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June 4, 2001

Feds Turn To E-Learning To Cut Costs
Faced with tightening budgets, government agencies push for online training for employees

By Elisabeth Goodridge (egoodrid@cmp.com)

More on e-learning:

Consolidation Continues In E-Learning Market (04/09/01)
E-Learning Is Less Simple Than ABC (03/01/01)
EE Times: Intel Sees E-Learning As Next Killer App (04/06/01)

oberta Katson has learned to do more with less. As a director of technical training for 1,500 employees at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, she faces a shrinking budget, a 25% workforce reduction, and additional responsibility stemming from the Welfare Reform Act and new federal programs. Like other federal agencies, Katson's $7 million budget is being "squeezed to death trying to get employees here to their peak performance."

That's why the feds are turning to E-learning. Katson last year signed on to FasTrac, a governmentwide E-learning initiative managed through the Department of Defense. FasTrac is giving more than 400,000 federal employees in the Commerce Department, Department of Health and Human Services, FBI, and other agencies access to more than 1,000 career-development courses from E-learning content providers NetG Inc. and SkillSoft Corp. By shifting career development and employee training online, Katson estimates training costs were cut in half. "Compared with our estimated [cost of] $100 per day per person in the classroom, FasTrac cost us less than $50 per course per person, and it provides just-in-time training," she says.

To help meet the federal government's demand for IT workers, President Clinton in February 1998 called for online training, which led to the FasTrac program. Under the Bush administration, there's been a bigger E-learning push in the federal government, says International Data Corp. senior analyst Mike Brennan. "Thanks to the IT investments made for year 2000 preparation, agencies have the necessary infrastructure in place, and they want to leverage that investment to the maximum," he says.


Online libraries that deliver courses via Microsoft Word files are popular at the IRS, says McCormack, because the agency has older workers who prefer to download material to print or read offline.

At the Department of Commerce's commercial service division, 1,800 employees in 85 countries get updates on thousands of tariff regulations and trade policies online. They also get training, management, and leadership classes to ensure that they're on top of their jobs in supporting and promoting U.S. trade overseas. Jon Fogarasi, director of the Commercial Service Institute, the division's training organization, estimates that E-learning saves the agency 10% to 30% in travel, instructors, and other training costs.

But as with many E-learning programs, obstacles are common. "We're dealing with regions in the world where even phone lines are tough to come by," says Fogarasi. Many E-learning infrastructures demand high bandwidth, and inaccessibility has delayed some of this year's rollouts. Meantime, the training department distributes copies of CD-ROMs with pertinent training and policy information, while encouraging employees to go online when they can.

Cultural barriers and employee preferences also present roadblocks for government acceptance of E-learning. At the School of IT, the IT training division of the Internal Revenue Service in Austin, Texas, Patricia McCormack oversees technical training for all 100,000 IRS employees as well as 50,000 employees at the Department of the Treasury. Her unit offers IT courses in multiple formats. Online libraries that deliver courses via Word files are popular, she says, because "the IRS has an older population that prefers to download the courses to print and read offline."

At the Administration for Children and Families, half of the employees will be eligible for retirement in the next three years, but Katson estimates that all employees will be online by next year. The aging workforce "makes it even more remarkable that we've had such a high acceptance rate."

Photo of McCormack by John Langford

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