PCAST Examines Technology for Targeting Job-Skills Training and Matching Talent to Jobs

Today, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) released a letter report to the President about opportunities for information technology (IT) to improve the way the labor market works and to help get more people into jobs. The report – which focuses on “middle-skill” workers, people whose jobs require post-secondary training, but not a conventional college degree – describes how IT can be used to enhance interactions among workers, trainers, and employers, and to help boost the performance of the labor market as a whole.

Getting more people into jobs calls for closing the gap between the kinds of skills potential workers have and the kinds of skills needed for jobs that are currently available.  IT can play a role in assessing skills of a potential employee or workforce and helping to facilitate targeted training opportunities, beginning with students and other individuals who are already investigating job and training options.  IT can also be deployed to help analyze, at a large scale, what kinds of jobs are available, where they are available, and what skills are available admits the talent-pool that is actively seeking work. Building on such analyses, it can help in the matching of workers with jobs.

In its new report, PCAST recommends three steps the Federal Government can take to enhance the performance of the U.S. middle-skill labor market:

• Improve the operation of the worker-trainer-employer ecosystem by better coordination of related Federal efforts.  In addition to continuing to support the important activities at the Departments of Labor and Education, as encouraged by the White House’s Ready to Work report, engage the convening power of the Department of Commerce, which can help to bring industry together with government to foster improvements to the WTE system, as well as encourage activity such as technical standards-setting and approaches to facilitate information exchange across the associated ecosystem.
• Continue to support development of information technology to facilitate assessment of skills and training needs, counseling about training and career options, and delivery of training that culminates in credentials that can be validated.  Federal support for IT research can not only generate new capabilities, it can also promote commercial use by helping to prove concepts and lower costs.
• The Federal Government should lead by example in exploring opportunities to use information technology, in particular large-scale Web services in the private sector and machine-learning capabilities emerging from research, to identify and forecast the detailed skills required in the evolving Federal workforce and to match candidates from across the country with those opportunities.  Further, in skill development, the Federal Government should look to harness both private-sector and captive IT-based training mechanisms to deliver the ongoing skills development required for new and existing Federal employees.   

This report is the second in a series of PCAST studies that explore the potential of education information-technology (EdIT) to enhance education and training.

• Read the full letter report here.
• View PCAST’s infographic about education technology in higher education here.

Jim Gates, Craig Mundie, and Barbara Schaal are members of PCAST and co-chairs of the PCAST EdIT Working Group.

PCAST is an advisory group of the Nation’s leading scientists and engineers, appointed by the President to augment the science and tech­nology advice available to him from inside the White House and from cabinet departments and other Federal agencies. For more information about PCAST, please visit the PCAST website.