Joined up Jobs

Objectives

Joined up Jobs is seeking to standardise the way councils and other public bodies communicate job vacancy information with third parties and intermediaries, reducing legal bureaucracy, reducing technical testing costs, reducing data entry costs and reducing data keying errors associated with establishing and maintaining multiple channels to reach citizens with vacancy information.

This will allow councils to concentrate on business issues rather than technical or legal issues. It should also enable new business choices that can:

• Give jobseekers the widest possible, accurate listing of available jobs, when and where they want to access it.
  
• Give councils access to a wider labour market, ultimately raising application rates, raising the quality of staff and driving down overall costs of recruitment.

Concepts

• Enable easy re-use of public sector job vacancies information in the north east
• Reduce re-keying of information
• Increase volume of jobs vacancy information shared with partners
• Harness emerging technologies
• Create opportunities to provide improved or new services

Without forcing Councils to get rid of their current online systems or recruitment advertising arrangements

Take existing data from existing systems in a common form

Make that data available to others for re-use so they can collate information from a variety of sources and develop new services. This is the same concept as the tourism services we established for the on-street kiosks

So Joined up Jobs isn't about introducing new front-ends to vacancy data, or forcing councils to replace their back office system - it's about making the data transfer and messaging more efficient, which in itself holds significant potential benefits.

Of course, with the messaging freed of technical and structural constraints, it leaves personnel departments free to concentrate on business rather than technical issues.

Scope

Joined up Jobs will not force councils to change their existing relationships with intermediaries, change their front-end systems, or replace their back office systems; the project may however provide insight that enables better informed business decisions about these in the future.

Joined up Jobs is focused on how councils transmit their job vacancy information to the intermediaries they are engaged with. It addresses issues such as:

• Reducing re-keying of data
• Whether data can be automatically extracted from back office systems
• How multiple intermediaries can be supplied with data
• If standard re-use agreements can be constructed to save legal time when establishing new relationships with intermediaries
• If standard data formats can be used to save data export/import testing time when establishing new relationships with intermediaries
• How the set up costs of new relationships with intermediaries can be reduced, encouraging greater use of particular channels for ad hoc campaigns
• How intermediaries can develop new services safe in the knowledge that the ‘information supply’ is going to be in a format they can understand and use, regardless of the client, thus reducing service costs
  

Elements of the process Joined up Jobs may impact upon are illustrated below in green.

Outputs

• ‘State of the Region’ Report: who are the stakeholders, what are their aspirations for e-recruitment, how ready are they for Joined up Jobs?
• Technical background research: xml, syndication
• Investigation into the Re Use of Public Information directive and Commercial Licensing of public sector jobs information.
• Specification, business model and operational, governance, and implementation requirements.
• Options, business case and sustainability appraisal
• Work towards UK national standard schemas for job adverts, job profiles and person specifications
• A standard commercial licence for the reuse of public sector jobs information
• Services on the world wide web, on-street kiosks and interactive digital television, giving access to jobs information from all of the participating councils and support the Public Service Academy

Phasing

• The Project is organised into 2 phases, with a critical review point mid-way.

Phase I October 2005 to March 2006

• Engage stakeholders, identify current practice, aspirations and constraints
• Establish 'Follower' organisations
• Identify the technical infrastructure to establish initial data feeds
• Identify options for a first joined up public access service on
  • The world wide web
  • The network of 50 public access kiosks (most on street)
  • The interactive Digital TV services on sky, ntl: and Telewest
  • To support the Public Service Academy

Checkpoint – options evaluation February / March 2006

• Appraisals of options for
  • Data export / import facilities
  • Developing services to reuse and collate data
  • Establishing enhanced services within Councils
• With an eye on
  • Potential benefits, efficiency savings
  • Sustainability
  • Investigations of opportunities and constraints

Phase II April 2006 to September 2006

• Implementation of selected way forward

Project Rationale

• We already forward some of our vacancies to third parties for them to put them onto their systems or onto the web
• There are cost and accuracy issues with having to re-enter the information

Wouldn’t it be better if

• Third parties working with us could automatically pick up the data from each of us in a standard format?
• Jobseekers could look in one place and be sure it contained all the available vacancies?
  

Benefits

• Give the widest possible, accurate listing of available jobs, when and where they want to access it.
• Give councils access to a wider labour market, ultimately raising application rates, raising the quality of staff and driving down overall costs of recruitment.

Links to other initiatives

Public Sector Academy Project

• Investigating establishing a physical ‘joined up’ recruitment bureau

Regional initiatives

• NEREO is providing Project Assurance to the Joined up Jobs Project Management Board

Your Involvement

We would like you help shape the project.

We are asking all local councils to complete an online questionnaire so we can assess the ‘state of the region’ regarding job vacancy processes, and design Joined up Jobs to suit. 

We have created a web page of latest e-recruitment news which automatically updates itself each time you visit.

If you are interested in following the progress of Joined up Jobs please sign up to our online discussion forum.

Partners

• Gateshead Council
• North Tyneside Council
• South Tyneside Council

Supported by

• North East Centre of Excellence (www.nece.gov.uk)
• Tyne & Wear ICT & e-Government Partnership

Pearson’s was selected to undertake technical research and design for the project.
Scope

Presentations, Reports etc

These can be found on our Downloads page.

Glossary

A glossary of terms can be found here.