Launch of the Innovation & Opportunity Network

Workforce 3One

Transcript of Webinar

Launch of the Innovation & Opportunity Network: A Peer Learning Community Focused on Implementing WIOA

Wednesday, June 3, 2015

Transcript by Noble Transcription Services Murrieta, CA BRIAN KEATING: Our slides today, and want to tell everyone welcome to the launch of the Innovation and Opportunity Network, a peer learning community focused on implementing WIOA. And so we can move right into our content, I'm going to turn things over to Joseph Barela, a senior advisor with the Employment and Training Administration with the U.S. Department of Labor. Joseph, take it away.

JOSEPH BARELA: Thank you, Brian, and good afternoon and good morning to some of us on the line today. We thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedules to join us. We are excited today. We are at the point in time where we'd like to introduce the really exciting news that we have at the Department of Labor and with our interagency partnerships on how we want to address technical assistance and training as we get ready to implement the WIOA.

Today I'm excited to have with me -- actually I'm going to go over the agenda with you real quick. Today we'll spend 90 minutes. First of all, we have fantastic footage of the secretary of labor talking to the audience at this year's 2015 NAWB forum that was held in late March. Then we'll actually go into what we're calling the roadmap to WIOA and kind of give you a visual of what we envision not only planning and implementing but moving us on into full deployment of the new act.

We'll learn about the Innovation and Opportunity Network, which we are going to refer to as ION. So you'll hear that moving forward. Then we'll hear from our peers. We're excited that we have some workforce leaders from across the country that will tell us their stories as they get ready to change the system from WIA to WIOA. And then we'll get insider's view on training and technical assistance that we have planned in the near future.

So at this time I am going to let you know with us today on the webinar are Amanda Ahlstrand who's the administrator of the Office of Workforce Investment here at the U.S. Department of Labor. We also have Les Range joining us from Atlanta who's the regional administrator with the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training.

And joining us our colleagues and practitioners in the field, we have Bruce Ferguson who is the president of Career Source Northeast Florida. We have Adam Peck, executive director of Tulare County Workforce Investment Board, and we have Stephanie Steffens-Veck who is the director of the Colorado Workforce Development Council. Thank you all for joining us this afternoon.

At this time we are going to share the video of Secretary Perez. So I hope you enjoy it, and there's some key messages as we move forward transitioning from WIA to WIOA.

MR. KEATING: All right. Great. And while we bring up that video, just want to remind everyone to go ahead and turn up your computer speakers so that you can hear the audio for the video. We'll go ahead and play that now.

(Video plays-silence)

Launch of ION: A Peer Learning Community Focused on Implementing WIOA Wednesday, June 3, 2015 Page 2 of 25 AMANDA AHLSTRAND: Hello everybody. My name's Amanda Ahlstrand. It's great to have you participating in today's webinar and it's certainly difficult for me to follow Secretary of Labor Tom Perez. He really fired up the audience at the NAWB conference this spring, and I hope the clip that we played for you just now fired you up as well.

Let me start a little bit of my presentation with following up on Secretary Perez's challenge that he really has given to us here at the Department of Labor, and I know other secretaries and cabinet members have challenged their teams across the federal government to work in this way too.

We have here a quote which you can all read from Sue Swenson who's the acting assistant secretary at the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services, who is a true partner with ETA and other parts of the Department of Education, not to mention Health and Human Services and other federal agencies.

But we've been working very closely with Sue and her team as we prepare to issue the proposed rules and as we're going forward with providing guidance to the workforce system and technical assistance, which we're focused on here today. But I just wanted to start with that. A key theme throughout WIOA, throughout today's conversation, and those conversations we'll have all together as a system is partnership. And so just a quick view of that here, and we'll revisit some of those themes as we go forward.

I also want to pick up on a few of the other highlights that the secretary had in his speech as well as how we've really been embracing the vision of WIOA. It is demand-driven, and we know that that is and will continue to be a very important piece of implementation of WIOA.

Many of you were making great strides on that under WIA, and moving forward we're continuing to challenge ourselves as a system to make sure that's how we operate, that we meet the needs of employers who create jobs, that we're growing our regional economies across the country. There are multiple paths to prosperity, and being in tune with where business and industry is going will help us get there.

Those multiple paths also mean that we need to meet people where they are, that job seekers come into our system from many different places. They have many different characteristics. Their backgrounds are different. Some of them may face barriers. Some of them may not know they're facing barriers, and we're really challenging ourselves and the system to take a look at designing services and delivering services with that customer in mind, tailoring the services that you provide to the job seeker so that you can help them along their pathway to prosperity.

And again, partnership at all levels of the system, I think we have lots of examples from across the country and I know from my work here at ETA over the last decade or so that a common challenge we get from states and locals is that we need to partner at the federal level better. I do think we are making great progress on that, and I challenge and encourage all of you to further embrace that partnership model as you move forward under WIOA.

Launch of ION: A Peer Learning Community Focused on Implementing WIOA Wednesday, June 3, 2015 Page 3 of 25 Let's take a brief moment to look a whole two and a half weeks or so back to May 13th. We had a webinar on some guidance that we issued regarding governance, and during that webinar we did a poll. And what this showed all of us is that most of you are ready to start in now less than a month on July 1st implementation of WIOA. What I think is important and we asked this question this way but this is about starting at that time.

As we get day by day closer to that date, we all are realizing I think the fervor and activity that needs to go along to meeting that deadline, and certainly that's not a one-time turn the light on and we're ready to go. So the ION that we're going to talk about today and the technical assistance that we have in mind is designed to help us along the way. So we'll get into a little bit more detail there here in a minute, but I wanted to remind folks and thank you for all that you're doing to be ready for July 1.

