Job hunting is never easy, but what if data could be used to make the process a little less stressful?Companies such as Linkedln and Monster．com hold vast amounts of information on people's professional lives, but there is one organization that surpasses them all: the federal government．Although rich and comprehensive, government labor data can often be hard to access, bound by red tape and cloaked in jargon. 
    "With today's technologies, we can do a lot more to build open dam sets for skills," said Aneesh Chopra, the White House's first chief technology officer and founder of Arlington-based start-up Hunch Analytics．During his tenure, Chopra's role involved making government dam more accessible．It's a mission he has continued after his departure, assembling a band of public officials, tech entrepreneurs and think-tank analysts whose focus is firmly on the labor market. 
    A robust economic recovery tempered by flat wages has reinforced the need to connect Americans with higher-paying technology jobs, according to the White House．That was the rationale behind the President's new initiative, announced last week, to train and hire Americans for more than 500,000 unfilled information teclmology jobs through partnerships with local communities. 
    "There's not a standard, real-time, modem way to identify all the skills our economy needs in play today．Worlfforce and talent planners have a daunting job in ensuring they have a 'ready-now' workforce, so the more dam they can get, the better informed they are．" said Leighanne Levensaler, senior vice president of products at Workday, a human resources software company that was involved in the project. 
    The closest thing to a standard national database is the Labor Department's Occupational Information Network Website, known as O * Net．Built in the 1990s, the site compiles dam on more than 900 occupations, with details about job skills, average compensation and a search tool to find jobs by state．But although the site is continually updated, it has been slow to keep pace with the changing job market, according to Chopra and Levensaler. 
A push to modernize O * Net is the group's next big undertaking．The President's 2016 budget proposal includes a $ 5 million request to study and test approaches "to modernize and potentially streamline dam collection" for O * Net． The measure seeks to provide " up-to-date coverage of occupations and skills, particularly for high-growth,  changing industries．"  Chopra convened a roundtable of government officials, academics and private-sector executives last month to discuss measures to improve O * Net．Workday and LinkedIn are among the companies interested in the effort-- which is still at a conceptual stage, Chopra said. 
    To open-dam advocates such as Chopra, there's no better time to harness the power of information for the economy．"No one company, no matter how amazing they are, has the capacity to get every employer in America to open up their skills data for every job posting," he said．"The government has the capacity to convene stakeholders to open up the dam．"