America
Aneesh Chopra's new role: Tackling US unemployment with government data
Washington, March 17
Indian-American Aneesh
Chopra, who was named by President Barack Obama as the first White House
chief technology officer, is now working to make government data
accessible for tackling unemployment.
During his tenure, Chopra's
role involved making government data more accessible. It's a mission he
has continued after his departure, according to the Washington Post.
After
leaving the White House, he has founded Arlington-based start-up Hunch
Analytics, assembling a band of public officials, tech entrepreneurs and
think-tank analysts whose focus is firmly on the labour market. "With
today's technologies, we can do a lot more to build open data sets for
skills," Chopra was quoted as saying.
One of Chopra's pilot
efforts using data to tackle unemployment was a job portal for veterans
called Veterans Talent, created last autumn. The site scraped data from
Monster and LinkedIn and mapped the locations of unemployed veterans to
geographic regions that had veteran-friendly job openings.
The
project was intended as a proof-of-concept, but it taught the group
about the importance of open data, said Leighanne Levensaler, senior
vice president of products at Workday, a human resources software
company that was involved in the project.
The closest thing to a
standard national database is the Labor Department's Occupational
Information Network Web site, known as O*Net.
Built in the 1990s,
the site compiles data on more than 900 occupations, with details about
job skills, average compensation and a search tool to find jobs by
state.
But although the site is continually updated, it has been
slow to keep pace with the changing job market, according to Chopra and
Levensaler.
Chopra convened a roundtable of government officials,
academics and private-sector executives last month to discuss measures
to improve O*Net, according to the Post.
Workday and LinkedIn are among the companies interested in the effort - which is still at a conceptual stage, Chopra said.
Last
year, LinkedIn worked with the City of New York on a programme led by
the mayor's office to train and hire New Yorkers for technology jobs.
The plan served as a model for the president's initiative.
"No
one company, no matter how amazing they are, has the capacity to get
every employer in America to open up their skills data for every job
posting," Chopra was quoted as saying.
"The government has the capacity to convene stakeholders to open up the data."