# Information and Communication Technology (ICT)

# Proposal for Research Project 

# Summary: This project compares the educational preparation of mid-skilled (post-secondary, pre-baccalaureate) employees in information and communications technologies (ICT) companies and occupations in the United States and Denmark (i.e., basic vocational education and training and the short cycle higher education courses (KVU), with special emphasis of its relevance to REFORM 2000 in Denmark and current reforms in Europe of national vocational educational systems). The goals are to (a) programmatic and systemic improvements in the education, training, international content, and skill standards for ICT and (b) a cooperative structure for on-going monitoring and sharing between colleges and education agencies in both nations. The process will collect new data but will also draw from existing studies and skill standards in making comparisons from both the demand (employers) and supply (colleges) side. This project is a joint initiative to implement the cooperation agreement.

The research will include (1) a review, analysis, and cross-walk of
recent studies of skill needs, job profiling methods, skill standards,
and occupational classifications and definitions, (2) interviews of
employers and vendors that operate in both countries, and (3) analyses
of the content and context of curricula and course materials, and of the
policy environments for four programs (conducted with assistance from
faculty teams).

*Anticipated Accomplishments* include recommendations for improving and
internationalizing education for ICT skills and occupations to enhance
the mobility of graduates; an on-going exchange of information between
the two national education agencies to improve policies; a system for
on-going exchange of information concerning IT skill needs, methods,
curricula, skill standards, and benchmarks among colleges and
researchers in the U.S., Denmark, and other EU nations; documented
findings; and a set of activities among Danish and U.S. officials,
faculty, and students that contributes to the US/Denmark cooperation
agreement.

# I. Overview

This project will compare the educational preparation of mid-skilled
(post-secondary, pre-baccalaureate) employees in information and
communications technologies (ICT) companies and occupations in the
United States and Denmark (basic vocational education and training and
the short cycle higher education courses (KVU) with special emphasis of
its relevance to REFORM 2000 in Denmark and current reforms in Europe of
national vocational educational systems). The goals are to (a) make
improvements in the education, training, international content, and
skill standards for ICT that increase their value to both the employer
and the individual, and (b) establish a cooperative structure for
on-going monitoring and sharing between colleges and education agencies
in both nations. The process will collect new data but will also draw
from existing studies and skill standards in making comparisons from
both the demand (employers) and supply (colleges) side. This project is
a joint initiative that contributes to the implementation of a
cooperation agreement signed by U.S. of Education and Danish Minister of
Education in December 2000 (Appendix A). The agreement was the result of
interest expressed by the Danish Minister in learning from the U.S.
technical education system in order to make systemic improvements in the
Danish system and reciprocal interest from the Office of the U.S.
Secretary of Education in learning from and applying to U.S. policy the
strengths of Denmark's education and system of skill standards.

# II. Activities

# A. Relevance to purposes of program

This collaborative comparative research and program improvement project
meets six of the stated objectives of the program. The project will:

-   promote mutual understanding between the U.S. and Europe by
    exchanging information about the nature of the demand and supply for
    ICT occupations and enterprises with special emphasis on
    employability, flexibility, and adaptability and roles for leading
    companies.

-   improve the quality of human resource development by integrating the
    best characteristics of each program and building a stronger
    international dimension into the curricula.

-   promote transparency and mobility by better understanding and
    adjusting for differences in skills standards and in the
    organization of the workplace.

-   promote long-term alliances and faculty exchanges among colleges and
    key personnel involved in the research, as recommended in the plan
    for the Ford Foundation (Appendix D).

-   reinforce the EU/US dimension to cooperation with special emphasis
    on technical and continuing education.

-   complement an existing relevant bilateral program between Denmark
    and the United States that was signed in December 2000 (see Appendix
    A).

# B. Nature and Purpose

This project is intended to use international benchmarking and
comparative research to improve the design and delivery of education and
training for occupations that require ICT skills in accordance with (a)
the changing and increasingly global needs of employers for specific and
general competencies and flexible employees and (b) the desires of
employees for opportunities for career advancement and mobility within
and across national boundaries. The focus is on improving the match
between post-compulsory, pre-baccalaureate vocational/technical
education institutions and demand in an increasingly international field
of work. For the most part, these institutions prepare what the National
Academy of Sciences calls "Category 2" ICT workers, or those involved in
the "application, adaptation, configuration, support, or implementation
of IT products or services designed and developed by others."[^1] These
workers rely on technical skills related to specific platforms or
applications software and depend on high levels of technical knowledge
in areas of configuration, maintenance, installation, functionality and
systems capabilities. They also should have knowledge of the business
context in which they work. Some pre-baccalaureate institutions,
however, also educate for some aspects of "Category 1" work, which is
the development, creation, specification, design, and testing of an IT
good or service. Many ICT workers possess education credentials in
non-ICT fields, and therefore it is important to consider ICT
preparation as a form of lifelong learning and an opportunity for
incumbent workers to acquire new skills and move into new careers. In
the U.S., in fact, many community college students already have a B.A.
or B.S. degrees in a non-ICT field.

**Globalization of IT**: The globalization of information has led to the
globalization of ICT requirements and protocols and an organization of
work that crosses all national boundaries. Therefore the competencies,
knowledge, and increasingly specialized certifications of the labor
force that develops, improves, and administers ICT protocols must be
comparable in all nations. The academies of Oracle, Microsoft, Cisco,
Novell, and other vendors are examples of how skills standards are
developed and set in (and out) of educational institutions and systems
all over the world. Global testing agencies serving as intermediaries
administer tests that must be passed before certifying completers.
However these specialized academies mainly address skills linked to the
release of each new generation of specific software product and do not
address or match the wider set of foundation skills concerned with
methodology, design, documentation, and problem solutions. A risk,
therefore, is that the international information technology guild, which
Clifford Adelman[^2] notes is developing in all nations, could be
setting skills standards that overlook the longer term needs of industry
or the employability needs of the individual. Further, companies in
industrialized nations are increasingly looking to foreign ICT workers
to meet their labor market demands and to foreign locations for their
plants or offices. An approach is needed that builds on partnerships
between colleges and industry in order to incorporate into the system an
educational process that effectively captures and transfers changes in
skills to the individual.

**Skill Needs**: Throughout the industrialized world, nations have been
facing tight labor markets for people with intermediate and advanced
competencies in information technologies. The employment shortfalls and
skill mismatches have affected not only the ICT[^3] industry but all
those industries that are increasingly dependent on ICT, e.g.,
traditional manufacturers and distributors that are required to become
e-businesses and integrate their entire production systems into a
logistics chain, advertising agencies that use the web, financial
institutions that manage databases, and publishers that use advanced
digital systems for e-publishing services. Although estimates of
documented shortages of employees with the right IT and IT-related
qualifications vary widely, it is nevertheless a bottleneck and threat
to many regional economies across the U.S. and Europe. Even with the
recent spate of downsizing and small "dot com" closings as the industry
faces its first major crisis and undergoes its first retrenchment, the
labor shortages/mismatches remain high in both continents according to a
recent article in *Financial Times* [^4].[^5] Further, the composition
and content of the IT sector is changing rapidly, and employees of
successful companies must be able to deal with states of flux.

-   A 1999 report from the U.S. Department of Commerce predicted a
    demand for nearly 1.4 million new highly skilled IT workers to meet
    needs between 1996 and 2006---1.1 million for new jobs and 240,000
    for replacements.[^6]

-   By 2010, half of all jobs in the European Union (EU) are projected
    to be in industries that are either major producers or intensive
    users of ICT products and services. A skills gap already exists that
    is limiting growth in software, services and telecommunications
    sectors. The shortage in Western Europe could reach 1.6 million
    equivalent jobs by 2002. A recent study from EITO, European
    Information Technology Observatory, estimates that there will be a
    shortage of 723,000 people in two years time and that employment in
    the ICT sector will increase and in 2003 account for 13.4 % of the
    labor force.[^7]

-   The Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) estimated
    in 1999 a shortage of 400,000 IT workers. Over 80 percent of the
    firms polled said the shortage was the same or more severe than a
    year ago.[^8] In early 2000, ITAA, based on a survey of 700 IT
    managers, estimated that demand exceeds supply by nearly
    850,000.[^9]

-   The gap between supply and demand for personnel with IT skills and
    experience that require less than a BS degree but more than a high
    school diploma is widening.[^10] and ICT competencies increasingly
    are needed in programs other than ICT core occupations.[^11]

-   Only two percent of the workforce in Denmark has an official IT
    diploma or education, almost two thirds of IT employees have little
    or no formal IT education, and over 60 per cent of employees working
    in the private sector have no IT education whatsoever.

