combined with the leadership of the respective governing boards, offer a unique opportunity to reinvent these programs so they are more relevant, efficient and effective. In order to ensure that national and state best practices were considered, and to help our workforce review team successfully navigate through the dense regulatory environment that surrounds the WIA programs, ETCOG contracted with a nationally recognized consultant, Greg Newton and Associates. Mr. Newton and his staff have worked with 20 of 28 workforce boards in Texas, and over 190 workforce Boards nationwide. His expertise has proven to be invaluable to the team in many ways. Two of the benefits I have enjoyed early on is his ability to help keep this challenging project on track, and his vast knowledge of the programs and how other boards successfully reinvented themselves to serve the needs of their respective regions. Newton has immediate working knowledge of best practice information that would have taken us many months to research on our own.
Two additional developments combine to give me an infusion of hope and excitement for this project. First, in October the Workforce Solutions East Texas Board held a retreat. Some of the major outcomes and consensus points from the retreat are:
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To continue and strengthen the focus on workforce development for economic development and better link these functions within the region and within ETCOG.
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Increase horizontal alignment activities that focus on broader community involvement and engagement for workforce development, while maintaining the requisite focus on vertical alignment activities that focus on the centers and programs.
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Emphasize the ongoing collection and dissemination of meaningful workforce intelligence to inform Board strategy for vertical and horizontal alignment and support economic developers in their work.
The extent to which we are successful in accomplishing these outcomes for our region, our businesses, our economic development professionals and our job seekers will determine the long term success of this project. The second encouraging development is our new workforce centers contractor, Dynamic Workforce Solutions, (DWS) under Mr. Paul Dunn’s leadership, is fully engaged with us in the review effort. As ETCOG’s new workforce centers contractor, it is of critical importance that we are working to chart the new future together. The final report and recommendations of the review team are currently scheduled to be released in February, 2012.