A Database for a Changing Economy Review of the Occupational Information Network (O*NET) (2010) / Chapter Skim
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5 The Role of Technology
5 The Role of Technology
Pages 93-112
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THE O* NET uSER INTERFACE The field of website usability is developing rapidly and now includes sophisticated methods to gather feedback from users about their interactions with websites (Butler, 2009)
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The review of the O* NET web presence that follows suggests that the multiple websites do not conform to three key principles of effective web design: (1)
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NET websites provide few aides to facilitate navigation by users. This aspect of the design of the websites stands in contrast to the research on web design reviewed by the panel, which emphasizes that ease of navigation strongly influences both the extent of use by an individual visitor to the site and the number of repeat visits.
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The Advanced Search area has a drop-down menu linking to a Skills Search page and a Tools and Technology Search page. The Crosswalks Search area has a drop-down menu allowing the user to choose among pages for different occupational classification.
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One example of the difficulty users may encounter is in the Find Occupations section of the home page, which invites the visitor to "Browse groups of similar occupations to explore careers." The user is offered a drop-down menu to search by Career Cluster, Green Economy Sector, Indemand Industry Cluster, Job Family, Job Zone, O* NET Descriptor, or STEM discipline.
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From page 98... ...
O* NET OnLine limits the user's ability to assemble and compare similar data across multiple occupations.
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Many individuals and organizations download the database and incorporate it into tools and applications that are used in career development, workforce development, human resource management, and research (National Center for O* NET Development, 2009)
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The finding that the database is used most widely in applications created by outside developers leads to our discussion in the following sections of the role of technology both to increase availability and use of O* NET and to assist in gathering background occupational data.
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In addition to the database comprised of core files related to the content model, the O* NET Center makes other information, including Emerging Tasks, Detailed Work Activities, Tools and Technology, and crosswalk files available separately for download.
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NET by developers using other proprietary and nonproprietary database programs. Making the database available in ANSI SQL, in addition to the currently available versions, would lower developers' costs of creating local copies and reduce the probability of error for developers who do not use the three currently supported database programs.
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It has used O* NET data to identify common elements of human resource management systems and develop specifications that allow organizations to capture and use occupational information for human resource functions, such as building competency models, conducting job analyses, and developing performance appraisal systems (U.S.
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As the owners of various data sets establish RDF stores, it becomes possible for data users, including researchers and applications developers, to write a data query that draws data from distinct, but semantically linked, data sets (Sadler, 2009)
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NET data, along with any other related, semantically enabled data, and use them for display, for research, or for local storage to serve as an input to a local application. In this scenario, any user with a web browser would be able to query the data, using SQL or another computer language or application.3 For example, a job-seeker using her laptop at a coffee shop could use her own copy of Microsoft Excel, with its built-in database query tool, to query the O*
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NET and other human resource data sets might result in a substantial expansion of the use of O* NET in human resource management information systems and in human resource management processes more generally.
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DOL and the O* NET Center might use wikis and other online collaboration tools to establish an ongoing dialog with local workforce development agencies, career information delivery systems, human resource management associations, and other O*
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The Environmental Protection Agency proposed another possible approach to supporting outside developers in its roadmap for publishing environmental data. The roadmap envisions the creation of widgets -- reusable web code -- that could be used by service providers to build new web pages
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NET websites suggests that the sites do not conform to three key principles of web design: ease of navigation, targeting of content to users, and interactive elements that can flexibly respond to user interests and styles of use. Recommendation: The Department of Labor should, with advice and guidance from the technical advisory board recommended in Chapter 2 and the user advisory board recommended in Chapter 6, consider con ducting a usability study to obtain user feedback on the ease of use of the O*
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Recommendation: The Department of Labor should, with advice and guidance from the technical advisory board recommended in Chapter 2 and the user advisory board recommended in Chapter 6, explore se mantic web techniques. Specifically, DOL should consider creating an occupational classification ontology that would encompass O*
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NET as linked data. Presentation to the Panel to Review the Occupational Information Network (O*
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U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Web Workgroup.
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