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-   An increasing level of globalization and need of standardization of
    the human resources function in the ICT sector goes beyond national
    system differences. ICT firms can be expected to have a greater role
    in the future in shaping curricula and standards due to the rapid
    rate of innovation in ICT.

-   The recent downsizing in the ICT sector in the U.S. and, to a
    certain degree, in Denmark, which calls for a deeper understanding
    on how short-term operational skills needs and broader transversal
    skills needs are best met in order to ensure maximum employability
    for employees under economic fluctuations.

-   The role that internal certification systems and corporate virtual
    universities will play in the skills formation, including new type
    of preferred partnerships between colleges and companies, extends
    beyond geographical borders and systems.

# The objectives are: 

-   To improve the theoretical and applied skills and knowledge of ICT
    workers in the U.S. and Denmark and, by transference, to other parts
    of Europe.

-   To increase the number of people qualified for ICT occupations and
    establish a part-time, lifelong learning track for people from other
    fields wishing to qualify for ICT positions.

-   To contribute to employee mobility by developing more consistent
    skill standards among nations.

-   To develop a pilot international curriculum that includes the best
    aspects of both nations' education for trial implementation.

-   To build a network of colleges and policy experts that will
    facilitate collaborative exchange, benchmarking, and monitoring of
    needs, skill standards, and sharing curricula regarding ICT.

-   To develop an assessment system for both work-based and classroom
    learning that meets skill standards.

-   To identify and implement systemic changes in the education systems
    of the U.S. and Denmark for ICT occupations.

# C. Content

**Thesis 1**: ICT protocols and skill requirements span national
boundaries; thus both the needs and programs for education and training
programs are increasingly global, can be compared and contrasted, and
are convergent.

**Thesis 2**: The content and delivery of ICT education can be
demonstrably improved by the exchange of methodologies and information
among researchers, faculty, administrators, and policy makers between
Denmark, representing a European education system, and the U.S.

**Thesis 3**: The process will enhance learning and productivity, and
the relationships will result in increased communications and exchanges
among both faculty and students across the Atlantic.

Denmark will be the lead country from among European Union nations. This
choice is justified because of its recent formal technical education
alliance with the United States (Appendix A), because its system was
selected for the Carl Bertelsmann Prize in 1999 as the best system for
occupational education,[^12] and because of the importance of ICT to its
economy. According to the OECD, Denmark's employment in ICT as a percent
of the business sector ranked sixth among OECD countries (the U.S.
ranked 14, but above the OECD average).[^13] The information collected,
however, will include data from other EU countries and the findings will
be presented in a way that makes them applicable to other EU countries.

# 1. Methodology

The research that informs the final report will include (1) a review,
analysis, and cross-walk of recent studies of skill needs, job profiling
methods, skill standards, and occupational classifications and
definitions, (2) interviews with employers and vendors that operate in
both countries and employee associations, and (3) analyses of the
content and context of curricula and course materials, and of the policy
environments for four programs (conducted with assistance from faculty
teams).

For the content analysis, we will identify three ICT occupations that
are relatively similar in both nations, are needed by large numbers of
employers, and that use some type of skill standards. We do not
underestimate the difficulty of matching occupations in a field that is
based more on job content than on job titles; however, we believe we can
develop a matching framework. We will then select at least 20 companies
(10 large and 10 small) that have jobs that are related to the content
of at least two of the three occupational programs. Typical occupations
might be network design and administration; database administration and
development; web development and administration; sales support
specialist; e-business technician; and web master. We will also select a
group of 8 to 12 colleges in each nation that offer training in at least
two of the three selected occupations. In the U.S, the colleges will be
selected from the states of Mississippi, Kentucky, Virginia, and
Colorado (Support letters attached). Each state has made a major
commitment to improving its ICT education and has expressed strong
interest in participating and in applying the results in the form of
program improvements. In addition, Kentucky has played a lead role in
developing the U.S.-Danish cooperative agreement. In Denmark, half of
the schools will be technical colleges and the other half, commercial
colleges.

Since there will be inter-institutional differences within each nation
(greater in the U.S. due to differences among state systems and a
paucity of national standards) and differences among European Union
nations, the analysis must determine whether differences in outcomes
between nations exceed the differences among states or regions within
nations. There are, however, fundamental structural differences between
the U.S. and Danish educational systems and organization of work that
can be compared, such as the intensity of workplace learning, entrance
requirements, roles of companies, employer federations, and labor
organizations in development and testing, the transfer mechanisms to
higher education, and needs for decision making skills and flexibility.
Finally, there are differences in the policy environments that affect
what institutions are allowed or not allowed to do and in the funding
formulas that affect what they are able or not able to do. All of this
will be done under the auspices of and with advice from the steering
committees for the U.S./Danish cooperation agreement signed in December
2000 (Appendix A).

**Task 1: Review and compare existing IT skill needs assessments.**

The analysis will select recent national and local skill requirement
surveys from the U.S., e.g., Information Technology Association of
America (ITAA) and the states of Indiana, New York, California, and one
underway by RTS in Mississippi, and compare the results to surveys in
Europe from, for example, EITO, Carrier Space, and a number of national
surveys that have been conducted in Denmark at a national and regional
level, including several by the Danish Technological Institute. We will
attempt to explain differences---which may be significant (in the U.S.,
the National Academy of Sciences, for example, found estimates of the
size of the ICT labor force that ranged from 2 million to 10
million)[^14] in terms of economic and market conditions, regional
variations, and changes in technology.

# Task 2: Review and compare skill standards.

We will compare the voluntary standards that have been developed in the
U.S. by the National Center for Emerging Technologies at Bellevue
Community College and National Skill Standards Board and by various
states with those standards used in Denmark and across European to
determine where they differ and, insofar as possible, why. Standards
will be classified as U.S only, Denmark only, and common. In order to
ensure a European perspective, standards identified will be compared
with current standards developed by Career Space in collaboration with a
number of leading firms in Europe and with the European Commission, as
well as with studies conducted by CEDEFOP. We will also compare the
impacts of the global certifying intermediaries that do the testing for
various competencies associated with ICT vendors as expressed by numbers
tested and passed. These include, among the largest, Prometric (operates
in 140 countries), CatGlobal (servers in 16 countries), and Virtual
University Enterprises (1,500 locations).

**Task 3: Present findings for review to the Danish/U.S. steering
committee.**

We will present the findings to the joint steering committee for review
and comment.

**Task 4: Comparing views of employers**

**a. Interviews:** We will conduct structured interviews with (a) ten
multi-national employers that operate in each nation or that produce or
use similar equipment or software in both countries and (b) ten small or
mid-sized enterprises (SMEs) in each country that work with or use
similar equipment. The large employers may include Oracle, SAS, Danfoss,
Intel, Lego, and Cisco, Hewlitt-Packard, IBM, or Grundfos. We will be
sure to include ICT "production" companies and major ICT users, since
many of the greatest needs for ICT workers are among firms not
classified as ICT companies. The objective is to compare employers' and
suppliers' needs, requirements, and perceptions of strengths and
weaknesses of the employees and educational systems in both nations, to
examine how they interact with educational institutions at the
local/system levels, and to distinguish between systemic and local
differences. The companies will be asked to describe the skills they
expect for employment and for advancement in selected occupational
fields, the drivers of change in skills requirements, and to assess and
compare the value of the preparation their employees receive.

The structured interviews will ask about, for example:

-   strengths and weaknesses of the educational process in each country

-   partnership arrangements, involvement in the educational process,
    and skills definition

-   ways that differences in the organization of work affect skill
    requirements

-   occupations they seek to fill from this mid-skilled pool and whether
    there are differences or barriers to fill those occupations
    attributable to the nature of the skills profiles

-   problems concerning methodological foundations at the technician
    level and what is it a company "buys" in less than a master's
    candidate

-   skills that are most important to employers and significant national
    differences

-   areas in which new hires are strongest and weakest

-   career paths/ladders available to graduates

-   skill upgrading and re-certification requirements, how they are
    arranged, and roles played by vocational colleges and employer and
    labor organizations

-   importance of and means for acquiring tacit knowledge

-   expectations for globalization/internationalization of the knowledge
    industry, corporate university alliances, and how they can affect
    supply and demand

Although too small a sample of employers for a rigorous statistical
analysis, the contextual information will supplement what is learned
from the base of existing surveys, be used to validate or refute the
findings of other studies, and identify differences between such things
as productivity, problem solving skills, advancement rates, and
organization of work in the two nations. We will focus on questions that
relate to structural and policy differences between the two systems and
to issues that have been ambiguous or conflicting in results of recent
surveys. The more detailed information combined with the analysis of the
literature will allow us to compare qualifications for similar
occupations in the U.S. and Denmark, technical competencies, business
competencies, advancement potential and fulfillment. It will also help
to refine the way future information---which the National Academy of
Science concluded is needed---is classified and collected to make it
more useful.

