Open Taxonomy Platform

Labor markets are diverse and fast changing, so a useful taxonomy must be localizable and adaptable in a transparent way. Our open taxonomy platform empower partners to do this.

We are currently developing the Open Taxonomy Platform, which lets partners flexibly adapt our reference taxonomy in a transparent way. The platform is currently under active open-source development. You can follow along and contribute on Github. If you would like to learn more, please get in touch.

Key Features

1. Reference Taxonomy We maintain a canonical set of occupations and skills for general use. This includes both traditional roles (e.g., Accountant) and informal or unpaid roles (e.g., Family Caregiver).

2. Localization Partners create “forks” or branches of the base taxonomy to adapt local job titles, language requirements, or cultural specifics—without losing the broader structure. This means a localized taxonomy can still talk “under the hood” to other regions.

3. API Access A simple REST API (with plans for GraphQL in the future) allows you to search, retrieve, and update taxonomy entries. Whether you’re building a job-matching platform or a chatbot, you can programmatically look up occupations, skills, tasks, or synonyms.

4. Version Control & Transparency Every revision is tracked, and older versions remain accessible. Anyone can see what changed, when, and why—a key requirement when multiple organizations or contributors collaborate over time.

5. Community Contributions We welcome pull requests and issue reports on GitHub. Contributors can:

   • Propose new occupations or skills that capture informal work or emerging digital livelihoods.

   • Offer local language translations.

   • Flag redundancies or gaps in the taxonomy structure.

Use Cases

This taxonomy is best used for:

• Public Employment Services (PES) A government job portal may need to index both formal occupations (like Nurse or Electrician) and informal tasks (like Childcare at Home). The Open Taxonomy Platform lets PES administrators adapt the reference taxonomy to local categories while remaining compatible with international frameworks.

• Youth Employment NGOs A non-profit that focuses on upskilling young people can integrate the platform’s API into its app. When a user describes an unpaid or informal experience—such as cooking at home for large extended families—the NGO’s app can quickly map that to recognized culinary or budget-management skills.

• Research and Analytics Think tanks or academic teams might want to track how the labor market shifts over time, especially in informal sectors. By using version-controlled, transparent data on occupations and skills, they can compare how certain roles or skill sets grow or shrink across multiple regions.

Getting Started

1. Explore the Reference Taxonomy Head to our GitHub repository for an overview. You’ll find JSON definitions of occupations, tasks, and skill mappings, along with instructions on how to propose changes.
2. Set Up the Platform Locally If you want to adapt or extend the taxonomy for your own region, clone the repo and follow the quick-start guide to run a local instance of our platform.

3. Use the API Documentation on authentication, queries, and updates is available in our /docs folder on GitHub. You can also find sample scripts and postman collections that show how to retrieve occupations, look up skill definitions, and commit changes.

4. Contribute

   • Issues and Pull Requests: Found an occupation that needs local adaptation or noticed a skill that’s missing? Open an issue or submit a pull request on GitHub.

   • Discussion & Feedback: Join our community forum (link coming soon!) where practitioners and developers share best practices, tips, and localized expansions.

Roadmap

While the Open Taxonomy Platform is already in active development, some exciting features are in progress:

• Multilingual Support: We aim to standardize how we store localized names and synonyms for occupations and skills, making it easy to deploy in multiple languages.

• Advanced API Queries: Searching by skill clusters or skill synonyms to quickly find relevant occupations.

• Integrations with Compass and Classifier: Our Compass conversational tool and Inclusive Livelihoods Classifier both rely on the taxonomy. We plan to release more examples of how to combine them seamlessly.

License and Community Guidelines

The Open Taxonomy Platform is licensed under MIT, reflecting our commitment to openness and widespread adoption. We encourage everyone—government agencies, NGOs, private job-matching platforms, researchers, and individuals—to explore, test, and refine the taxonomy so that, together, we build a more inclusive, dynamic picture of labor markets.