Governor Terry McAuliffe announced the Open Data, Open Jobs initiative to better connect job seekers with job opportunities.
The Open Data, Open Jobs initiative provides a new open data set of available jobs in Virginia to equip innovators, programmers, and researchers with accessible data to help the Commonwealth offer new and creative approaches to articulating employer needs for talent and matching job seekers to job opportunities. Entrepreneurs can use the workforce data to create apps and programs that better engage a new generation of career seekers.
Open Data, Open Jobs consolidates data from multiple, publicly available sources of job postings into one machine-readable file. The Governor’s Data Internship Program along with students and staff at the Discovery Analytics Center at Virginia Tech provided support necessary to combine, clean and enrich individual data sets to create the initial, new workforce data product. Work will continue in the coming months to capture additional job postings. The new Open Data, Open Jobs data set is available on the Commonwealth’s data portal:data.virginia.gov.
“With close to 1.5 million jobs to fill in the next decade, we must take an all hands on deck approach to workforce development,” said Governor McAuliffe. “I applaud the teams of students and faculty at Virginia Tech who worked to open up this essential data. As we build the New Virginia Economy, it is imperative that we harness the creativity of entrepreneurs and coders to help us develop new ways to connect employers with prospective employees. We hope the Open Data, Open Jobs data will spur the development of apps and programs that will greatly benefit job-seekers today and in the future.”
“Innovation such as we’re seeing with Open Data, Open Jobs is integral to building a workforce to support the new Virginia economy,” said Secretary of Commerce and Trade Maurice Jones. “In addition to Virginia Tech, George Mason University faculty and students are now exploring ways in which the new data set can better inform Virginia’s efforts to develop and expand its Data Analytics and Cybersecurity workforce. The Open Data, Open Jobs data is spurring both technology solutions and a fresh look at workforce challenges.”
“Virginia is once again demonstrating leadership by opening up and posting jobs related data in support of the commonwealth’s workforce initiatives,” said Secretary of Technology Karen Jackson. “To further spur creativity, the upcoming annual commonwealth data-thon will be centered on this new data to highlight innovators’ abilities to creatively match Virginia job seekers with open opportunities.”
Open Data, Open Jobs is the first initiative of the Commonwealth Center for Advanced Research and Statistics (CCARS). Executive Order 23: Establishing the New Virginia Economy Workforce Initiative called for CCARS to be a virtual center for modeling innovative approaches for improving and using labor market, workforce, and education data. CCARS is sponsored by the Council for Virginia’s Future.
Initial partners lending their thoughts, talent, and data to this project include the: Discovery Analytics Center at Virginia Tech, Data Analytics Program at George Mason University, Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce, Direct Employers Association, Inc., Virginia Employment Commission, Virginia Community College System, Devis, and Glassdoor.
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