**b. Analysis of "Want Ads"** We will analyze a sample of recently
posted advertisements for ICT job openings and tabulate and compare
requirements in terms of years of experience, international experience,
levels of education or degrees/certificates, software or vendor
certifications, and special competencies for comparable jobs. The
objective is to determine whether educational qualifications are treated
differently in the two nations. For example, is a baccalaureate more
likely to be required in one place and, if so, why?

**Task 5: Comparing the education and training programs**

Based on information from these colleges and working with a team
composed of members of their faculties and state and national agencies,
we will compare the following with a special focus on three occupations
and a sample of ICT courses within those programs. This will require a
small number of workshops (estimated at one joint U.S./Danish and one
national per year), of education and training experts within nations and
between nations to review content and resolve questions and issues, and
a web based information exchange system. With respect to Task 5(a)
below, colleges and/or government agencies will submit potential
programs and courses for analysis. Members will review these and jointly
select those to be analyzed in depth.

**a. Organization and content of curricula for new employees**: We will
compare the mix of theory and practice, the organization and scale of
work-based education, the mix of specific IT coursework, distance
learning methods, business context, homework requirements, liberal arts,
electives, emphasis on "all aspects of the industry," project work,
instructional methods, classroom technologies, entrepreneurial content
of programs, use of skill standards, length and time of programs,
off-campus (including in-plant) courses, class opportunities, and
processes for creating and updating curricula.

**b. Enrollment patterns**: We will compare entrance requirements (and
barriers), pathways into ICT programs, age, gender, ethnicity of
entrants, part-time enrollments, and recruitment methods and trends for
each.

**c. Roles of social partners and customers**: In what ways are
employers, employer associations, and employee associations engaged in
planning and/or determining program requirements, content, graduation
requirements, testing, faculty and administrator qualifications, and
college hiring decisions?

**d. Governance structures**: We will compare the corporate differences
between U.S. and Danish delivery systems for initial and continuing
education, degrees of institutional and program autonomy and roles and
responsibilities at each level of government, performance assessment
tools, and research agendas. We will look in particular at the
flexibility of colleges and individual faculty to adapt to market and
technological changes, to meet the lifelong learning needs of adults and
people in the work force, and to innovate. For example, are
entrepreneurial instructors or institutions and flexible scheduling
supported and are innovators rewarded or constrained?

**e. Resources**: We will compare the forms of funding available for ICT
programs and courses and the technological resources that are available
(hardware and software) and opportunities for and applications of
distance education.

**f. Skill upgrading and special certification---credit and
non-credit**: We will compare the availability of and enrollments in
short courses for workers who wish to upgrade skills or advance or
available to other non-ICT professionals or technicians who wish to
acquire additional skills fort ICT work and the experience of the
faculty that teach. We will also compare capacities for vendor
certifications and how they relate to curricula.

**g. Outcomes**: We will compare the retention rates, graduation rates,
employment outcomes, placement services, progression to further
education, and economic outcomes of the credit and non-credit programs.
We will also interview representatives of unions representing ICT
workers.

**Task 6: Present draft report for review to the Danish/U.S. steering
committee.**

We will prepare a report of (1) what was learned from the comparative
analysis of skill needs and standards and the comparisons of programs,
(2) recommendations for changes and improvement based on integrating
best aspects of practices in Denmark and the U.S., and (3) a plan for
continued collaborative innovation and learning. This report will be
presented to the U.S. and Danish steering committee and to the network
of participating colleges for review and comment. The results will be
presented at larger symposia in Denmark and the U.S.

**Task 7: Prepare final report**

RTS and DTI will incorporate suggestions of advisory groups and submit a
final report.

**3. Anticipated Accomplishments and Deliverables**

**a. Improvements in curricula and standards**: Recommendations for
improving and internationalizing the education and training for ICT
skills and occupations and associated skill standards and for reducing
outcome differences to enhance the mobility of graduates. In Denmark it
will encompass both the KVU's as well as initial vocational education
programmes, with special focus on the implications for curriculum
development within the framework of Reform 2000 and similar vocational
reforms under way in Europe..[^15]

*Deliverables*: A report that describes what has been learned from the
analysis and a set of programmatic and systemic changes and that
colleges and governing agencies will consider and, where appropriate,
implement.

**b. Improvements in policies for structure and delivery of ICT
education and training**: An on-going exchange of information between
the two national education agencies.

*Deliverables*: Suggestions for public policies and actions that enhance
the education for ICT occupations including relationships with business
and labor, and for a framework for continuing dialogue and monitoring
performance.

**c. Network**: A system for long term sharing of information about IT
skill needs, learning methods, curricula, skill standards and for
benchmarking that includes a comparable set of colleges and research
agencies in the U.S., in Denmark, and other EU nations.

*Deliverables*: A college innovation and learning exchange (CILE) among
a group of colleges that will continue their interaction as part of a
larger, Ford Foundation-supported, program to develop an international
learning network (Appendix D).

**d. Documentation and Transferability**: Document methodology findings
in ways that they can be replicated in other parts of the U.S., Denmark,
and in other EU member countries.

*Deliverables:* Final report and related publications.

**e. Contribution to U.S./Denmark cooperation agreement**: A set of
activities that will engage Danish and U.S. officials, faculty, and
students in sustained cooperation.

*Deliverables:* A plan for continuing the cooperation concerning ICT
education and training between the two countries that is adopted by the
two steering committees.

##### Performance Measures

+-------------------------------+--------------------------------------+
| **Outcome**                   | **Performance Measures**             |
+-------------------------------+--------------------------------------+
| Recommended improvements in   | Resulting revisions in existing      |
| ICT curricula                 | programs                             |
|                               |                                      |
|                               | Investments in new programs or       |
|                               | courses                              |
|                               |                                      |
|                               | Increased international emphasis     |
|                               |                                      |
|                               | Increased use of colleges by         |
|                               | employers and unions                 |
|                               |                                      |
|                               | Increased enrollments                |
+-------------------------------+--------------------------------------+
| Comparison of ICT skill       | Resulting modifications in skill     |
| standards and uses of vendor  | standards                            |
| standards                     |                                      |
|                               | Increased efforts towards            |
|                               | international standards              |
+-------------------------------+--------------------------------------+
| Analysis of delivery systems  | Changes in relations with industry,  |
| and work environments         | delivery structure (e.g., time,      |
|                               | place, length)                       |
+-------------------------------+--------------------------------------+
| ICT education and training    | Formation and administrative         |
| network                       | endorsement of permanent leaning     |
|                               | alliance of US and DK colleges       |
|                               | committed to continual improvement   |
+-------------------------------+--------------------------------------+
| Documented results            | Extent of dissemination throughout   |
|                               | U.S., Denmark, and EU countries      |
+-------------------------------+--------------------------------------+
| Cooperative activity of       | Increased communication,             |
| U.S./Danish cooperation       | understanding, and cooperation       |
| agreement                     |                                      |
+-------------------------------+--------------------------------------+

**Evaluation**

The value of the project will ultimately be evaluated by the steering
committee in terms of usefulness, impacts, and the sustainability of the
relationships formed. The committee will establish a subcommittee to
assess the success and value of the project.

**4. Time table/sequencing of tasks**

**Quarter**

  ------------------------ ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- -------
  **Task**                 **1**   **2**   **3**   **4**   **5**   **6**   **7**   **8**

  Literature comparison                                                            

  Skill Standards                                                                  

  Steering Committee                                                               
  Review                                                                           

  Compare employers                                                                

  Compare E&T                                                                      

  Draft report & symposia                                                          

  Final report                                                                     
  ------------------------ ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- ------- -------

**5. Organizational Capabilities**

RTS and the Danish Technological Institute have worked together
previously on various research projects, including grants from the U.S.
Department of Commerce and the U.S. Department of Education (compared
performance assessments of colleges and IT programs across four
countries for the congressionally-mandated National Assessment of
Vocational Education). In addition, the co-PI's worked together to form
the Trans-Atlantic Technology and Training Alliance and both served in
the advisory board for the Danish National Centre for Distance Learning.

