At the invitation of the Labor Markets Division of the Inter-American Development Bank and the SEALC network, ESCO was presented in the Regional Policy Dialogue "Digital Transformation of Public Employment Services," that took place the 18th and 19th of October in Lima, Peru and via zoom.

The main objective of the event was to define and promote specific solutions for the Public Employment Services (PES) and to support the recovery of employment in Latin America and the Caribbean through digital transformation processes. Participants learned about new approaches on:

• how to support PES in the region to identify learning opportunities, best practices and examples from other countries that can help them advance in digital transformation, as well as recommendations on where they should focus their efforts to carry out these digitization processes effectively and efficiently;
• promoting dialogue between those responsible for the PES in the region and representatives of the digitization areas of their governments; and
• identifying knowledge gaps or technical assistance needs, such as needs in terms of the use of information technology.

The conference brought together a diversity of stakeholders from labour ministers and vice-ministers, to staff of the employment office and public employment service directors from 16 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. 

The ESCO team provided an overview on ESCO's latest updates, its main use cases in support of public employment services as well as a short introduction to the role of artificial intelligence and machine learning in the development and maintenance of the ESCO taxonomy.

ESCO is already used and adapted to the realities of the national labour markets:

• in Peru, by the Peruvian public employment service;
• in Chile through the  Relink platform, a public-private partnership and the National Labor Observatory;
• in the platform Observatorio Laboral recently launched by the labour market division of the Inter-American Development Bank.

Participants showed a high degree of knowledge on the role of taxonomies like ESCO in supporting interoperability among stakeholders and the need to use a common language to improve the functioning of the labour market via job-matching services, career guidance or skills intelligence.

The recording of the presentation is available: Decoding skills: innovate for a better labor market on Vimeo

For any questions or technical support on how to get started with ESCO, reach out to us at EMPL-ESCO-SECRETARIAT@ec.europa.eu.