The Service Centre for Continuous Learning and Employment (SECLE) was established to anticipate the skills needed in working life and to fund competence services to proactively improve the matching of skills and jobs. SECLE’s new online service, Osaamistarvekompassi (Skills Needs Compass), provides anticipatory data on job transitions, along with insights on near-future skills needs derived from AI-assisted data mining, in a user-oriented way. The service guides the allocation of SECLE’s funding and supports the development of continuous learning services.
Innovation Summary
Innovation Overview
According to the OECD publication, 19 February 2020: “Continuous Learning in Working Life in Finland” Finland lacked a comprehensive strategy for continuous learning, with gaps in education supply. Working age-adults had limited upskilling opportunities and existing education supply was not fully aligned with the needs of the labour market, partly due to deficient methods for using anticipation data.
The Service Centre for Continuous Learning and Employment (SECLE) was established in 2021 to promote the competence development of working-age people and the availability of skilled labour. SECLE analyses the competence and labour market needs of working life and finances short-term courses relevant for the labour market. For that mission SECLE needs up-to-date and reliable anticipation information.
SECLE received funding from the European Union’s Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) to enhance the analysis and distribution of skills anticipation data. Development work on the project began in 2022 with service design and the formulation of a data strategy.
The service design team ensured that the needs of the service’s stakeholders and future users were met while exploring the reasons for the underutilisation of anticipation data in planning continuous learning services. The main issues centred on the accessibility and presentation of information. Providers of information, guidance and career counselling services were found to benefit most from information that is easily scannable and digestible. Education providers, in turn, needed information on the skills needed in working life, but the available data was mainly presented in the problem-oriented language of companies rather than the language of education providers that focuses on learning outcomes.
We identified data refinement as the main issue. Expert knowledge required simplification, and the wording of the skills needs of the education sector and working life needed to be harmonised.
We tailored the anticipation data to the needs of stakeholders who could use it. In 2025, municipalities will be responsible for organising employment services, which requires us to consider the needs of new user groups. Stakeholder input on service development was ensured by holding regular cooperation group meetings from the planning phase onwards.
The first version of the data platform and website was published in December 2023. Named Osaamistarvekompassi (translated as 'Skills Needs Compass'), the new service provides reliable and up-to-date information on future skills needs from the perspective of continuous learning.
Next steps in development include:
• New skills data
• Anticipated skills needs related to various occupations and qualifications
• Language versions, primarily Swedish
• APIs to enable the utilisation of skills data by other stakeholders.
Innovation Description
What Makes Your Project Innovative?
Osaamistarvekompassi is innovative in five ways:
• Artificial intelligence in structuring and refining mined skills needs data utilising the new skills classification of the Finnish National Agency for Education, established in 2022.
• Mapping job transition opportunities
• Designing and providing information about anticipated skills needs in an openly accessible online service
• Employing generative AI in content creation for the service to reduce administrative workload
• Utilising the data in the allocating of funding for continuous learning services.
What is the current status of your innovation?
The project is currently in the implementation phase. Active development will continue until the end of June 2024. During this phase, the skills data for 2024 will be updated in the service. New features will include:
• New skills needs related to various occupations and qualifications
• Skills clusters not directly related to any existing qualifications or occupations
• Dissemination of skills data to beneficiaries via interfaces.
In spring 2024, the service will be introduced to stakeholders through events, promotional activities, webinars, newsletters and social media.
Innovation Development
Collaborations & Partnerships
The project’s cooperation group includes information, guidance and counselling services, players in regional anticipation, education providers across all levels, as well state administration and ministry representatives. This ensures that beneficiaries are consulted already in the development phase. This is crucial for achieving the primary goal.
The technology suppliers were tendered.
• Data platform development: Solita Oy
• Online service development: Digitalist Oy
• AI development: HeadAI Oy
Users, Stakeholders & Beneficiaries
• Education providers: our innovation improves proactive knowledge-based management and development of competence services
• Information, guidance and counselling services: for the first time in Finland, there is accessible and user-friendly information about future skills needs for education and career advice
• State administration: anticipation data supports the planning of employment and economic development services and the development of training measures aimed at improving employment
Innovation Reflections
Results, Outcomes & Impacts
The beta version of Osaamistarvekompassi has been in use for only a month, so there are no results yet.
We hope Osaamistarvekompassi will help reduce the skills mismatch in Finland. In addition to unemployment and labour shortages, this mismatch manifests as gaps in education supply, which we will measure through AI-assisted analytics by comparing skills needs to available publicly funded training.
We also hope that companies will adopt Osaamistarvekompassi as a recruitment tool and that the skills articulation gap between education providers and companies will narrow. This would result in a stronger emphasis on skills than personal qualities in recruitment, which could be transformative in tackling skills shortages and improving skills anticipation.
Challenges and Failures
Obtaining data has presented a major challenge. In Finland, data pertaining to working life and education are collected and managed in different sectors, and classifications are not standardised. SECLE does not own the data and it has had to be acquired through data requests. Unfortunately, we have not obtained all necessary data.
Additionally, some analyses require personal information, the acquisition of which is heavily regulated under GDPR. To mitigate the shortcomings in data acquisition, we have adjusted our requirements and used pre-aggregated data instead of personal information. The cost of IT development and the time-consuming nature of precise data work in relation to the conditions of RRF funding have also posed challenges.
Conditions for Success
The success of our innovation has been supported by
• Funding
• Enabling leadership
• A small and agile organisation
• Successful technology acquisitions
• Minimal bureaucracy
There is both deep and broad expertise within SECLE. Effective collaboration among the team, partners and technology suppliers has served both as a source of motivation and a driving force behind the project.
Replication
Osaamistarvekompassi is new and still incomplete. Its dissemination, and consequently learning from it and copying it, has not yet begun.
Lessons Learned
During the project, we have learned that our target groups benefit the most from sector-specific information tailored to their needs, and that sector-specific data platforms are more effective when the national data infrastructure is robust. On a large scale, it is economically advantageous to initiate the development of data utilisation from the national data infrastructure.
We have also learned that sufficient time should be allocated for collaboration with stakeholders and that in an IT project, it is advisable to use agile methods and prioritise. Acquiring the right kind of expertise is crucial in the procurement phase of IT development services.
Status:
- Implementation - making the innovation happen
Innovation provided by:
Media:
Date Published:
27 June 2024