Office of Workforce Investment - Strategic Priorities
OWI has a broad scope of responsibilities and functions. Not all of them are listed here specifically.
Below are OWI's strategic priorities for the FY 2007 performance cycle. In addition to these strategic
priorities, OWI continues to have the responsibility to effectively administer a number of programs and
funding streams and implement other initiatives. Managers need to ensure all key functions are covered
as they develop standards for their staff.
In addition to ongoing operations of the programs we administer, below are priorities for OWI for the
coming year:
- Build the capacity of OWI as well as the capacity of the workforce investment system to understand
and implement their workforce activities within the WIRED framework; i.e. to transform how we approach
talent development in the context of regional economies and to position the system to effectively
respond to regional economic shocks. This builds on our work to create a demand-driven system and
involves continued development of models and demonstrations and dissemination of a wide array of
information, tools, and products that flow from ETA investments in WIRED, the President's High Growth
Job Training Initiative, Community Based Job Training Grants, CAA Demos, and other key initiatives.
Workforce3 One will continue to be a primary communications and delivery tool.
- Proactive program policy development, system guidance on service delivery, and use of waiver
authority that enables and supports state and local implementation of the WIRED framework and the
President's proposed reforms (CAAs and more training, streamlined administration, integration, flexible
use of resources, fiscal responsibility, etc.)
- Continued collaboration with a wide array of education partners (Department of Education, Council on
Higher Ed, colleges/universities, community colleges, K-12, and others) to develop new workforce education
strategies that support a competitive workforce for the 21st century economy and ensure that more
individuals served area gaining postsecondary education to attain the skills needed in this economy. Workforce
education strategies must promote life-long learning and the use of technology based learning to increase
accessibility and affordability of workforce education.
- Continued collaboration across Federal government to promote strategic integration of federal
resources and workforce strategies in order to drive systemic change at the state and local levels.
- Continued focus on understanding the skills and competencies needed in the 21st century economy and
promoting quality career guidance. This includes our work in the competency model initiative,
assessments, all of our e-tools, key partnerships (such as with the PTA), and developing new service
delivery strategies for the workforce system broadly, including through One-Stop Career Centers.
- Continued focus on helping the workforce system at all levels to effectively assemble, integrate,
and use a wide array of data sources (performance data, economic data, workforce information, etc.) and
carry out analysis to drive workforce and economic development strategies, i.e. workforce information
reform. It also includes finding new ways to marry industry information collected through High Growth
with workforce information.
- Develop and implement a focused military families (including veterans and spouses) service delivery
strategy and action plan in partnership with ONR, VETS, and DOD.
- Conduct and support Career Advancement Account (CAA) demonstrations in partnership with ONR and OPDR.
- Implement the youth vision, including fostering alternative learning and pathways to graduation and
post secondary opportunities, bringing initiatives to "scale," and fostering integration across federal
agencies and at the state level;
- Foster seamless BRG/OAS integration with BRG providing national context and products and OAS
fostering a holistic approach to life-long learning that promotes institutionalizing the approaches
and products within the workforce system. BRG works to incubate new and innovative workforce solutions
and OAS needs to work to embed those approaches system-wide and across programs.
- In partnership with OPDR and others, develop and implement an agenda for ETA and the workforce
investment system for helping employers attract and retain older workers.
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