**Regional Technology Strategies, Inc.** is a tax-exempt nonprofit
company, incorporated in North Carolina in 1991 and located in Carrboro,
that researches, designs, implements, and assesses economic and
workforce development strategies and policies. RTS has a substantial
experience in working with community and technical colleges and in
conducting research on the ICT sectors, including recent contracts with
New York State to assess ICT needs and the National Assessment of
Vocational Education to compare ICT skill needs across four nations and
with current contracts with the National Science Foundation and the
State of Mississippi (Appendix C). RTS also has long standing
relationship with a range of institutions in Denmark and the PI has
organized five study tours to Denmark that have included leading
educators and public officials from a dozen states.

**The Danish Technological Institute** is one of Europe's leading
applied research institutions. Established in 1906, it has about 1,000
employees and an annual budget of 98 million Euros (Appendix D). The
role of the Danish Technological Institute is to address the needs of
the industrial sector and of society as a whole by developing and
disseminating technological innovation. Technology is here understood to
be broader than technical expertise and to include business management,
the development of organizations and human resources, and wider societal
impacts. The Centre for Competence and IT, within the Danish
Technological Institute's Business and Management Development Division,
works with new forms of competence development, organizational
development and knowledge management using IT. The Centre also focuses
upon the changing competence needs of the public and private sectors,
management, employees and society resulting from the introduction of new
technology and upon their socio-economic impacts.

**Co-PI Dr. Stuart A. Rosenfeld** is principal, Regional Technology
Strategies, Inc. He founded and directs the activities of the Consortium
for Manufacturing Competitiveness and Trans-Atlantic Technology and
Training Alliance, two internationally renowned networks of leading
technical colleges in the U.S. South and Europe. He has contributed
design papers to two of the past three congressionally mandated national
assessments of vocational education, and designed and co-authored the
final report of the earlier 1981 study. Dr. Rosenfeld has served on
several committees for the National Academy of Sciences; testified
before and reported to more than a dozen U.S. Legislative and
Congressional and OECD committees; and published numerous papers and
books on networks, economic development, technology policy, and
vocational education. In the past five years, he has been principal
investigator in studies and evaluations for the U.S. Departments of
Agriculture and Education, National Institute for Standards and
Technology, National Science Foundation, Ford, Alfred P. Sloan, Ford,
and Joyce Foundations, the German Marshall Fund of the United States,
North Carolina Rural Economic Development Center, Appalachian Regional
Commission, Tennessee Valley Authority, and various states and regions.

**Co-PI Hanne Shapiro** is the Manager for the Center for Competence
Development & IT at the Danish Technological Institute in Denmark, where
she has worked for nine years. She holds a B.A. from the Aarhus School
of Education and has taken courses at Boston University and Sorbonne
University, Paris. Ms. Shapiro has been project coordinator for European
Transport pilot project in COMETT I; member of project management team
for COMETT II project COSTEL; coordinator and initiator of European/U.S.
regional continuing training alliance under the US-Europe Cooperation
Act; project manager for strategic competency planning and recruiting in
collaboration with the Danish Confederation of Executive, and Managerial
Staff for the Danish Employers' Confederation and labor market
authorities in four counties. She also has been a member of team for a
national survey on skills needs related to ICT developments for the
Danish Ministry of Research and Ministry of Education; conducted a
national survey of skills demand and educational supply related to
e-business for the Ministry of Research and Ministry of Education; and
contributed to a trans-European survey headed by Dublin University on
ICT and new skills for women in the finance and retail sector.

### Other Project Staff

**Cynthia Liston**, **RTS,** Director of Workforce Development, holds an
M.S. from Georgetown University and B.A. from the University of North
Carolina. Ms. Liston directed two international asynchronous learning
networks projects, a major project to examine state-financed,
employer-focused job training programs, and is directing an NSF project
on ICT.

**Sarah Butzen, RTS,** Research Analyst, holds a B.A. from Kenyon
College and an MS in Public Policy from Duke University.

**Mette Abrahamsen, DTI**, holds an MA degree in Scandinavian Studies
and Information Studies. Her key qualifications include analysis and
documentation of complex organisational problems with special reference
to interpersonal relationships and competence requirements in relation
to IT. She is co-author of an Intranet Handbook and has been project
coordinator for a study of organizational learning and sharing of
knowledge in seven Danish companies.

**Knud Erik Hilding-Hamann**, **Senior Consultant, DTI**, has more than
12 years experience working with IT, education and training and business
development. He has managed projects and contributed to several European
Commission projects within the Telematics in Education Training
Programme, Esprit, and ADAPT and Leonardo.

**Additional Resources and Expertise**: In addition to the two steering
committees, the project will engage other organizations as sources of
information and advice and to help evaluate the research at various
stages. These will include the European Commission, CEDEFOP, the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, "Career Space,"
DG V, the Information Technology Association of America, New York New
Media Association, the Community College Research Center at Columbia
University, the U.S. National Skill Standards Board, and the American
Association of Community Colleges.

**LEAD PARTNERS INDENTIFICATION FORM**

**EC Project Coordinator:**

+-------------------------+--------------------------------------------+
| # Last name, first name | Shapiro, Hanne                             |
+-------------------------+--------------------------------------------+
| Name of                 | Teknologisk Institut                       |
| i                       |                                            |
| nstitution/organization |                                            |
|                         |                                            |
| in the national         |                                            |
| language                |                                            |
+-------------------------+--------------------------------------------+
| Name of                 | Danish Technological Institute (DTI)       |
| i                       |                                            |
| nstitution/organization |                                            |
| in English              |                                            |
+-------------------------+--------------------------------------------+
| Department/Unit         | Centre for Competence and IT               |
+-------------------------+--------------------------------------------+
| Type of                 | RES                                        |
| i                       |                                            |
| nstitution/organization |                                            |
+-------------------------+--------------------------------------------+
| Function (or title)     | Centre Manager                             |
+-------------------------+--------------------------------------------+
| Street address          | Teknologiparken                            |
|                         |                                            |
| Post code and town/city | DK-8000 Århus C                            |
|                         |                                            |
| Country and region      | Denmark                                    |
+-------------------------+--------------------------------------------+
| Phone (country and area | 45 7220 1415                               |
| code)                   |                                            |
+-------------------------+--------------------------------------------+
| Fax (country and area   | 45 7220 1414                               |
| code)                   |                                            |
+-------------------------+--------------------------------------------+
| Email address           | Hanne.Shapiro@teknologisk.dk               |
+-------------------------+--------------------------------------------+

**US Project Coordinator**:

+-------------------------+--------------------------------------------+
| # Last name, first name | Rosenfeld, Stuart                          |
+-------------------------+--------------------------------------------+
| Name of                 | Regional Technology Strategies, Inc.       |
| i                       |                                            |
| nstitution/organization |                                            |
+-------------------------+--------------------------------------------+
| Department/Office       | \--                                        |
+-------------------------+--------------------------------------------+
| Type of                 | Tax-exempt non-profit corporation          |
| i                       |                                            |
| nstitution/organization |                                            |
+-------------------------+--------------------------------------------+
| Function (or title)     | President                                  |
+-------------------------+--------------------------------------------+
| Street address          | 205 Lloyd St., Suite 210                   |
|                         |                                            |
| City/State/Zip code     |                                            |
+-------------------------+--------------------------------------------+
| Phone (area code)       | 919 933-6699                               |
+-------------------------+--------------------------------------------+
| Fax (area code)         | 919 933-6688                               |
+-------------------------+--------------------------------------------+
| Email address           | rosenfeld@rtsinc.org                       |
+-------------------------+--------------------------------------------+

**Dr. Stuart A. Rosenfeld, Regional Technology Strategies, Inc.**

**205 Lloyd Street, Carrboro, NC 27510**

**919-933-6699 Fax 919-933-6688 rosenfeld@rtsinc.org**

Dr. Stuart Rosenfeld is founder, principal, and president of Regional
Technology Strategies, Inc., a non-profit organization located in
Carrboro, North Carolina that is dedicated to researching, designing,
implementing, and assessing economic and workforce development
strategies. He directs the activities of the Trans-Atlantic Alliance for
Technology and Training, an international consortium of colleges in the
U.S. South, Europe, and South Africa. Rosenfeld has more than 30 years
of experience in policy analysis, formulation, and evaluation, published
and edited more than 100 articles, monographs, and chapters on these
subjects in various books, journals, magazines, and newspapers, given
more than 100 speeches to regional and national organizations, and
consulted for or testified before numerous advisory panels and
committees for the U.S. Congress, National Academy of Sciences, and
Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development.

