News - Labour market portal focuses skills

Labour market portal focuses skills information

September 2002

In response to emerging skill shortages throughout New Zealand, the Government provided $11.6 million in this year’s budget to improve the information on skills needs in the economy. One of the projects to receive funding under the Skills Information Action Plan is an electronic labour market portal (www.work.govt.nz).

The portal - NZ WorkInfo - is a multi-agency project and is one of the first all-of-government website projects based on a number of the e-government frameworks. The Department of Labour is project managing the work, with a Steering Committee comprising senior officials from the Ministries of Education, Social Development, Career Services and the State Services Commission.

The portal will bring together information from a variety of sources and provide it in a way that is accessible and useful. It will help students, people seeking work, employees, self-employed, employers, advisers and migrants to make decisions about education and training, employment, migration, workplace health and safety, employment relations and other subjects around the labour market.

The portal will be developed in two phases. Phase one, operational from early November 2002, will provide access to information from the Department of Labour, the Ministries of Education and Social Development, Career Services, Skill New Zealand, Industry New Zealand and the State Services Commission (including the new Government portal). Phase two will be operational from late next year. It will be more customised and will add information from other government agencies (including ACC and IRD) as well as from private sector organisations.