES National IAG and Technology Hackfest and consultation event
Department of Business, Innovation and Skills, and the Skills Funding Agency, Sheffield
Antennae Local Nottingham Business Network
Opendata Masterclass, Nottingham 2010
NOMIS, Durham November 2010
The team also initiated meetings with other UK employment and careers research centres, the Institute for Employment Research (University of Warwick) and the International Centre for Careers Guidance (University of Derby). The IER has been working on a large EU Knowledge Exchange project, MATURE-IP and the SALAMI team discovered early on that the project was investigating LMI sources with a focus on providing information for Connexions services and met to share outputs and data sources/services developed by both projects. Both the IER and ICEGS were commissioned to deliver recommendations on LMI, ICT and technology in careers to the UKCES for the purpose of advising BIS on new ways forward for IAG. Good working relations formed between our respective work areas which are sustained beyond the project.
Student feedback was also gathered through the partner colleges and Aimhigher, see Appendix A for an example of the student questionnaire.
New skills
Knowledge of and practical use of open datasets, the existence of APIs and how to integrate these, bringing technical concepts of cloud and shared services to non-technical team members through a combination of workshop presentation and activity and live demonstration of the possibilities. Better understanding of the data sets available, how to access them and their limitations. Better understanding of LMI, how it is used and represented, the range of stakeholders who make use of it and its considerable importance. New technical skills acquired in JSON, use of Google data services and knowledge of the codings available to use.
Skills were developed in a number of ways, including:
- Through developing new contacts and relationships with data providers, for instance, NOMIS
- Engagement with the open data community via Twitter and conference networks
- Through the SALAMI events themselves and the expert speakers and domain experts present
- Meetings with experts in their field, such as the University of Nottingham's Horizon Digital Economy Research Centre, UKCES, ICEGS and IER
- Technical knowledge was enhanced through practical development, learning through the online community
Drawbacks
The main drawback was around the quality and credibility of the data available. Although the project went further than anticipated, and found more API services than expected, there was a balance to be struck between access to information and interpretation of the unmediated data. This could potentially present data in a misleading way. Often good data existed, but it only presented one aspect of the domain. For instance, using the Job Centre vacancies data provides a reasonable picture of demand and supply, without a critical mass of other vacancy information, and presented in isolation, it is not necessarily helpful to the user. There is further work to be done to promote vacancy standards and trawl to join other datasets into the service layer.
Due to the technical nature of the project and the challenges around data quality and availability, the team were conscious not to raise expectations. Within the year long timescale, it was not possible to provide a polished product for production use, particularly as work on the service infrastructure is required prior to providing production quality applications. However, the demonstrator was a good illustration of how sets of freely available data can be combined to provide richer information, and a result was use of some of the individual web services by the college partner.
A major drawback followed the May 2010 General Election and actions undertaken by the new Government. The following impacted on the project thus:
- Dissolution of EMDA, the East Midlands Development Agency
- Dissolution of Aimhigher
- Cuts in Connexions services and career guidance
Regional opportunities existed prior to May to promote the services for skills gap analysis through the RDAs. Aimhigher in the East Midlands are a project partner and provider of Your Future East Midlands. They participated fully in the project and provided valuable input and support, however, the team would have ideally liked to provide extra LMI services within Your Future East Midlands, but due to the winding down of services, this was not possible. However, SALAMI has ensured the validity and the value of the Your Future East Midlands website and has enhanced the case for its sustainability and attractiveness to potential new hosts. LMI services for learners will be embedded within the New College Nottingham mycoursenottingham website in due course.
However, despite this, the SALAMI principle remains extremely relevant and solicited interest from the Skills Funding Agency and BIS in relation to development of the national careers service. The streamlined and value-added approach to the use and reuse of existing information is attractive in these austere times.
Key Lessons
The SALAMI Principle is valid and viable.
Begin development of the demonstrator as early as possible.
The key lesson for the sector is to use and reuse existing data, opening it out where possible for the benefit of the institution, student and community.
Use open standards and common vocabularies where at all possible.
Looking Ahead
The SALAMI project has really just scratched the surface. There is more work to be done to develop and productise both the services and applications.
The CIePD will ensure that dataset mappings are available as web services beyond the project. The project has proved demand for their use from many areas and will seek to use and promote them in other areas of work. The CIePD continue to work with internal and external partners and project partners will continue to develop embedded web services developed and accessed as a result of SALAMI. Knowledge transfer to sector and wider stakeholders will continue, provided appropriate funding can be sourced, via consultation events. The CIePD are investigating further open data projects, including knowledge exchange and direct benefit to the local community.
Sustainability
The outputs, specified at the start of the project are listed below, together with the plans for sustainability beyond the project end:
- Job profiles data standard
Additional deliverable, will be held on the CIePD website www.nottingham.ac.uk/eportfolio/salami
- Base-lining document; current processes for HE Careers, FE Workforce development and 3 wider organisations; building the business case (website)
- Set of LMI templates to inform
- XCRI in – LMI out web service
Available within technical demonstrator and linked web services
- Look-up/codings web service
Available within service layer
- Technical documentation/recommendations to JISC
Website - within case study and attached documents
- Benefits analysis
Within Case Study
- Dissemination materials and events addressed to a range of stakeholders, national conference submission
CIePD website
- Iterative case study report to include benefits realisation plan
CIePD website
Summary and reflection
The SALAMI project was an interesting and exciting project to deliver. The project steering team worked exceedingly well together, and enthusiasm was maintained throughout. Many new partnerships have been forged, and overall well over 100 people have been engaged with the project on a face to face basis, and many more through online media such as Twitter and conference dissemination. The sheer interest in the project has been an excellent validation of the initial ideas and those produced throughout the project. SALAMI embodies a 'piece by piece' approach to bringing services together, and the project has shown this principle to be viable and productive. There is more work to undertake in this area, and the CIePD together with its networks and partners continue to seek ways to safeguard the project outputs and outcomes.
Appendix
Supporting documents have been delivered alongside the Case Study. These include:
Project Website
CIePD Website—http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/eportfolio/index.shtml
SALAMI—http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/eportfolio/salami/
