Karnataka Partners with IBM for Smarter Employability
From Our Special Correspondent
Daijiworld Media Network - Bangalore
Bangalore, Mar 4: Karnataka Vocational Training and Skill Development Corporation (KVTSDC) in association with the State Labour Department has entered into partnership with global technology leader, IBM, to develop a smarter employability platform (SEP) to increase effectiveness of employment and skill-enhancement programmes in the state.
Through this first-of-a-kind project with IBM Research - India, KVTSDC will address the challenges of reaching millions of potentially employable individuals and empower them, especially in rural areas and in the unorganized sector.
Karnataka is the first state to set up a skill commission and take the lead in the Government of India’s objective of having 500 million skilled people in India by 2022.
The Karnataka Skill Commission and the KVTSDC were constituted in September 2008 with the objective of creating 1 million new jobs within 5 years. As part of this project, IBM will create a platform to effectively connect job-seekers and job-providers along with training and certification agencies in employability marketplaces accessible through mobile phones in local and vernacular languages.
Job-seekers will be able to find available jobs and apply for the same, while understanding job-trends and also refer opportunities to their friends through mobile phones.
Similarly job providers can post jobs, increase their reach, find matching candidates, connect with trainers, and track latest trends through both mobile phones and web channels.
KVTSDC will be able to increase the penetration of its programmes, enable a vibrant ecosystem and track the latest employment trends. The project will leverage several innovative technologies from IBM, including Spoken Web – a voice-based equivalent of the World Wide Web designed to provide information of value to rural and semi-urban people through their mobiles or landlines in local languages. A mobile crowd-sourcing-platform will enable people to offer opportunities to each other, provide referrals, and drive rapid dissemination of available opportunities.
It will also use unique skill-matching-techniques to match job-seekers with available jobs while employability analytics will allow employers and the government to understand demand and supply trends. The employability marketplace will run on the IBM Cloud providing a pay-as-you-go model and elastic scaling.
"The Karnataka state government is a pioneer in skill development in the country. Our goal is to enhance employment opportunities in the state by creating a condusive environment for all the stakeholders. SEP will help in reaching out to people in the remotest parts of Karnataka enabling them to have an access to all the information through mobile phones using local languages,” said Dr Vishnukanth Chatpalli, Executive Director of KVTSDC. Under the first phase of the project, SEP will be implemented in Mandya and Bijapur districts. It will be expanded to eight more districts in the second phase.
"IBM’s vision is to be a key enabler of India’s rural transformation, economic uplift and business growth by establishing viable business models, creating a sustainable ecosystem and bringing innovative technologies to bridge the digital divide. By working with KVTSDC, we hope to benefit a large section of the society and help build a smarter nation,” said Dr. Manish Gupta, Director, IBM Research – India and Chief Technologist, IBM India/South Asia.
The building of SEP is part of IBM Research's programme engaging clients’ experts in research projects to explore how emerging technologies could solve real industry problems. The collaboration exemplifies IBM’s commitment to being part of the industry ecosystem supporting clients and business partners to solve industry-specific issues, explained Dr Manish Gupta.