ESP Tech updatedFinal - Europa

September 2017 1

European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations ESCO handbook

Month Year 2

Contents

Contents ................................................................................................. 2

Introduction ............................................................................................ 3

Levels in versioning .................................................................................. 4

Taxonomy versioning .......................................................................... 4

Publication versioning .......................................................................... 4

Model versioning ................................................................................. 5

Taxonomy versioning ................................................................................ 6

Historic versions of concepts ................................................................ 6

Publication versioning ............................................................................... 7

Modules ............................................................................................ 7

List of modules that are versioned in ESCO ............................................. 7

DCAT-compatible repository ................................................................. 8

Release notes ..................................................................................... 8

Delta reports ...................................................................................... 8

Example ............................................................................................ 9

Next steps ............................................................................................. 10

Integration with ESCO applications ...................................................... 10

Publication of separate modules .......................................................... 10

Timeline view of more concepts .......................................................... 10

Advanced versioning and reporting ...................................................... 10

Automated semantic versioning .......................................................... 10

Glossary and abbreviations ...................................................................... 12

European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations ESCO data versioning

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Introduction

As ESCO is a live taxonomy, its concepts will be updated to better reflect the current job market at any point in the future. This may mean that new concepts are added, old concepts are removed or existing concepts are modified. Because the ESCO taxonomy is used by many different partners, it is important that everyone knows which version of ESCO has been used when describing particular content. Furthermore, a trace must be kept between the versions of ESCO so that partners know how to migrate from an older version of the taxonomy to a more recent version.

This document describes the basic principles of versioning in ESCO, how the current versioning process is implemented and what the next steps are. Its target audience includes (but is not limited to) taxonomy editors, application developers, knowledge engineers and users consuming ESCO data.


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Levels in versioning

In ESCO, we identify three types of versioning:

Taxonomy versioning;

Publication versioning;

Model versioning.

Taxonomy versioning

Definition: Taxonomy versioning refers to keeping track of the changes to concepts in terms of their taxonomy and their relationships. It happens in the background while the content is edited and tracks all changes continuously.

Aim: To track the history of each concept. The tracking done by taxonomy versioning allows questions such as who edited what at which time in the taxonomy to be answered. The life cycle of a concept is recorded.

Level: Taxonomy versioning records changes at the level of concepts.

Taxonomy versioning can be split into two areas:

1. Change set registration;

2. Concept life-cycle registration.

Change set registration means that every user action that modifies a concept is recorded, along with the time of the modification and the user who made the change. In this way, a “history” is created.

Concept life-cycle registration, on the other hand, requires special actions to a concept to be recorded as specific events. For example, concept creation is recorded, along with the time of creation. Concept deprecation is recorded too, together with the time of deprecation and, possibly, the concepts that replace the now obsolete concept – if any. By tracking these “replacedBy” relationships, the concept life-cycle registration reveals whether the concept was split or merged.

Publication versioning

Definition: Publication versioning provides a name to identify a particular release of ESCO at a particular point in time. In that sense, publication versioning is comparable to the versioning information on books: every new edition has the same title, but also holds a version number or publication date that identifies which edition it is. Publication versioning relates strictly to what is published. It does not cover the changes that have been made to concepts between one published versions of ESCO and the next.


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Aim: To identify and define a released version of a defined dataset as a whole. It allows any user to ascertain whether he/she is using the same version of a dataset as another user.

Level: Publication versioning applies to data sets as a whole or as a module. It is not applicable to individual changes made to concepts.

Model versioning

Definition: Model versioning refers to keeping track of changes to the data model of the taxonomy. Changes to the model include changing the list of available types and predicates, their URI or their constraints.

Changes to the data model may result in disruption to backwards compatibility. It is the responsibility of the technical architect and business involved to assess the extent of changes requested to the data model and balance options and impact. A change to the data model will always result in a major new release of the taxonomy.

In the following sections of the document, taxonomy and publication versioning are discussed in more detail. The model versioning is not covered under the scope of this document at present as the ESCO data model is expected to remain stable over the next several years. Nonetheless, when the relevant process is in place, the document will be updated accordingly.


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Taxonomy versioning

This section of the document describes taxonomy versioning and its use in ESCO in more detail. In general, taxonomy versioning concerns the ESCO concepts and their “historic” versions. It is the first step in maintaining the classification.

The following image demonstrates the relationship between concepts and their “historic” versions, which depict the full concept at a specific point in time. A stable ESCO concept has a fixed URI that never changes between publications, which is represented by “S”. Likewise, the historic versions of this concept have their own unique URIs, which point to the concept that they came from.

Figure 1: Taxonomy versioning example

Historic versions of concepts

To facilitate the publication of ESCO, historic concepts that represent “snapshots” of a concept at a certain point in time are created. These historic versions of concepts are full copies of the concept at that point in time, with the full set of properties and relationships.

While each concept has a fixed URI that does not change between publications, every historic version of the concept also has a separate URI. This way, the historic version of a concept used in a publication can be identified in an unambiguous way. The historic version of a concept always refers to the stable URI of the concept itself.

