A virtual skills governance and skills forecast support workshop for Slovenia was organised by Cedefop in cooperation with the country’s Ministry of Labour, Family, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities on 8 November.

This was the second such workshop in 2021 and it focused on managing expectations and designing and implementing governance arrangements that facilitate the development of sound skills intelligence and its use by different target groups (e.g. policy-makers, vocational education and training providers, individuals).

Following a scene-setting presentation by Cedefop department coordinator Jasper van Loo, Gonzalo Carlos Caprirolo Cattoretti gave an update on developments in Slovenia’s skills intelligence work since the first workshop. To promote policy learning, Margarida Rodrigues from the Portuguese Jose Neves Foundation and Rain Leoma from the Estonian Qualifications Authority talked about their experiences in developing and communicating skills intelligence.

Cedefop expert Ilias Livanos provided insights into what the unique added value and the limitations of skills forecasts are.

The discussion and question-answer sessions with participants and experts that followed confirmed the importance of skills forecasts as a backbone in national skills intelligence systems. To fully exploit their potential, it was crucial to use them alongside other approaches (e.g. short-term anticipatory systems, real-time big-data powered labour market information, skills foresights) to obtain relevant and reliable insight into future labour market and skills trends.

The interactive workshop format contributed to open discussion and provided a lot of practical insight supporting Slovenia, the current holder of the rotating EU Presidency, in further shaping its skills forecast system and the planned career platform.

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