Workforce Investment Act: Labor Should Consider Alternative Approaches to Implement New Performance and Reporting Requirements;Report to the Congress

摘要

The Workforce Investment Act (WIA) of 1998 took a significant step in that direction by introducing greater accountability for employment and training programs than prior programs. WIA established performance measures to look at a broad array of participant outcomes such as job placement and retention, earnings, skill gains, and customer satisfaction. WIA also required 17 programs, funded by four different agencies, to centralize service delivery through a one-stop center system. More recently, as part of efforts to link program performance to the budget, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) introduced common performance measuressimilar to some of the WIA measures for most federally funded job training programs that share similar goals. The U.S. Department of Labors (Labor) Employment and Training Administration (ETA) further defined the common measures for all programs it oversees and proposed a new, standardized reporting format, known as the ETA Management Information and Longitudinal Evaluation (EMILE) reporting system to facilitate reporting them.Given the importance of these issues and their potential impact on the quality of the performance data, you asked us to examine (1) states concerns about implementing Labors proposed EMILE reporting system and (2) the effect that the implementation of common measures and other new reporting changes might have on states ability to collect data and report on WIAs performance.