Blue Dot Experiment

Local labour markets remain fragmented and opaque, with trained candidates and job opportunities largely undiscoverable to one another. Employers, especially MSMEs, face high search costs and delays in hiring, while job seekers lack trusted, local visibility. Existing job platforms are platform-centric and poorly suited to hyperlocal and informal employment contexts, creating a need for open, interoperable discovery mechanisms. The disconnect between trained graduates and nearby employers often results in prolonged hiring cycles and underutilised local skills, even where training capacity exists.

ONEST is an open, interoperable network initiative incubated by the EkStep Foundation to enable discovery, access, and delivery of education and skilling opportunities across providers. It is designed using digital public infrastructure principles to reduce fragmentation in the education and skilling ecosystem by allowing multiple platforms, institutions, and services to interoperate through shared protocols.