Skip to content

ESCO 1.2 Crosswalks

Snapshot: ESCO 1.2 (2024)

The following table lists the nine Bukti capability clusters and their anchor ESCO concept URIs. These are the crosswalk pointers surfaced as esco_refs[] on Bukti capability nodes.

Cluster to ESCO anchor table

Bukti cluster ESCO anchor ESCO concept name
cluster:software-engineering S5.6.1 Working with computers
cluster:applied-ml-data-science S6.4.1.4 Designing systems (ICT systems design sub-path)
cluster:languages-natural S2.1 Communication, collaboration and creativity
cluster:education-pedagogy S1.4 Teaching
cluster:foundational-quantitative K01 Generic programmes and qualifications (maths subset)
cluster:domain-medical K09 Health and welfare
cluster:domain-legal K04 Business, administration and law (legal subset)
cluster:manual-kinesthetic S5 Handling and moving
cluster:default — No anchor

About ESCO

ESCO (European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations) is maintained by the European Commission's Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion. Version 1.2 was released in 2024 and is the reference version for the EU's Open Badges / Europass interoperability framework.

ESCO differs from O*NET in two important ways relevant to Bukti:

  1. Graph structure. ESCO is a proper graph with both hierarchical (broader/narrower) and associative relations. A skill can have multiple broader concepts ("PyTorch" is broader than "deep learning framework" AND "Python library"). This is why Bukti uses a DAG rather than a tree.
  2. Multilingual. ESCO provides labels in 28 EU languages. Bukti stores the ESCO URI as the canonical crosswalk reference; the human-readable label displayed is always the English preferred label from the snapshot.

ESCO data is available under a CC-BY 4.0 license. Crosswalk review is required on each ESCO major version update.

Coverage asymmetry

ONET and ESCO are not symmetric. There are Bukti capabilities with an ONET anchor but no clean ESCO mapping, and vice versa. The policy is dual-anchor without forcing 1:1 mapping. A Bukti capability node can carry zero, one, or both anchors without requiring parity. This is particularly relevant for fast-moving technology capabilities (MCP server development, agent orchestration) that neither taxonomy covers yet; these carry only a Bukti-internal parent link until an upstream taxonomy node is added.

Open Badges 3.0 alignment resolution

Incoming Open Badges 3.0 credentials carry alignment properties pointing at framework URIs. When an OB 3.0 credential uses an ESCO concept URI in its alignment, Bukti's resolver uses this table to map it to the appropriate cluster and capability node. This is the primary mechanism by which ESCO-aligned EU credentials from universities and vocational training bodies are ingested into Bukti's scoring pipeline.