Dr. Rosenfeld graduated cum laude in chemical engineering from the
University of Wisconsin and then worked for more than seven years in
manufacturing and operations research for the General Electric Company,
where he helped design and implement a division-wide program to teach
and apply management science. In 1971, he became headmaster of the New
School, an elementary/middle school in Vermont, returned to graduate
school at Harvard University, was named to the editorial board of the
*Harvard* *Educational* *Review*, and earned his doctorate in Education
Policy and Planning in 1977. Upon graduation, he joined the National
Institute of Education as a Senior Associate, managing and conducting
research on school finance, school district organization, and vocational
education---all with special emphasis on links to economic development.
He had lead responsibility for designing a national Congressionally
mandated study of vocational education and co-authored the final report
to the Congress.

From 1982 to 1991, Dr. Rosenfeld was Deputy Director of the Southern
Growth Policies Board in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, an
interstate compact that informs the governors of southern states on
education and economic development policy matters. In 1985, Rosenfeld
conceptualized and established a new policy advisory arm of the Southern
Growth Policies Board---the Southern Technology Council---as a forum for
southern states to share information, debate ideas, demonstrate new
programs, and form cooperative ventures.

Dr. Rosenfeld has participated in studies and evaluations for the
Northwest Area Foundation, the U.S. Departments of Agriculture,
Commerce, and Education, National Academy of Sciences, National Science
Foundation, Hitachi, Ford, Kellogg, MacArthur, Winthrop Rockefeller, and
Joyce Foundations, Carnegie Corporation, Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development, Southern Education Foundation, North
Carolina Rural Economic Development Center, Jobs for the Future, MDC
Inc., Appalachian Regional Commission, Tennessee Valley Authority, and
Research Triangle Institute.

Dr. Rosenfeld also is a Senior Policy Fellow with the Southern Growth
Policies Board and a Senior Research Associate with the Community
College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University.

**List of Selected Recent Publications**

"Rural Community Colleges: Creating Hybrids for the New Economy," to be
published in Vol. 15, Issue 5 of USDA's *Rural Economy*, Summer 2001

"Community Colleges as Engines of Growth," with Cynthia Liston. *Forum
for Applied Research and Public Policy*, Spring 2000.

*Learning.now: Skills for the Information Economy*, (Ed.) Washington,
DC, Community College Press, 2000.

"Education for Industrial Competitiveness and Rural Development," in
Peter Schaeffer and Scott Loveridge (Ed.), *Small Town and Rural
Economic Development: A Case Studies Approach* (New York: Praeger Press,
2000).

# "Cluster/ Community College Connections," *Economic Development Quarterly*, 14 (February 2000)

# "Linking Measures of Quality and Success to Goals and Customers," web site of National Assessment of Vocational Education, <http://www.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/sectech/nave/index.html>, U.S. Department of Education, Washington, DC, 1999.

"Regional Innovation Strategies in the United States: Small Steps, High
Expectations," to be published in Morgan and Nauwelaers (Eds), *Regional
Innovation Strategies: The Challenge for Less Favoured Regions* (London:
The Stationery Office, 1999).

"Technical Education in Denmark: The 'Sandwich Model'," with Cynthia
Liston, in James Mahoney and Lynn Barnett (Eds.), *Developing
Technicians: Successful International Systems*. (Washington, DC:
Community College Press, 1998).

"Cluster Connections Give Communities Economic and Educational Boost,"
*Community College Journal* 68 (June/July 1998).

"Asynchronous Learning Network and the Consortium for Manufacturing
Competitiveness" in *Educating Our Children with Technology Skills to
Compete in the Next Millennium,* Joint Hearing before the Subcommittee
on Technology of the Committee on Science and the Subcommittee on Early
Childhood Youth, and Families of the Committee on Education and the
Workforce, One Hundred Fifth Congress, March 24, 1998 (Washington, DC:
Government Printing Office, 1998).

*Technical College, Technology Deployment, and Regional Development*,
Stock-Taking Paper for International Conference on Building Competitive
Regional Economies, Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development, Modena, Italy, May 28-29, 1998.

"Bringing Business Clusters into the Mainstream of Economic
Development." *European Planning Studies*, Volume 5, Number 1, 1997.

"United States: Business Clusters" in *Networks of Enterprises and Local
Development*. (Paris: Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development, 1996.

"Community Colleges - The Right Place at the Right Time," *The Catalyst*
XXV (Spring, 1996).

*New Technologies and New Skills: Two- Year Colleges at the Vanguard of
Modernization* (Chapel Hill: RTS, Inc, 1995).

*Advancing Opportunity in Advanced Manufacturing: The Potential for
Predominantly Minority Two-Year Colleges* (Chapel Hill: RTS, Inc, 1995),
with Marcia Kingslow

*Competitive Manufacturing: New Strategies for Regional Development*,
(Piscataway, New Jersey: Center for Urban Policy Research Press, Rutgers
University, 1992).

**Co-PI Hanne Shapiro** is the Centre Manager of Competence and IT at
the Danish Technological Institute in Denmark, where she has worked for
more than ten years. Prior to that she worked in Brussels as a senior
programme analyst in the COMETT Technical Assistance Office with special
responsibility for the pilot programme initiative, technology supported
education and the concentration with the R&D telematics programmes. She
holds a B.A. from the Aarhus School of Education and has taken courses
at Boston University and Sorbonne University in sociology and French.
She has been project coordinator for European Transport pilot project in
COMETT I. Ms. Shapiro has been a member of project management team for
COMETT II project COSTEL; coordinator and initiator of European-US
regional continuing training alliance under the US-Europe Cooperation
Act; she has been a core partner in the external evaluation of two of
the external evaluations carried out on the EU FORCE programme
(formation continue en Europe) as well as the first evaluation of the
Leonardo programme and the Socrates programme. Ms. Shapiro contributed
to the White Book on Information Society for us All- background report
"The Learning Labour Market." She has also been a member of a team for a
national survey on skills needs related to ICT developments for the
Danish Ministry of Research and Ministry of Education and has conducted
a national survey of skills demand and educational supply related to
e-business for the Ministry of Research and Ministry of Education. She
contributed to two regional surveys on ICT skills in Denmark and
contributed to trans-European survey headed by Dublin University on ICT
and new skills for women in the finance and retail sector. For the
national Ministry of Education, she developed a new taxonomy and
framework for curriculum description linked to the Vocational Education
Reform 2000. She has been the project manager of two consecutive
evaluations of the implementation of the vocational reform in Denmark.
Ms. Shapiro is member of the Forum network---a European policy and
research network on innovation in vocational education and training and
is an expert for the IST programme, Flexible University.

