Organising Framework of Occupations
What is the Organising Framework for Occupations?
The Organising Framework for Occupations (OFO) is a coded occupational classification system. It is the Department of Higher Education and Training’s (DHET) key tool for identifying, reporting and monitoring skills demand and supply in the South African labour market.
The OFO is constructed from the bottom-up by:
- Analysing jobs and identifying similarities in terms of a tasks and skills
- Categorising similar jobs into occupations
- Classifying these occupations into occupational groups at increasing levels of generality
The OFO adds value to skills development planning and implementation purposes in that it:
- Provides a common language when talking about occupations
- Captures jobs in the form of occupations
- Groups occupations into successively broader categories and hierarchical levels based on similarity of tasks, skills and knowledge
The OFO adds value to skills development planning and enables members of the sector to work towards a working definition on Scarce and Critical Skills. The OFO codes have recently been used to scale the so-called ‘green’ occupations from the regular ones, an increasingly new area for the mining and minerals sector.
Developments to the OFO since 2010
The OFO was adopted by the Department of Labour in 2005 and then as a tool for identifying, reporting and monitoring scarce and critical skills, and maintained through an annual updating process. This process and responsibility was taken over by the Department of Higher Education and Training in 2009.
In 2010 the DHET took a decision to align the OFO to version 8 of the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) International Standard Classification System (ISCO). The process culminated in the release of the 2011 version of the OFO in March 2011.
The OFO version 2013 was released in March 2013 which stakeholders will need to use for the completion of the 2013-2014 WSP and ATR submissions. In the main, the changes to OFO 2013 are not substantial. There were a few changes to the trade and green related occupations. Enclosed is version 2013 for your ease of reference.
For any queries please contact Shaheen Buckus via e-mail ShaheenB@mqa.org.za or on 010 593 1916 or 081 037 2671. |
