The Workforce Investment Act created a new, comprehensive workforce investment system designed to change the way employment and training services are delivered. When WIA was enacted in 1998, it replaced the Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA) with three new programs—Adult, Dislocated Worker, and Youth—that allow for a broader range of services, including job search assistance, assessment, and training for eligible individuals. In addition to establishing three new programs, WIA requires that a number of other employment-related services be provided through a one-stop system, designed to make employment and training services easier for job seeker customers to access. WIA also requires that the one- stop system engage the employer customer by helping employers identify and recruit skilled workers. While WIA gives states and localities flexibility in implementing these requirements, the law emphasizes that the one-stop system should be a customer-focused and comprehensive system. Such a system gives job seekers the job search and support services they need and provides services that better meet employers’ needs. (See fig. 1.) The major hallmark of WIA is the consolidation of services through the one-stop center system. Seventeen categories of programs—termed “mandatory partners”—with appropriations totaling over $15 billion from four separate federal agencies, are required to provide services through the system. (See table 1.) WIA allows flexibility in the way these mandatory partners provide services through the one-stop system, allowing co-location in one building, electronic linkages, or referrals to off-site partner programs. While WIA requires these mandatory partners to participate, WIA did not provide additional funds to operate one-stop systems and support one-stop partnerships. As a result, mandatory partners are expected to share the costs of developing and operating one-stop centers. Beyond the mandatory partners, one-stop centers have the flexibility to include other partners in the one-stop system. Labor suggests that these additional, or optional partners, may help one-stop systems better meet specific state and local workforce development needs. These optional partners may include TANF or local private organizations. States have the option of mandating particular optional partners to participate in their one-stop systems. For example, in 2001, 28 states had formal agreements between TANF and WIA to involve TANF in the one-stop system. In addition, localities may adopt other partners to meet the specific needs of the community. About $3.3 billion was appropriated in fiscal year 2003 for the three WIA programs—Adult, Dislocated Worker, and Youth. The formulas for distributing these funds to the states were left largely unchanged from those used to distribute funds under JTPA and are based on such factors as unemployment rates, including the number of long-term unemployed, and the relative number of low-income adults and youth in the population. In order to receive their full funding allocation, states must demonstrate the effectiveness of their three WIA programs by tracking and reporting a variety of performance measures. These performance measures gauge program results in the areas of job placement and retention, earnings change, skill attainment and customer satisfaction. WIA requires states to use Unemployment Insurance (UI) wage records to gather this information about WIA participants. States are held accountable by Labor for their performance in these areas and may suffer financial sanctions if they fail to meet their expected performance standards. WIA did not establish any comprehensive measures to assess the overall performance of the one- stop system. WIA also requires that training providers wishing to serve individuals’ training needs through WIA’s Adult and Dislocated Worker Programs meet key data reporting requirements, including completion rates, job placement rates, and wages at placement for all students they serve, including those not funded under WIA. WIA requires the collection of these outcome data so that job seekers receiving training can use them to make more informed choices about training providers. Unlike prior systems, WIA requires that individuals eligible for training under the Adult and Dislocated Worker Programs receive vouchers—called Individual Training Accounts—which they can use for the training provider and course offering of their choice, within certain limitations. WIA also requires these data so that states and localities can assess training providers’ performance. For example, a state might only allow training providers’ courses with an 80-percent completion rate to remain on the training provider list. If a course fails to meet that level, it would no longer be allowed to serve WIA-funded individuals. Finally, WIA called for the development of workforce investment boards to oversee WIA implementation at the state and local levels. At the state level, WIA requires, among other things, that the workforce investment board assist the governor in helping to set up the system, establish procedures and processes for ensuring accountability, and designate local workforce investment areas. WIA also requires that boards be established within each of the local workforce investment areas to carry out the formal agreements developed between the boards and each partner and oversee one-stop operations. WIA requires that private-sector representatives chair the boards and make up the majority of board members. This is to help ensure that the private sector is able to provide information on the available employment opportunities and expanding career fields and help develop ways to close the gap between job seekers and labor market needs. States and localities have found ways to use the flexibility in WIA to develop creative new ways to serve job seekers and employers. In particular, a group of 14 one-stops, identified as exemplary by government officials and workforce development experts for our study of promising one-stop approaches, has developed strategies for streamlining services for job seekers, engaging and serving employers, and building a solid one- stop infrastructure. All of the 14 centers in the study streamlined services for jobseekers by ensuring that they can readily access needed services, by educating program staff about all of the one-stop services available to job seekers, or by consolidating case management and intake procedures. In addition, to engage employers and provide them needed services, all of the centers used strategies that included dedicating specialized staff to work with employers or industries, tailoring services to meet specific employers’ needs, or working with employers through intermediaries, such as Chambers of Commerce or economic development entities. Finally, to provide the infrastructure needed to support better services for job seekers and employers, many of the one-stops we visited found innovative ways to develop and strengthen program partnerships and to raise additional funds beyond those provided under WIA. (Figure 2 shows the locations of the 14 one-stop centers we visited.) All of the one-stop centers in our recent study focused their efforts on streamlining services for job seekers by ensuring that job seekers could readily access needed services, educating program staff about all of the one-stop services available to job seekers, or consolidating case management and intake procedures. To ensure that job seekers could readily access needed services, one-stops we visited allocated staff to help them navigate the one-stop system, provided support to customers with transportation barriers, and expanded services for one-stop customers. For example, managers in Erie, Pennsylvania, positioned a staff person at the entrance to the one-stop to help job seekers entering the center find needed services and to assist exiting job seekers if they did not receive the services they sought. In addition to improving access to one-stop center services on-site, some of the one-stops we visited found ways to serve job seekers who may have been unable to come into the one-stop center due to transportation barriers or other issues. For example, in Boston, Massachusetts, the one-stop placed staff in off-site locations, including family courts, correctional facilities, and welfare offices, to give job seekers ready access to employment and program information. Finally, one-stops also improved job seeker access to services by expanding partnerships to include optional service providers—those beyond the program partners mandated by WIA. These optional partners ranged from federally funded programs, such as TANF, to community-based organizations providing services tailored to meet the needs of local job seekers. The one-stop in Dayton, Ohio, was particularly proactive in forming optional partnerships to meet job seekers’ service needs. At the time of our visit, the Dayton one-stop had over 30 optional partners on- site. To educate program staff about one-stop services, centers used cross- training sessions in order to inform staff about the range of services available at the one-stop. Cross-training activities ranged from conducting monthly educational workshops to a shadow program to help staff become familiar with other programs’ rules and operations. Officials in Salt Lake City, Utah, reported that cross–training improved staff understanding of programs outside their area of expertise and enhanced their ability to make referrals. The Pikeville, Kentucky, one-stop supported cross-training workshops in which one-stop staff from different partner programs educated each other about the range of services they could provide. After learning about the other programs, Pikeville staff collaboratively designed a service delivery flow chart that effectively routed job seekers to the appropriate service providers, providing a clear entry point and a clear path from one program to another. In addition, the Vocational Rehabilitation staff at the Pikeville one-stop told us that cross- training other program staff about the needs of special populations enabled them to more accurately identify hidden disabilities and to better refer disabled customers to the appropriate services. Centers also sought to reduce the duplication of effort across programs and the burden on job seekers navigating multiple programs by consolidating case management and intake procedures across programs through the use of shared service plans for customers and shared computer networks. Ten of the 14 one-stops we visited consolidated their intake processes or case management systems. This consolidation took many forms, including having case workers from different programs work as a team developing service plans for customers to having a shared computer network across programs.