Using Open Labor Market Data for Social Good
How open data allows citizens to create innovating services and better help those who need it most.
Some argue that data is now the world’s most valuable resource. We know that a huge amount of our data is collected by private companies through the devices or the digital products we use everyday. We even have, at least, a vague idea of what they are used for: advertising, personalization, recommendations…
However, although we might be aware that the government deals with tons of citizen data (how many administrative forms have you filled out in your life?), we only have a restricted view of how they can be used to fuel innovative user-driven services.
By Opening Up Public Data, the French Government Values Innovation
Recently, the French government decided to go Open and to allow government agencies and private organizations to rely on public data to deliver services to citizens. This philosophy is translated in the ‘Government-as-a-Platform’ framework. The availability of these datasets opens the way for anyone to use them in a way that goes further their initial application.
As an illustration, several ‘State Startups’ have already started to provide new services to reduce frictions between public agencies and citizens.
At Bayes Impact, our mission as an NGO is to build open source services that help those who need it the most. And we believe technology and data enables us to do so at scale. This is why we’re using every opportunity to take advantage of open data to improve our services and better help our users.
Bob Emploi, a Personal Coach for Jobseekers
About a year ago, we launched Bob Emploi, an open-source platform that empowers jobseekers to improve their chances with data-driven, personalized advice. Throughout its development, it made no doubt that to bring something new to the people, we needed to make the best of past and present knowledge.
To give actionable advice we need to understand who is the user, how is the market, and what has worked well for others. On the way to gather and make sense of this information, we were thrilled to discover the availability of the Emploi Store Dev, the API collection proposed by the French unemployment agency (Pôle emploi) to share their data. These resources contribute to our effort to provide personalized content.
How Open Data can be Used to Build More Personalized Services
Two months ago, we started to retrieve statistics about jobs from their ‘Information sur le Marché du Travail’ (IMT) dataset and to use it in Bob to strengthen our advice personalization.
As an example, we rely on the market stress (number of job offers vs number of applicants) to identify the best departments for a relocation project. Depending on their profile: family situation, mobility… we can suggest them relocation as a potential new avenue to explore to increase their chances to find a job!
That’s only one use case, and there are more… We investigated how to make good use of information on the salaries, the contract types or what application modes (spontaneous application, temporary employment agencies or networking) were the most successful for a given job in a specific area. These datasets are huge! After using them for a little while now, we can assert that they are super clean, pretty well documented and updated on a regular basis.
Empowering Citizens to Build High Impact Solutions
What next? On our side, we’ll stay committed to what we believe in. We’ll persist to deliver Open Source, user-focused products and we’ll definitely continue to put to good use the functional and efficient resources provided by others. Bob has already reached more than 125K people and we receive everyday our share of ‘Bob Love’ messages.
What I Loved:
Personalized advice and, very useful website recommendations in line with my job search. It keeps me going and I feel less lonely on this painful journey. Thank You!
—J’ai aimé :
Les conseils personnalisés et les recommandations de sites vraiment utiles dans ma recherche d’emploi. Ça me motive et j’ai l’impression que je ne suis pas toute seule dans cette démarche qui est assez lourde pour moi. Merci !
We really hope that our example will encourage government agencies in their efforts to provide great services and great data. But also to inspire other citizens, like us, to use them for the best.
