That is what is driving the market today, he says. Some agencies, such as the General Services Administration and the Defense Department, are far ahead in adopting e-learning techniques, having already launched their own online training centers. Others, such as the Social Security Administration and VBA are in the early stages of figuring out how to best harness the technology. Those agencies trailing behind, however, may soon be forced to step up their pace. In September, the President s Task Force on Federal Training Technology was expected to urge President Clinton to make the Web an integral part of all federal employee training initiatives.
Nobody is against cutting costs either.
The task force, which has been meeting since March 1999 and is housed at the Office of Personnel Management, was created by Executive Order 13111 in January 1999. We need to ensure that we continue to train federal employees to take full advantage of these technological advances and to acquire the skills and learning needed to succeed in a changing workplace. People who were not just in training were appointed. This included the chief information officer who has to deploy the technology, the head of human resources who has to come up with the content and the chief financial officer who has to finance it. For too long, Blanton says, these disciplines have been operating in their own worlds, coming together only when it was time to make a purchase.