Næstaskref.is: Supporting Educational and Career Choices Through Digital Innovation

Next step is a public information website about education and careers, hosted and operated by the Centre for Education and School Services (Miðstöð menntunar og skólaþjónustu) on behalf of, and in collaboration with, three government ministries.

The Næstaskref.is website traces its origins to a larger European project carried out between 2012 and 2014 by the Education and Training Service Centre (Fræðslumiðstöð atvinnulífsins) and the Centre of Expertise in Lifelong Learning and Career Guidance (Sérfræðisetur í ævilangri náms- og starfsráðgjöf).

After undergoing various changes, it was decided to relocate the website to the Centre for Education and School Services and redesign it with a new focus and a broader target audience. The current version has been available since spring 2024.

Among the website’s most popular features is the Pathfinder, a tool inspired by the Job Compass concept on similar Danish and Norwegian websites. Its foundation consists of the educational and occupational descriptions available on the „next step“ site, which are linked to each user’s personal characteristics, primarily their strengths and interests.

The original intention was to create something of a digital exploratory tool that would be both faster and more user-friendly than traditional interest assessments, while incorporating additional factors such as values, work environment preferences, and educational level. The Pathfinder quickly became very popular among users and has remained largely unchanged from a technical standpoint since its first version.

Recently, several university students studying computer science and software engineering took the concept further. For their B.Sc. project, they built upon this earlier foundation and developed a new tool that is expected to be ready for publication as part of the website next autumn.