The annual Government Transformation Summit is set to take place on May 11th 2023 and will focus on high-level discussions with leaders in civil service digital, data, and technology. The summit will cover topics such as performance, service delivery, leadership, digital technology, and data.

Maria Dalhage, Senior Project Manager from JobTech Development, the Swedish Public Employment Service, will be among the speakers, sharing on stage experiences and lessons learned from the ongoing government assignment for developing a coherent data infrastructure for skills supply and lifelong learning. The goal with the assignment is to facilitate the transition in the labour market through developing common standards and translation keys between existing classification systems for competencies, educations, and jobs. This infrastructure will promote lifelong learning and, in the long run, facilitate the development of services for validation, matching, and career guidance.

The private sector has a vital role in building the data infrastructure. Their data significantly complements the picture of today's labour market needs and challenges.

"We need more success stories of public-private data collaboration. We need to include the private sector in our ecosystem and infrastructure. The Swedish Public Employment Service’ collaboration, via the platform JobTech Development, on job ads increased the number of job ads on the public national job board (e.g. in Swedish: Platsbanken) by 30%, which, in turn, increased the private job boards' traffic," underlines Maria Dalhage.

Senior Project Manager from JobTech Development

The collaboration between the public and private sectors on data requires several significant steps, all of which should be taken simultaneously. Firstly, there is a need to create secure methods for individuals to share relevant data with other public authorities and external actors. Secondly, data sharing must be made easy. Thirdly, private actors' business models should be respected. Fourthly, there is a need for designing for contribution. Lastly, a common platform for sharing open-source code, open data, and digital resources is crucial.

On the JobTech Development platform, all APIs, datasets, and open-source data and code are freely accessible for anyone to use.

Take a look at the entire interview Maria Dalhage gave to the Government Transformation Magazine on how Swedish agencies are collaborating to build a data infrastructure for skills supply and lifelong learning.