BPA and Defense Technologies, Inc. (DTI) provided management support to the U. S. Department of Labor to assist with coordination and management of ETA's multi-year capacity building effort. The capacity building effort was aimed at enhancing the effectiveness of staff in local, state, and federal agencies that administer employment and training programs, including JTPA, Employment Service, Dislocated Worker, School to Work, and others. The ultimate objectives were to enhance staff skills at a time when reform and consolidation efforts were also changing the delivery of workforce development services, and to improve service delivery to the system's customers, participants, and employers.
Activities undertaken within the scope of this contract were:
? Collect and disseminate information about existing innovative and effective job training program models and staff training curricula, materials, and techniques.
? Review the accomplishments of ten state-level challenge grants and the replicability and broad usefulness of the materials and training efforts developed within those grants.
? Research staff training programs in the private sector and programs funded by other government agencies to learn state-of-the-art staff training techniques.
? Facilitate consultations with the many partner agencies, public interest groups, representatives of state and local government, providers of staff training within the system, and particularly the members of a designated Panel of Experts for capacity building, aimed at setting capacity building priorities in a time of funding constraints.
By building on the work of other efforts to expand services and improve programs, such as the Enterprise Council, Simply Better!, and the Challenge Grants, the project endeavored to establish an ongoing vehicle for incorporating capacity building throughout the nation's employment and training system.

Final Report on Research Into Staff Development in Private Industry, Universities, and Other Government Agencies (May, 1998) (PDF:176KB)
Presents findings from capacity building study in the private sector and its implications for the building of capacity of U.S. Department of Labor staff to respond to their customers' needs.