Relations of a historic version of a concept always refer to the stable URI of the concept. Only the origin of the relation shows a historic URI.

These historic versions are used in publications, as well as explained in the following section.

III

IV

V

S

Stable URI for occupation

Historic version of concept

Has previous version Has historic version

TIME

●●●


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Publication versioning

When the ESCO taxonomy as a whole is considered ready for publication, the publication act is relevant for versioning as well. Publication versioning therefore refers to when each new release of ESCO is accompanied by its own unique versioning number.

The decision as to whether it is worth releasing an update to the data as a new version of the taxonomy is a business decision, not a technical constraint. This is why ESCO is being built on a modular basis, providing flexibility for the end user to choose which modules to consume.

Modules

While the logical components of ESCO are obviously related, they are likely to be used in different configurations and possibly even on their own. For instance, a national institution might only be interested in the languages spoken in its own nation and all other language publications are likely to be ignored by that agency. For this reason, the sets of translated terms associated with the concepts are published separately and independently of the other language modules, and even separately from the concepts themselves. This means that they can be improved and republished without having to republish the whole core of ESCO. This requires the publication of the set to be separately identifiable and versioned.

To serve ESCO users, the taxonomy is also made available in “packages” that answer certain needs (e.g. a language-specific set of ESCO content, or only the occupation pillar).

List of modules that are versioned in ESCO

The following is a list of ESCO modules that are versioned at the time of the writing of this document. This list will evolve as soon as more ESCO modules are included in the versioning process (please see the “next steps” section for further information).

Name Description Dataset URI

Occupation concepts

The occupation concepts and their profiles, including links to ESCO model taxonomies, excluding terms.

http://data.europa.eu/esco/dataset/occupations

Skill concepts The skill concepts and their profiles, including links to ESCO model taxonomies, excluding terms.

http://data.europa.eu/esco/dataset/skills

Occupation terms per language

Occupation terms in a specific language, containing the links from a concept to its terms with their label and gender.

http://data.europa.eu/esco/dataset/occupation-labels-{lang}


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Skill terms per language

Skill terms in a specific language, containing the links from a concept to its terms with their label and gender.

http://data.europa.eu/esco/dataset/skill-labels-{lang}

Relationships between occupations and skills

The relationships between occupations and skills, specified using esco:Relationship objects and the materialised links using esco:essentialSkill and esco:optionalSkill

http://data.europa.eu/esco/dataset/occupation-skill-relations

DCAT-compatible repository

The data collected and aggregated in the ESCO publications is distributed to the public or used in another aggregation process. A coherent set of data, such as the ESCO publications or modules, is called a dataset. A standard vocabulary will be used to describe these datasets and thereafter distribute them. Within Europe, an application profile of the W3C’s Data Catalogue vocabulary (DCAT), called DCAT-AP, is being used to facilitate interoperability between data catalogues. This standard, which is also a European Commission recommendation, enables dataset descriptions in Europe to be exchanged in a coherent and harmonised context.

To provide more information about the ESCO datasets (publications, also of separate modules) in a machine-readable format, ESCO will use a DCAT-AP-compliant data repository, once the DCAT register is fully implemented (in early 2018). This cataloguing system will compile datasets for availability to stakeholders, and act as a central point where they can be browsed and downloaded in one or more distribution formats.

Release notes

Each new publication will also be accompanied by a release note to describe the changes that have been made since the previous, consecutive version (whether major or minor changes). The release note will be a short text in a language that can be understood by business stakeholders, e.g. “The following skill collections were added: …”

The release notes of a major new release will describe:

the changes at the level of the data model between this and the previous major release;

the changes at the level of the minor type between this and the former minor release.

Delta reports

In addition to release notes, machine-readable delta reports will be supported within versioning. These reports will contain a list of triples that have been added or removed between versions and will be in a machine-readable format. They will point to specific


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changes between two subsequent versions of the data and should be more technical than release notes.

Delta reports allow the change history between the previous release and the current state of the data to be “replayed”. However, deltas can be chained to cover the changes between two versions over the intermediate versions.

Example

Assume a series of changes to an existing concept (A) at different times (T1 tot T4):

Concept A at T1 : existing published PT is ‘architect’;

Concept A at T2 : changed PT to ‘buildings architect’;

Concept A at T3 : changed PT to ‘building architect’;

Concept A at T4 : changed PT to ‘architect’;

A release is done at T1.

In practice, this means that:

1. if a new release is published at T3, the delta will have the changes T2+T3;

2. if a new release is only published at T4, the delta will be empty;

3. if there is a release at T3 and T4, the delta at T4 will indicate the T4 change.


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Next steps

The ESCO taxonomy is evolving and new features will be added in the versioning process. In the following section, we discuss them in brief.

Integration with ESCO applications

A link between the same concept stored in the various ESCO platforms, like the Translation Management Platform (TrMP), allows navigation from the concept detail page to a page with an overview of the translation status for each of the 25 languages for that concept.

Both datasets are merged into one dataset serving the different front-ends of the applications.

