Public Funding for Seme4 Limited

Matching the skills output of educational establishments with the needs of industry, particularly in a rapidly changing economy, is problematic. The inability to integrate the various bespoke datasets has meant the holistic dynamic view necessary to manage a city's skills pipeline (and thus maximise employment) has been impossible. The aim of SkillsPlanner is to increase the economic performance of urban areas and improve the quality of life for citizens through higher levels of employment. This will be achieved through the integration of disparate social and economic data to better understand and shape the current and future skills level of the local workforce. Project collaborators include major construction companies, colleges of Further Education, local authorities and trade bodies for a 24 month London-based research and development project. The objectives of SkillsPlanner are to increase employment by matching skills to need in both short and medium terms; to support the provision of relevant and more informed training to meet employer need, and reduce the amount of migrant labour, thereby recycling more wages back into the local economy.

The advent of new standards and initiatives for data publication in the context of the World Wide Web (in particular the move to linked data formats) has resulted in the availability of rich sources of information about the changing economic, geographic and socio-cultural landscape of the United Kingdom, and many other countries around the world. In order to exploit the latent potential of these linked data assets, we need to provide access to tools and technologies that enable data consumers to easily select, filter, manipulate, visualize, transform and communicate data in ways that are suited to specific decision-making processes. In this project, we will enable organizations to press maximum value from the UK’s growing portfolio of linked data assets. In particular, we will develop a suite of software components that enables diverse organizations to rapidly assemble ‘goal-oriented’ linked data applications and data processing pipelines in order to enhance their awareness and understanding of the UK’s geographic, economic and socio-cultural landscape. RAGLD (Rapid Assembly of Geo-Linked Data) is collaboration between the Ordnance Survey, Seme4 Ltd and the University of Southampton.