Achieve What No One Agency Can Achieve Alone

Provide all Americans a seamless learning and employment system to get the job skills they need to be successful in the 21^st century.

Vice President Gore's National Partnership for Reinventing Government (NPR) has brought all of its initiatives related to workforce development and lifelong learning into one cluster: 21^st Century Skills . Our vision is to craft a seamless learning and employment system so Americans have the knowledge, skills and tools they need to succeed in the 21^st Century workplace. This vision includes promotion of an increased understanding of the importance of lifelong learning.

Build communities of practice -- networks of partners and stakeholders working on related goals to share best practices and help each other resolve barriers to further success.
Use technology to bring pubic services close to the "customer."

The Federal Level. The Assistant Secretaries and other officials from federal departments and agencies with Workforce Investment Act (WIA) responsibilities are meeting monthly to advance a shared vision and collaboratively resolve cross-cutting issues that impact WIA implementation. Their vision states: "The WIA partnership will enable states and local communities to create convenient access to learning and employment through seamless, one-stop services, so all Americans, including people facing significant barriers to employment, will have the knowledge, skills and tools they need to succeed in the 21^st Century economy. This group calls itself the WIA Partners.

A smaller group, the Inter-Agency Life Long Learning Strategy Group, came about when Vice President Gore accepted a report, "Skills for A New Century: A Blueprint for Lifelong Learning" on November 4^th 1999 from the 21^st Century Skills Leadership Group. The primary recommendation was to build and expand community-based partnerships that cross multiple sectors and focus on 21^st Century skills. Accepting the report, Vice President Gore announced that NPR, and the U. S. Departments of Labor, Education and Commerce, will form an Inter-Agency Group to support local partnerships implementing community-wide strategies. The Vice President invited interested members of the Leadership Group to advise the Inter-Agency group.

The Community Level. NPR has selected 13 performance partners and created a 21^st Century Skills Community Network . The purpose of the network is to connect community-based partnerships and relevant, federal agencies to enhance education, skills, training and lifelong learning for adults in local communities. The seven core goals of this network are:

To close the skills gap by sharing best practices and effective strategies for dramatically increasing the basic and technical skills of the American workforce;
To support lifelong learning for all adults;
To help more workers move into high-skill, high-wage jobs;
To identify and eliminate barriers to success in employment, training and learning programs;
To help communities, local agencies and government offices measure results and to collect, analyze, and use data to develop strategies to achieve results;
To model a de-centralized, collaborative, federal/state/local partnership that gets results people care about; and
To provide a continuous feedback system that informs the federal government and the Network participants as a seamless learning and employment system is developed for all Americans.

The network will use a web site to post best practices, significant issues, and effective strategies for reaching goals and measuring results. The web site is open to the public.