Continuous improvement process

Only if ESCO is updated continuously, it will remain fit-for-purpose for the use in various IT applications that deliver high-quality services to end-users. The labour market and the education and training sector are changing permanently. These changes therefore need to be reflected in new versions of the ESCO classification. The changes include:

• Changes in the labour market: new occupations emerge; occupations become obsolete; nature of occupations change and with it the knowledge, skills and competences requested by employers;
• Changes in curricula: new knowledge, skills and competences appear in education and training curricula, while others disappear;
• Changes in terminology: terms to refer to specific occupations, knowledge, skills and competences change; rules of the entire language change (e.g. spelling reforms, female forms of occupation names become more common);
• Changes in the requirements of IT applications: technological development or new expectations by end users change the way of service provision and thus the requirements towards the ESCO classification as a building block of the system.

Updates of ESCO are also occasions to correct any identified mistakes in the classification such as misspellings of the terms, wrong metadata or relationships.