Careers Advice was the UK's frontline telephone and web support service to help re-skill adults in the UK. Every year over 12 million people used its products. Collecting comprehensive learning opportunity data, and building tools to provide this service was a challenge that Hotcourses was commissioned with in 2001.

The work we carried out has resulted in:

The size of the National Learning Directory (NLD) grew from 200,000 courses in 2001 to 1 million courses in 2008. It covered over 8,500 providers

A data accuracy score of over 96% achieved against a 93% target (our data accuracy is subjected to monthly independent external audits as part of the contract with University for Industry (Ufi))

Availability scores for the NLD database of 99.96% in 2007 achieved against a contractual target of 99%

Hotcourses developed over 83 portals that are now linked to the NLD (examples include portals for the BBC, Channel 4 and Directgov)

The NLD and its portals had over 12 million visits in 2007

Over the years this project covered a diverse range of areas:

Data collection

The collection, quality assurance and maintenance of all course and provider data in the UK

Website development

The development and maintenance of not only the main course search and results components of the Careers Advice website, but also the associated 100 affiliated portals

Support services

Providing support and help, not only to Ufi directly, but also to the 47 nextstep offices. Support included on-site and off-site training of providers and liaising with them over data collection

Enhancements to the services

Development of a content management system to transform the way providers manage their data; and the "Advisor Interface" which was a highly developed search tool built specifically for Careers Advice Advisors. This enabled them to search for additional service information such as ´childcare provision´, ´guidance and advice services´ and ´language support´