In essence, the OFO is a coded occupational classification system. It is the Department of Higher Education and Training’s key tool for identifying, reporting and monitoring skills demand and supply in the South African labour market.

The OFO is constructed from the bottom-up by:

• analysing jobs and identifying similarities in terms of a tasks and skills;
• categorising similar jobs into occupations; and
• classifying these occupations into occupational groups at increasing levels of generality.

The OFO adds value to skills development planning and implementation purposes in that it:

• provides a common language when talking about occupations;
• captures jobs in the form of occupations; and
• groups occupations into successively broader categories and hierarchical levels based on similarity of tasks,   skills and knowledge.