The InGRID project was funded by the European Union’s 7th Framework Programme for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration and involved 17 European partners. Referring to the EU2020-ambition of Inclusive Growth, the general objectives of InGRID were to integrate and to innovate existing, but distributed, European social sciences research infrastructures on ‘Poverty and Living Conditions’ and ‘Working Conditions and Vulnerability’ by providing transnational data access, organising mutual knowledge exchange activities and improving methods and tools for comparative research. This integration aimed at providing the related European scientific community with new and better opportunities to fulfil its key role in the development of evidence-based European policies for Inclusive Growth. In this regard, specific attention was paid to a better measurement of related state policies, to high-performance statistical quality management, and to dissemination/outreach activities with the broader stakeholder community-of-interest, including European politics, civil society and statistical system. Therefore, focusing on issues such as poverty, working conditions and vulnerability, as well as related labour and social policies, the project helped social scientists access and cross-compare data to support policymaking. This also facilitated understanding of policy impacts and moving towards harmonisation of standards. Importantly, the project team integrated European research infrastructures in social science and provided access to hundreds of scientists and early-stage researchers through exchange visits, workshops and training events.
CEPS’ work focused mainly on the use of web data and big data in labour market research resulting in a state-of-the-art report, a methodology paper and a taxonomy paper (WP21: Working conditions and vulnerability). These papers document the creation of an occupations observatory, and present case studies on the use of web data for research on language skills, IT skills, among other requirements. CEPS was also responsible for the organisation of the expert network programme (WP3) including four expert workshops, as well as for four winter and summer schools (WP4).
