Research activities carried out by the Research Institute for Labor and Social Affairs in 2001 revealed the need for a comprehensive collection and analysis of data indicating the level of integration of foreigners who have been competing on the Czech Republic’s job market for a long time. The project’s objective was to assess the usability of data collected as a part of the existing information system OK Job (“OK Práce”) and propose the system’s enhancement to this end. OK Job was created in order to make the administrative work of Labor Authorities more effective and to track selected sets of data about the country’s job market for the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs. Utilization of the data collected through the OK Job system for sociological analysis of integration of foreigners on the job market could be the secondary output of a system, which was originally created for a different purpose. OK Job provides the opportunity to track selected characteristics of all foreigners working in the Czech Republic based on a work permit, all Slovaks who are required to fill out a “registration card” when working in the Czech Republic, and also foreigners with a permanent residency status in the Czech Republic who are (or have been) registered as unemployed at one of the Labor Authorities.
The primary task of the Institute’s present project was to identify the data that would be beneficial to track within the OK Job information system so that output from the system helps resolve issues related to integration of foreigners lawfully employed in the Czech Republic. The authors believe that an expanded OK Job system would enable the processing of regular reports on integration of foreigners on the Czech job market in line with the requirements set by the European Union. Analysis of data from the OK Job system for the purposes of researching job market integration of foreigners in the Czech Republic limited to a large degree due to the more practical focus of the software package owing to the needs of Labor Authorities. The OK Job system has been devised from the bottom up based on the requirements of the Labor Authorities, not designed to facilitate research. However, the system seems to have been preordained for research, as it includes empirical data about the job market and employment in the Czech Republic that are otherwise unavailable. Individual data are available at the respective Labor Authority, while only selected data sets are collected in the “central database” of the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs. The central database therefore does not contain for example information about foreigners with permanent residency status. The current analysis of data stored in the system also is inadequate also because some of the information is collected on a voluntary basis. The authors believe that OK Job could be used for a wider range of purposes if the entire system was enhanced to include items specified in the study (e.g. country of birth, country of last residency, marital status, length and type of residency in the Czech Republic, etc.), which, however, would require amendments to existing laws to collect the required information about foreigners with a work permit as well as an agreement of government authorities responsible for employment issues with the addition of the new items into the system.
The study aims at opening a qualified debate about the potential expansion of the OK Job system.