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SEEMP: An interoperability solution enabling seamless collaboration between employment agencies in a fragmented European market.
European Member States have introduced major reforms to make the labour market more flexible, transparent and efficient, in compliance with the European Employment Strategy guidelines. Such major reforms include decentralization and liberalization of the mediation market (competition between public and private actors). Employment Services (ESs) realised the need for making available on-line a one-stop shop for employment. This results in an increased use of Information Communication Technology (ICT) and a boost in differentiating and personalizing the services they offer (e.g., Le FOREM, EURES , etc.).
More specifically, in the domain of e-Employment, different Employment Services, both public and private, collect CVs and Job Offers in order to match demand with supply. Each ES covers either a region or an occupational sector. As a result, the employment market is severely fragmented and many ESs perceive the need of sharing information in order to provide a better service to their customers.
The SEEMP project (IST-4-027347-STP) designs and implements a prototype of an Interoperability infrastructure for PESs and PRESs. More specifically, SEEMP is developing an EIF-compliant Architecture (EC, 2004) to allow collaboration between the employment services that exist in Europe. The resulting European Employment Marketplace overcomes the national barriers complying, at the same time, with the local policies of each Member State.
The technical approach of SEEMP relies on the concepts of Web services and semantics. This combination enables an easier maintenance of the integration. Semantics, encoded in the systems by the means of ontologies and mediators, allow for the reconciliation of hundreds of heterogeneous systems that are already in place and are evolving separately. They provide a straightforward way to implement the subsidiarity principle of EIF.
Currently the pilot evaluation phase of the SEEMP project has been completed. The result demonstrated the success of the integration scenario of the SEEMP services to a new ES (Le Forem EBP), as well as, the high potential and added value that SEEMP brings to the Employment Services business operation. The R&D phase of the SEEMP project has been successfully completed on 31/12/2008 and the consortium is now targetting to the exploitation of the SEEMP services in line with the established Business Plan.