Publication of separate modules

At this phase of the versioning implementation, the entire ESCO dataset is published and subsequently downloaded. A next version of the publication service will allow separate ESCO modules (as described earlier) to be published and downloaded.

The publication process will also include the generation of the previously-mentioned delta reports.

Timeline view of more concepts

The front-end of the Taxonomy Management system (eTMS) currently supports a timeline view of each concept. For a chosen concept, this illustrates the logged changes that have been made on a timeline, along with the different version releases.

A similar timeline function will be applied for each concept/language.

Advanced versioning and reporting

Enhancing the versioning process to include the versioning of qualifications and the versioning of the ESCOdata model (ontology) are in the development agenda of early 2018, along with the implementation of the DCAT-AP as explained earlier.

In addition to the above, delta reports will be chained between multiple releases.

Automated semantic versioning

To track each release of ESCO in a consistent and structured way, a semantic versioning model will be implemented. ESCO versions will therefore be numbered according to the type of version change.

The numbering according to semantic versioning identifies three different levels of changes in the publication. An example of such a version number could be ESCO v.1.3.58. In this version number, the major number is 1, the minor number is 3 and the patch number is 58.


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Using semantic versioning in this way will ensure that the compatibility between different versions of ESCO is clear to all stakeholders.


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Glossary and abbreviations

Term Description

DCAT DCAT is a data catalogue described in RDF vocabulary. It may contain multiple collections of data, published or curated by a single agent, and available for access or download in one or more formats.

ESCO ESCO is the multilingual classification of European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations. The ESCO classification identifies and categorises occupations and skills, competences and qualifications relevant for the EU labour market and education and training.

ESCO concept

The language-independent abstraction of an occupation, a skill, a qualification or any other topic of interest for use as a classification or tagging instrument.

ESCO knowledge

A knowledge concept refers to the outcome of the assimilation of information through learning. Knowledge is the body of facts, principles, theories and practices that is related to a field of work or study.

ESCO platform

The entire IT platform and tools that support the development and life-cycle management of the ESCO classification. The platform includes modules such as the editing application, API availability, web publication, Linked Open Data publication, the temporary Online Consultation Platform (OCP), the Translation Management platform and the Mapping platform.

ESCO skills A skill concept refers to the ability to apply knowledge and use know-how to complete tasks and solve problems. Skills are cognitive (involving the use of logical, intuitive and creative thinking) or practical (involving manual dexterity and the use of methods, materials, tools and instruments). The term “skill” typically refers to the use of methods or instruments in a particular setting and in relation to defined tasks. The term “competence” is broader and refers typically to the ability of a person - facing new situations and unforeseen challenges - to use and apply knowledge and skills in an independent and self-directed way.

ETMS The ESCO Taxonomy Management System is an integrated module of the ESCO platform designed to continuously edit, review, integrate and publish ESCO content for occupations and skills.

HT A Hidden Term is a list of informal terms that represent a concept and that may well be commonly miss-spelt or considered politically incorrect.

ISCO ISCO is the International Standard Classification of Occupations. It is a four-level classification of occupation groups managed by the International Labour Organisation (ILO). Its structure is grouped by education level. The two latest versions of ISCO are ISCO-88 (dating


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from 1988) and ISCO-08 (dating from 2008).

KSC ESCO Knowledge, Skills and Competences.

LOD Linked Open Data refers to a set of best practices and patterns for hyperlinking and publishing machine-readable data on the public web that are identified with a persistent unique identifier.

MapP Mapping Platform is a micro-service-based application to create SKOS structured mappings between the ESCO taxonomy and other national and local taxonomies.

NC Any labour market-oriented National Classification covering both NOC and, if applicable, NSC.

NOC A National Occupation Classification is a classifications system used in a Member State to classify occupations.

NPT A Non-Preferred Term is a list of synonyms for each language that represent the concept.

NSC National Skills Classification is a classifications system used in a Member State to classify skills, knowledge and competences.

OCC ESCO Occupations are the ESCO concepts that describe occupations

PES The Public Employment Service is a governmental service that helps jobseekers to find a job.

PT A Preferred Term is a single term (for each language) that best represents the concept.

RDF The Resource Description Framework is a standard specification designed to support capturing metadata: http://www.w3.org/RDF/

SKOS The Simple Knowledge Organisation Systems is an international standard to capture and represent thesauri, classification schemes and taxonomies: http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/

Supporting taxonomy

A taxonomy different from ESCO or an ESCO pillar, but used by ESCO because it is considered a reference taxonomy. Typical examples are NUTS, NACE rev 2, ISCO08. The ESCO usage is to characterise its own concepts by means of mapping it to support taxonomy concepts or by means of tagging its concepts with supporting taxonomy concepts.

Transversal KSC

KSC concepts that are relevant for many occupations in a broad range of sectors (e.g. "collaborate on tasks").

TrMP The Translation Management Platform is a micro-service-based application to manage the translation and term generation of the ESCO taxonomy. TrMP is a highly specific service used by DGT.


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