Workforce development
2006 New Mexico Update: Online guidebook outlines clusters system

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson has unveiled the Work in New Mexico Career Clusters Guidebook, which was produced by Public Works on behalf of the Governor’s Workforce Coordination and Oversight Committee to address the disconnect between the state and federal dollars being spent on workforce training in New Mexico.

Public Works has worked with the Office of Workforce Training and Development and the Governor's Workforce Coordination and Oversight Committee to help align the state’s education and workforce development programs with the occupational demands of the state's future economy. The Committee has designed a career clusters system, which directs students and workers into training and education that gives them the right skills to be successful in today’s workplace. As part of this effort, the committee identified seven broad business sectors that will need a workforce in industries that New Mexico wants to grow. The career clusters initiative creates the pipeline that provides highly-qualified workers for New Mexico companies in these industry clusters:

• Arts and Entertainment
• Business Services
  
• Communications and Information
  
• Energy and Environmental Technologies
  
• Engineering, Construction and Manufacturing
  
• Health and Biosciences
  
• Hospitality and Tourism

While releasing the publication, Governor Richardson said, "This guidebook is going to be the bible for job seekers. This simple guide outlines where the jobs are and what skills are needed to get these jobs. It is our goal to have this in the hands of everyone who wants to work in New Mexico."

Arizona Department of Commerce and Department of Economic Security

Public Works created a strategic plan for the Arizona Departments of Commerce and Economic Security to maximize Workforce Investment Act Dislocated Worker/Rapid Response funds. The resulting recommendations were carefully tailored to enhance Arizona's uniquely locally-driven Rapid Response system. The effort resulted in the first statewide strategic plan and policies aimed at working with businesses to prevent worker layoffs, targeting growth industry training and workforce development programs, and maximizing re-training efforts to better prepare Arizona workers for jobs of the future. The plan was developed in collaboration with local directors and service providers in county, regional, and Tribal Workforce Investment Boards across the state through a series of focus groups and discussions, as well as by helping the two state departments to cooperate and collaborate more fully.

California State University CSU Advantage Project

Public Works has assisted the California State University system - the world's largest university - on a number of initiatives to design cutting edge, useful programs that would aid CSU's efforts to train CSU students to meet the needs of the 21st Century workforce. Various California governmental entities produced at least seven major reports in recent years on the state's workforce needs in the next few decades. Action, not another report, was needed. Public Works developed a groundbreaking process called CSU Advantage to bring together the state's governmental, educational, and private sector leaders to reorient the state university system to provide the attributes the state workforce will need to possess in the 21st Century. This effort now involves a Virtual Forum throughout the university system and business communities to further the grassroots and high-tech development of this strategy.

Pennsylvania Pathways to Advancement Leadership

Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell convened a state Leadership Team consisting of representatives from the Departments of Labor & Industry, Public Welfare, and Education, the Office of Planning & Policy, the General Assembly, the business community, higher education, and the workforce development system to develop a long-term agenda for increasing adult participation in postsecondary education. Public Works not only conducted research and analysis for this Team, but also oversaw and compiled the final report agreed to by these multifarious entities.

New Mexico Workforce Development Project

The State of New Mexico and the Bridges to Opportunity for New Mexico Initiative, a coalition of public and private stakeholders that has studied the workforce education system in New Mexico, hired Public Works to develop recommendations for producing a competitive and highly skilled workforce in New Mexico. After working with various New Mexico state agencies to review the status and effectiveness of their efforts to develop, educate and train its workforce, Public Works proposed reforms to improve the delivery of workforce development and education in New Mexico, including a governance structure to integrate education, workforce development, and economic development policies and programs and a series of improvements to make the workforce development system more responsive and accountable to workers, employers and the taxpayers. This project required working with and negotiating between many of the 42 New Mexico state entities charged with some portion of the responsibility for workforce development in the state, including the Department of Labor, Employment Development Department, and Human Services Department. Soon after completion of the study in early 2004, Governor Richardson issued an executive order to begin implementation of the reports recommendations, starting with creation of a Governor's Office of Workforce Development to oversee integration and improvement of the state's workforce development efforts.

New York Controller Workforce Development Effort

Public Works was asked by the New York Controller's Office to propose reforms to New York's workforce development, training, and education efforts - a $1 billion system of 75 state- and federally-funded job training and employment programs administered by 15 different agencies. The State Comptroller's Office audits of the state's job training and job creation programs had showed that there was little accountability for, or understanding of, what was being achieved through the state's considerable investment. Building on these audits, Public Works developed a series of recommendations with the goal of reengineering the state's workforce development system to produce a workforce with the skills necessary to support high-quality job growth. The Public Works study recommended steps to integrate programs and funding streams to create a seamless system that develops and upgrades workers' skills; maximizes input of the system's business and economic development communities; capitalizes on the strengths of the state's universities, colleges, and especially community colleges; and provides heightened accountability for performance by programs, individual providers, and the workforce development system as a whole.

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