**EC-US PROGRAM\--BUDGET SUMMARY, FY 2001**

# PROJECT FUNDS REQUESTED FROM FIPSE

+--------------------------------+--------+--------+--------+--------+
| ## A. Direct Costs:            | **YR   | **YR   | **YR   | **T    |
|                                | 1**    | 2**    | 3**    | OTAL** |
+--------------------------------+--------+--------+--------+--------+
| 1\. Salaries & Wages           | 20,920 | 22,640 | 0      | 43,560 |
| *(Professional and Clerical*)  |        |        |        |        |
+--------------------------------+--------+--------+--------+--------+
| 2\. Employee Benefits          | 7,322  | 7,924  | 0      | 15,246 |
+--------------------------------+--------+--------+--------+--------+
| 3\. Travel                     | 8,000  | 6,000  | 0      | 14,000 |
+--------------------------------+--------+--------+--------+--------+
| 4\. Equipment (Purchase)       | 0      | 0      | 0      | 0      |
+--------------------------------+--------+--------+--------+--------+
| 5\. Materials and Supplies     | 0      | 0      | 0      | 0      |
+--------------------------------+--------+--------+--------+--------+
| 6\. Consultants and Contracts  | 7,500  | 7,500  | 0      | 15,000 |
+--------------------------------+--------+--------+--------+--------+
| 7\. Other                      | 2,554  | 2,232  | 0      | 4,786  |
+--------------------------------+--------+--------+--------+--------+
| **B. Mobility Stipends**       | 0      | 0      | 0      | 0      |
+--------------------------------+--------+--------+--------+--------+
| ## Subtotal (A + B)            | 46,296 | 46,296 | 0      | 92,592 |
+--------------------------------+--------+--------+--------+--------+
| **C. Indirect Costs**          | 3,704  | 3,704  | 0      | 7,408  |
+--------------------------------+--------+--------+--------+--------+
| **TOTAL REQUESTED**            | 50,000 | 50,000 | 0      | 1      |
|                                |        |        |        | 00,000 |
+--------------------------------+--------+--------+--------+--------+

## PROJECT COSTS NOT REQUESTED FROM FIPSE

  -------------------------------- --------- --------- --------- ---------
  Institutional Support                                          

  **Other Funding Sources**        10,417    11,578    0         21,995
  -------------------------------- --------- --------- --------- ---------

## FUNDS REQUESTED BY EUROPEAN PARTNERS

  ------------------------------- --------- --------- --------- -----------
  **Total Requested from the      50,000    50,000    0         100,000
  European Commission**                                         

  ------------------------------- --------- --------- --------- -----------

**Budget Narrative**

1\. Travel in year one includes two trips to Denmark at \$1,500 each to
meet with EU partner and steering committee, partial travel costs for
meetings with faculty team members totaling \$3,000, one trip to PI
conference at \$1,000. Travel required for in-person interviews with
companies will be combined with other trips and require only marginal
expenses estimated to be \$1,000. Travel in year two includes one trip
to Denmark at \$1,500, one to PI conference at \$1,000, and the
remaining \$3,500 to assist with travel costs of faculty advisory teams.

2\. Consultants includes10 honoraria of \$500 for lead faculty advisors
in each year and an additional \$2,500 for consultants to advise as
needed in the design phases.

3\. Other includes communications expenses, meeting costs for faculty
teams, and layout and printing of reports.

4\. The indirect rate used was 8 percent of direct expenses.

### Project costs not requested

The difference between the indirect rate of 50 percent of direct labor
and benefits, which has been accepted in recent contracts with the U.S.
Department of Education, Appalachian Regional Commission, U.S.
Department of Agriculture, Tennessee Valley Authority, and National
Science Foundation.

**Appendix A**

**UNDERSTANDING ON EDUCATION BETWEEN THE**

**GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA**

AND THE GOVERNMENT OF DENMARK

The Government of the United States of America and the Government of
Denmark, herein after referred to as the Participants;

Desiring to promote better understanding between the peoples of the
United States of America and Denmark, to strengthen the relationships
between the two countries through education, and to improve the
education systems of each country;

Believing that the expansion of mutually beneficial cooperation and
exchanges facilitates the achievement of these aims, and

Desiring to strengthen the links already existing between the
educational communities in both countries,

Have reached the following understandings:

# ARTICLE I: GENERAL PRINCIPLES

The Participants intend to enhance and expand cooperative efforts in
education according to the following general principles:

A.  The Participants plan to encourage and develop cooperation and
    exchanges in the field of education on the basis of equality, mutual
    benefit, and reciprocity.

B.  Such exchanges and cooperation are subject to the constitutional and
    applicable laws and regulations of the respective countries, and to
    the availability of funds. Within this framework, the Participants
    intend to make every effort to promote favorable conditions for the
    fulfillment of this cooperation and these exchanges.

C.  The cooperation contemplated in this Understanding is not intended
    to affect relations currently established between educational
    agencies, institutions, or school systems of the Participants.
    Rather, the Participants intend to identify new areas for joint
    activities, or, where deemed appropriate by all concerned, to
    strengthen or expand existing programs.

# ARTICLE II: METHODS OF COOPERATION 

A.  In carrying out the general principles of this Understanding, the
    Participants intend to:

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1.  Encourage and facilitate closer relationships between educational
    agencies and offices, schools and school systems, postsecondary
    institutions, appropriate educational organizations, business, labor
    and other educational stakeholders in the two countries, with
    special emphasis on vocational education initiatives that support
    systemic innovations as well as institutional partnerships between
    Danish Technical and Business Colleges and United States Community
    Colleges.

2.  Encourage mutually beneficial educational activities involving
    researchers, scholars, faculty members, teachers, educational
    administrators, students and other specialists to lecture, teach,
    conduct research, and develop cooperative programs, in higher
    education and secondary education.

B. The Participants intend to emphasize:

1.  Cooperation that facilitates exchanges and dialogue centered on
    vocational and technical education, methods, evaluation and
    research, as well as apprenticeship programs and work-based
    learning.

2.  Introducing an international dimension into vocational and technical
    education through development of new learning methods and courses,
    sharing expertise and innovation, and sharing experience in quality
    assessment, benchmarking and skill standards.

## ARTICLE III: ORGANIZATION AND COOPERATION

A.  The executive agency for fulfilling the Understanding for the United
    States of America is the Department of Education, in consultation
    with the Department of State. The executive agency for fulfilling
    the Understanding for the Government of Denmark is the Ministry of
    Education, in consultation with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
    Each executive agency may designate an entity within such agency to
    coordinate functions under this Understanding.

B.  The Participants expect to create a Steering Group that will meet
    periodically to review the implementation of this Understanding and
    to develop specific programs of mutual benefit within its framework.
    At these meetings, which may include representatives of other
    interested organizations as appropriate, the participants also
    intend to exchange views on the state of educational cooperation
    between the two countries. The preparation for such meetings, their
    timing and their agendas, should be established through appropriate
    channels.

# ARTICLE IV: METHOD OF IMPLEMENTATION

A.  Specific activities to be undertaken under this Understanding which
    have been decided upon by both executive agencies are included in
    the Annex.

B.  Additional annexes may provide for new activities as mutually
    decided by the executive agencies.

    **ARTICLE V: FINANCING**

    Unless otherwise decided, each executive agency shall bear the costs
    of its participation.

    **ARTICLE VI: TERM OF UNDERSTANDING**

Activities under this Understanding commence December 1, 2000, and
continue until December 31, 2003. The Understanding may be extended for
successive three-year periods unless one Participant notifies the other
of the termination thereof no later than June 30, 2003, or not less than
six months prior to the expiration of any such three year period.

DONE at \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_, in
duplicate, this \_\_\_\_\_ day of \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_, 2000.

FOR THE GOVERNMENT OF THE FOR THE GOVERNMENT OF DENMARK

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

**ANNEX**

ACTIVITIES TO BE UNDERTAKEN IN 2000-2003 UNDER UNDERSTANDING ON
EDUCATION BETWEEN THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND THE
GOVERNMENT OF DENMARK

n the implementation of the Understanding, the Participants intend to
focus on the following activities for the period December 1, 2000
through December 31, 2003.

In carrying out these activities, the Participants note that both
governments have, through parallel action, dedicated financial and other
resources to programs or projects that should further the purposes of
the Understanding.

-   The Participants intend to explore the possibilities of cooperation,
    information sharing, and research relating to the development of
    skill standards, curriculum, assessment and teacher development in
    areas of common interest.

-   The Participants intend to explore collaborative efforts regarding
    the effective use of technology resources to improve: business and
    vocational education in colleges; practical training; applied
    learning and distance education.

-   The Participants intend to explore the possibilities of carrying out
    a project related to the theme of joint development of learning
    organizations (and related pedagogy) and institutional partnerships.

-   The Participants intend to explore the possibilities of implementing
    educational exchanges between the two countries during the period
    covered by this Annex. The Participants intend that the focus of
    this activity should be on personnel involved in helping educational
    institutions and other educational stakeholders develop joint
    programs in manufacturing technology and communications technology
    and other areas of common interest.

-   The Participants intend to explore areas for continued cooperation
    at all levels of postsecondary education, including matters relating
    to vocational education and training.

-   The Participants intend to continue to build support for joint
    activities having a special emphasis on creating partnerships
    between education and business.

The Participants may determine to carry out other activities during the
period of this Annex, such determinations to be made through an exchange
of letters.

