For raising competitiveness, ensuring qualified labour force and enabling self-realisation in Estonian labour market and in the society more widely, it is important to build an education system, which provides the skills necessary in the current and future labour market. To achieve this, it is necessary to collect and combine information on the labour force and skills needs that can be used as an input for planning training and education. In Estonia, the labour market monitoring and future skills forecasting system OSKA has been created with this purpose in mind.

Nevertheless, labour market intelligence is only one component of the wider skills governance system. It is equally important to ensure that there are mechanisms in place that support the implementation of labour market intelligence in practice.

Thus, the aim of the current research is to analyse to which extent OSKA has been successful in creating practical and usable labour market intelligence, which mechanisms support this and what are the obstacles for achieving these aims. A holistic approach is taken towards analysing the system through its contents (i.e. applicability of the recommendations and suggestions made in the OSKA reports, their clarity, practical value and timeliness for the main target groups) and process of implementation (i.e. inclusion of target groups in analysing and interpreting the results, ways of forwarding the recommendations and conclusions made from the reports, the role and responsibility of various parties in implementing the recommendations etc).

The implementation of OSKA recommendations is analysed based on the sector reports published in 2016: accounting, forestry and timber industry, information and communication technology, manufacturing of metal products, machinery and equipment and social work. An in-depth analysis of the recommendations towards adjustments in formal education or additional training volumes, contents of the formal education curriculum and providing respective career information will be made.

See also

Labour market monitoring and future skills forecasting system OSKA