## Steering Committee Members from U.S.

## Keith Bird, Chancellor, Kentucky Community & Tech College System, Lexington, KY 

## Ron Castaldi, Director, Division of Vocational-Technical Education, U.S. Department of Education, Washington, DC 

Peter Eio, President, LEGO, Endfield, CT

Peter Joyce, Manager, Workforce Development , Cisco Systems, Inc., San
Jose, CA

Jim McKinney, Director of Economic Development, American Association of
Community Colleges, Washington, DC

Stuart A. Rosenfeld, President, Regional Technology Strategies, Inc.,
Carrboro, NC

\*Ken Tolo, Director, Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary
Education, U.S. Department of Education, Washington, DC

Jane McDonald-Pines, Workforce Development Specialist, AFL-CIO,
Washington, DC

Dave Wilcox, Executive Deputy Director, National Skill Standards Board,
Washington, DC

#### Steering Committee Members from Denmark

Mr Peter Hoier. Counsellor, Labour Relations, Royal Danish Embassy ,
Washington, DC

Mr. Roland Oesterlund, General Director, Danish Ministry of Education,
Copenhagen

Svend Erik Povelsen, Chief Adviser, Danish Ministry of Education,
Copenhagen

Mette Ringsted, Director, Education and Training Policy, Danish
Employers´ Confederation, Copenhagen

Astrid Dahl. Union Adviser, Danish Federation of Trade Unions,
Copenhagen

Torben Jessen, President, Aabenraa Business College, Aabenraa

Mr. Lars Mahler, President, Aalborg Technical College, Aalborg

Mr. Benny Dylander, Director, Cirius, Copenhagen

Mr Lars Moeller Bentsen, Cirius, Copenhagen

\* Dr. Tolo will recuse himself from any involvement or activity that
may be a conflict of interests with the U.S. Department of Education

**Appendix B**

**RTS: Experience with Information Technology and Technical Education
Projects**

Regional Technology Strategies, Inc. (RTS) is a private, non-profit
corporation founded in 1991 and headquartered in Carrboro, North
Carolina. RTS designs strategies to build and strengthen regional
competitive advantage by encouraging higher value-added commerce
performed by highly skilled people. With a lean staff of six full-time
employees, RTS typically partners with other companies and steadily
employs a group of consultants and graduate students. RTS projects
typically revolve around issues and opportunities associated with
regional competitiveness, education and training policy, industrial
modernization, strategic planning for economic development
organizations, the development and application of technology policy, and
entrepreneurship. Its Board of Directors are:

-   The Honorable Martha Layne Collins, Scholar-In-Residence, Georgetown
    College

-   David Dodson, President, MDC, Inc, Chapel Hill, NC

-   Badi Foster, President, Phelps-Stokes Fund

-   Niels Christian Nielsen, President, Catenas, Copenhagen/London/San
    Francisco

-   Malcolm Portera, President, Mississippi State University

-   Grace Young, President, EDI of South Carolina

RTS is particularly qualified to carry out the type of research and
development projects that involve information technology and technical
education on the basis of its recent experience, which includes:

-   Assessed regional IT-related workforce development needs and
    resources throughout New York State for the Empire State Development
    Corporation, with a special emphasis on information technologies and
    new media on Long Island and in New York City (1999-2001).

-   Completed a design and business plan for an Information Technology
    Park and Training Center with the Palestinian National Authority for
    Tulkarem, on the West Bank (1999).

-   Conducting an assessment of skills and employment needs and supply
    for the Information and Communications Technology cluster in
    Mississippi (2001).

-   Conducting an analysis of and strategy for the education and
    training system for IT in Southwest Pennsylvania (2001).

-   Organized and now managing collaborative of community colleges in
    U.S. and Europe developing capstone IT course called Learning
    Through Simulated Information Technology Enterprises (LSITEs), under
    grant from the NSF (2000-2).

-   Managed a project with eight community colleges, funded by the
    Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, to collectively develop and disseminate
    a core set of web-based asynchronous learning credit and non-credit
    courses.

-   Compared practices across four countries to address IT skill
    shortages and to assess the performance of community/vocatiuonal
    colleges for the Congressionally mandated National Assessment of
    Vocational Education (2000-1).

-   Currently identifying, validating, documenting, and disseminating
    best practices at community colleges that have a positive impact on
    local economies for USDA (1999-2001)

-   Assessed, compared, and described four exemplary industry cluster or
    sector-focused activities at community colleges in the U.S. and
    Europe (two in the IT sector) for the Community College Research
    Center at Teachers College (1998-9).

**Appendix C**

##### Danish Technological Institute

The Danish Technological Institute is an independent, not-for-profit
institution approved as a technological service agency by the Danish
Ministry of Business and Industry. The role of the Danish Technological
Institute is to address the needs of the industrial sector and of
society as a whole by developing and disseminating technological
innovation. Technology is here understood to be broader than technical
expertise and to include business management, the development of
organizations and human resources, and wider societal impacts. A ready
fund of technological expertise and business services is available for
improving competitiveness, encouraging the sustainable use of resources,
enhancing employment and the quality of jobs, whilst also reducing the
burden of costs to industry and society. The Institute collaborates with
both Danish and international centres of excellence and research
institutes in seeking out, adapting and enhancing the latest research
findings, and with industrial organizations, educational establishments
and government authorities in disseminating and exploiting the fruits of
this expertise rapidly and efficiently. The Danish Technological
Institute had a turnover of about 98 million Euros in 1999 with a staff
of 997.

The Centre for Competence and IT, within the Danish Technological
Institute's Business and Management Development Division, works with new
forms of competence development, organizational development and
knowledge management using IT. The Centre also focuses upon the changing
competence needs of the public and private sectors, management,
employees and society resulting from the introduction of new technology
and upon their socio-economic impacts. Developments are taking place
that cut across existing occupations, job hierarchies and economic and
social sectors, resulting in on-going changes in management,
organizational and work forms. Information, and especially
communication, technologies can play a central role in these
developments, especially in information and knowledge management both
within as well as between organizations. The Centre has, over the last
few years, built up considerable expertise in competence development and
IT based upon a large number of Danish and European development projects
in cooperation with government at all levels, companies, research
institutions, the social partners and NGOs. In addition, the Centre has
developed a unique competence in project development, management and
administration, and in particular the use of IT in this context.
Furthermore, the Centre undertakes many assignments for governments,
administrations and regions, both in Denmark and internationally, on
change management projects designed to assist localities, regions and
institutions in fully exploiting the opportunities of the Information
Society and Knowledge Economy.

The Centre's services include:

-   analysis and evaluation within the field of competence development
    and educational planning in the Information Society

-   competence development and ICT

-   eCommerce

-   eGovernment

-   eWork \-- new ways of working and the future workplace and ICT

-   socio-economic impact assessment

-   the needs of special groups(e.g. the elderly, the handicapped)

-   the needs of special and areas (e.g. rural areas, peripheral
    regions, cities)

-   regional development

Reference projects:

Currently the Centre for Competence and IT is managing and coordinating
two major European projects in the IST Programme:

-   PRISMA (Providing Innovative Service Models and Assessment) --
    developing current best practice in eGovernment and future best
    practice models (2000-2003)

-   BEEP (Best eEurope Practices) -- providing online benchmarking and
    best practice services in support of the eEurope Initiative
    (2001-2003).

Other relevant projects include:

-   FlexWork---new ways of working in remote regions. Services for
    business advisers, SME networks and regional actors (2001-2003)

-   Families---analysis of interactions between new ICT work methods and
    the family (2000-2002)

-   SIBIS (Statistical Indicators for Benchmarking the Information
    Society)---in support of the eEurope Initiative (2001-2003).

-   EMERGENCE (Estimation and Mapping of Employment Relocation in a
    Global Economy in the New Communications Environment)---mapping and
    quantifying the delocalization of tele-mediated employment in a
    global information economy (2000-2002)

**Appendix D**

**Plan for Community College Inter-institutional Learning Exchanges
(CILEs)**

**A Summary of the Report Submitted by RTS to the Ford Foundation March
2001.**

Regional Technology Strategies, Inc. (RTS) has completed a one-year
planning process to explore ways to transfer theories and practices
associated with learning organizations and networks to community
colleges and to apply them to common problems. The initial premise was
that innovation and problem solving are much more effective when they
are collaborative and interactive processes and that community colleges
in poor urban and rural areas lacked the opportunities. The results of
and recommendations from the planning process are summarized in the
following paragraphs. Our most important recommendation(s) is to (1)
establish a small number of pilot projects and management and
communications structure, (2) demonstrate the**ir** value by documenting
the outcomes of long-term collaboration, and (3) achieve scale, convince
state and federal agencies and foundations that support community
colleges to encourage and provide meaningful incentives for collective
projects under existing programs.

Because of the costs of expanding the networks, achieving scale will
depend in large part on leveraging and using the results of the pilot to
convince agencies such as the National Science Foundation, Fund for the
Improvement of Postsecondary Education, the Danish/U.S. Community
College Partnership, and Appalachian Regional Commission of the value.
We believe that this is reasonable and attainable because of an emerging
proclivity (and pronounced tendency) among agencies to operate in this
fashion. FIPSE has two programs for networks of colleges and NSF
encourages inter-institutional learning. The challenge will be to move
the groups of colleges beyond focusing on a single project to a true
learning network and to add colleges from weaker economies and
lower-income areas.

Our premise is that an environment that facilitates "learning" is
increasingly essential to the high performance of almost any individual,
organization, community, or region. The divide between less and more
developed regions and between lower and higher income people, is in
essence a "learning divide." An educational environment conducive to
learning and innovation, i.e., one with a stock of intellectual and
social capital and frequent opportunities for interaction with
colleagues, peers, competitors, customers, and suppliers, is rarely
found in community colleges. But inter-institutional learning does not
occur regularly in colleges because of certain constraints, e.g.,
isolation, parochial outlooks, resistance to change, resource
constraints, lack of time, insufficient reward, and hierarchies in the
organization. These loom even larger at rural and poorer colleges, where
resources are generally even more constrained and connections weaker.
Colleges rarely are able to reap the benefits of in-depth learning from
others' experiences, infrequently take part in synergistic collaboration
with others to tackle common problems, and are too often unaware of
efforts that might be replicated on their own campuses.

Priority Issues: The two planning groups suggested the following issues
that are common to many colleges and which colleges may want to address
together.

-   Developing networks around common industry clusters.

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-   Establishing economic development capabilities at colleges to
    monitor trends and provide data for region.

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-   Addressing ethnic and cultural diversity and the needs of immigrant
    students.

-   Improving articulation between and among secondary schools, two-,
    and four-year schools

-   Increasing access for and retention of low- and mid-income workers.

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-   Creative scheduling and enriched curricula to attract
    non-traditional students.

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-   Creating career ladders for working poor and strategies for
    supporting career advancement through, for example, employer/college
    partnerships.

-   Forming learning communities among students not yet ready for higher
    education.

# Establishing College Innovation and Learning Exchanges (CILEs) and an appropriate support system: A pilot project consisting of four to six CILEs will be used to refine the interactive process, learn more about the levers that accelerate learning and change, and test the value added by an approach. 

-   Each CILE will be comprised of five to ten colleges.

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-   Each president must commit resources and release time and designate
    a project team of 4 to 6 individuals to participate.

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-   Each network will set forth two types of measurable outcomes: those
    that are specific to each institution and those that relate to the
    network as a whole.

-   CILES will use meetings and IT for regular communications and
    exchange.

# Managing and facilitating networks: Each CILE will have a facilitator/expert will help manage the network, steer the learning process, identify external sources of information, help organize meetings, report progress towards milestones, and help generate additional support for follow-on projects. Meetings and site visits will occur about every three to four months for project teams from all colleges. 

Establishing a Pilot Phase Support Structure: We propose an overarching
mechanism to coordinate, broker, support, document, and evaluate the
College Innovation and Learning Exchanges during the pilot phase called
the Foundation to Accelerate College Learning and Innovation Exchange
(FACILE). FACILE will not necessarily have a long-term institutional
presence but will play the important role of setting up, managing, and
assessing the collective learning that occurs through the CILEs and, in
cooperation with the Community College Research Center (CCRC) at
Teacher's College, market the concept to relevant state and local
agencies. Responsibilities will include:

-   Serving as the central communications hub, maintaining the project
    web site, and disseminating information.

-   Recognizing "cross pollination" opportunities among the CILEs and
    organizing an annual meeting for all participants to disseminate
    results and advance the model.

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-   Providing technical assistance to each of the learning networks
    through an arrangement with CCRC.

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-   Evaluating the process of implementation of innovation into the
    organizational and administrative structures of the individual
    community colleges.

-   Working with state and federal agencies to build approach into
    existing programs.

# Participants in Planning Workshops Planning Workshops

**Alexandria, Virginia Sept 2000 and Madison, Wisconsin Nov 2000**

Nancy Ritze, Dean, Bronx Community College, New York, NY

L. Allen Phelps, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI

Glen Fenter, President, MidSouth Community College, West Memphis, AR

Jacques Koppel, President, Minnesota Technology, Minneapolis, MN

Deidra J. Lewis, Vice Chancellor, City Colleges of Chicago, Chicago,

Jeffrey Rafn, President, Northeast Wisconsin Technical College, Green
Bay, WI

Mary Crabbe Gershwin, Director, Colorado Community College System

Kara Heffernan, The Ford Foundation, New York, NY

Peter Hoier, Royal Danish Embassy, Washington, DC

Gregory A. Sedrick, Vice President, Chattanooga State Technical College,
TN

Keith Bird, Chancellor, Kentucky Community & Tech Colleges

Rick R. Allison, Oklahoma State Univ.-Technical Branch, Okmulgee,
Oklahoma

Laura Dresser, Director of Research, Center on Wisconsin Strategy,
Madison, WI

Jim Jacobs, Vice President, Macomb Community College, Michigan

G. Edward Hughes, President, Hazard Community College, Hazard, KY

Ellen M. O'Neill, Dean, Borough of Manhattan Community College, New
York, NY

Bruce Herman, Executive Director, Working for America Institute,
Washington, DC

Glenda L. Partee, Co-Director, American Youth Policy Forum, Washington,
DC

Norena Badway, University of California, Berkeley

Scott Ralls, Vice President, North Carolina Community College System

Bruce H. Leslie, President, Houston Community College

John Dunn, Executive Vice President, Springfield Technical Community
College

Susan Gerwitz, The Annie E. Casey Foundation, Baltimore MD

Kim Mulkey, BellSouth Foundation, Atlanta, GA

Phillip Henderson, German Marshall Fund of the United States

Stuart Rosenfeld, Regional Technology Strategies, Inc. (Director)

Robert Kronley, Southern Education Foundation, Atlanta (Facilitator)

[^1]: National Research Council, *Building a Workforce for the
    Information Economy* (Washington, DC: National Academny Press,
    2001), p. 4.

[^2]: Clifford Adelman, A Parallel Universe, Expanded: Certification in
    the Information Technology Guild, Unpublished paper for the U.S.
    Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and
    Innovation, 2000.

[^3]: Although the field is generally called IT in the U.S. it is more
    often referred to as ICT (Information and Communications Technology)
    in Europe.

[^4]: "Skill Shortage puts job market out of balance". *Financial Times*
    Wednesday May 2, 2001

[^5]: Laurie Flynn, "Opportunities for Workers in Technology Despite
    Cuts," *New York Times*, April 2, 2001.

[^6]: Carol Ann Meares and John F. Sargent, Jr., *The Digital Work
    Force: Building Infotech Skills at the Speed of Innovation*," June
    1999.

[^7]: European Information technology Observatory, 2001

[^8]: "ITAA Initiates IT Skills Gap Research Program,"
    *www.itaa.org/workforce/about.htm*, June 30, 1999.

[^9]: Executive Summary: "Bridging the Gap: Information Technology
    Skills for a New Millennium," April 13, 2000,
    *www.itaa.org/workforce/studies/hw00execsumm.htm*.

[^10]: Freeman and Aspray, *The Supply of Information technology Workers
    in the United States*, 1999, p. 32.

[^11]: Freeman and Aspray, 1999.

[^12]: Bertelsmann Foundation (Eds.), *Vocational Education and Training
    of Tomorrow* (Guterloh, Germany: Bertelsmann Foundation, 1999).

[^13]: OECD, *Measuring the ICT Sector*, Paris: Organization for
    Economic Cooperation and Development, 2000.

[^14]: National Research Council, *Building a Workforce for the
    Information Economy* (Washington, DC: National Academny Press,
    2001).

[^15]: Dr. Graham Attwell, Wales, who has worked for the EU for the
    Cedefop programme, will be consulted on this aspect.