So I'm going to turn it over to my colleague, Joe, to ask one of our first polling questions for today's webinar. Again, we appreciate your participation. We're looking forward to getting feedback from you from hearing from some of you from across the country during this webinar. But first, let's do a quick poll on today's audience. Joe.

MR. BARELA: Thanks, Amanda. And shortly you will see a poll come up on your screen, and we're going to ask today, have you conducted or are you planning WIOA specific training and/or technical assistance to your public workforce stakeholders and partners prior to July 1st, 2015?

MR. KEATING: All right. And the poll is actually up on your screen now. To vote, as many of you have already done, you just need to click the radio button. Your choices for this one are yes or no. So please go ahead and vote now, and we'll be able to see those results as they roll in. And I'll turn things back over to Joseph to go ahead and chime in on what you're seeing so far.

MR. BARELA: Okay. It looks like we're about 55 percent of the audience this afternoon is telling us they have conducted or are planning to provide technical assistance training to their partners and stakeholders, and that's pretty consistent. So we'll go ahead and, if you want, that poll will stay active for a few more seconds, but we are going to transition into the rest of the presentation we have for you today.

So again we're about 56 percent are planning on doing so or have done so already, and the remainder are saying that they haven't. So we encourage you. Hopefully today's webinar and content will give you some opportunities and resources so that you can continue to do that or begin to do that. So, Amanda, back to you.

MS. AHLSTRAND: Thank you. Well, and certainly the focus on technical assistance, as we're here to discuss today, we want to introduce to you the Innovation and Opportunity Network or the ION. And we hope that this proves helpful to you as you're continuing to provide that technical assistance to your stakeholders and partners and as you begin to plan that.

What we're envisioning here through the ION is really a community of people, practitioners, programs, partnerships, and stakeholders that group together and work to build the system capacity across the country and really strive toward excellence across the country. We want this

Launch of ION: A Peer Learning Community Focused on Implementing WIOA Wednesday, June 3, 2015 Page 4 of 25 to be a national, regional, state, and local alliance. We want its members to be committed to awareness, education, and deployment of WIOA such that it's responsive to the dynamic needs of the environment and impacts the public workforce system in service delivery.

What we're really trying to get to here is a community that engages both through online platforms but is also bigger than that, that in your communities you're thinking about your day- to-day work and you're providing not only direct information and assistance on program implementation but also thinking about how you can teach some of your colleagues and share the lessons that you're learning along the way with your colleagues from across the country at all levels of the system.

Another key part of what we're envisioning for the ION basically just gets down to who is in the network. And I'll be honest here. This is a draft definition of the workforce system, which you may see immediately, as you read it, changes that you would make to it.

And certainly we would love to hear those, but what we are trying to get to here is a recognition and realization that ION is about everybody who has a stake in human capital development in your local and regional economies, in your state economies. If you may not have been traditionally thinking of yourselves as part of the workforce system, if you didn't identify with Title I of WIA or identify yourself as a community college, we know that there are pieces of your business that in those two examples, a large majority of your business day to day is addressing human capital needs.

But the point I'm trying to make is that we're really looking broadly at the network. We want lots of people to raise their hands, if asked, in your workforce development board community. Are you a stakeholder in the public workforce system? We want that number to be high. We also want that number of hands to be participating in this network.

While today we're hosting this webinar here at the Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration, we know that many of you are coming from different parts of the system that might not receive those direct formula funds from ETA. And our federal partners were helpful in getting the invitation out to today's webinar but really we do envision this to be about all parts of the system and your active and ongoing engagement can make this network a positive and forceful change as we move forward through implementing WIOA.

The ION is also all about big ideas. So those of you across the country, those of us here in D.C., we're addressing these kinds of issues every day in our day-to-day work. We might not always think about them in these terms, but they are big ideas.

They are things that we have in common, and we're looking to create a community where we can share, again, lessons learned as we go through the changes from WIA to WIOA, as we're working together in stronger partnership, as we're developing a regional mindset in the work we do, for example, focusing on talent development strategies such as career pathways, registered apprenticeship, and sector strategies.

Launch of ION: A Peer Learning Community Focused on Implementing WIOA Wednesday, June 3, 2015 Page 5 of 25 Some of those have a strong evidence base. For example, some of them that evidence base is being built, and we're looking to capture where people are gathering evidence that's both robust and strong in the pure sense of evaluation but also in the sense of promising or best practices and approaches. So taking a step back from our day-to-day work and thinking about how we're addressing these changes that WIOA gives us the opportunity to do is something that we want to continue to stay in touch with you about through the ION.

This next slide I'm going to turn over to a colleague on the phone. Rebecca Livingston is with Maher & Maher, and they're providing great support to our technical assistance efforts. And Rebecca's going to go through a little bit more of the detail of this roadmap. You'll see that we have a logo and theme of the ION, the orange and blue and the road.

We're going to be thinking and planning in those terms going forward over the next couple of years and into the future we hope. We could only get so far as winter of '17 to date, but expect some of the details of this to change. We'll look for your input on how things could change but this is kind of what we're thinking and we wanted to introduce it to you today. So let me turn it over to Rebecca for a minute. Rebecca?

REBECCA LIVINGSTON: Thank you, Amanda, and good afternoon, everyone. As Amanda and Secretary Perez stated, WIOA is the opportunity for transformational change, and we understand that change is hard as well as rewarding. Real and sustainable change takes time and determination, and as ETA and our partners are looking at developing a technical assistance strategy, we were thinking about it in the context of the phases that you, state and local areas, will go through as you implement WIOA.

This roadmap shows the phases that we anticipate you will be going through as well as the types of technical activities -- technical assistance activities that ETA and partners will provide to help you be successful. I will mention that this is just a high-level framework. There's going to be much more details around the specific technical assistance activities that will be provided, but this is the framework that will guide all of the technical activities.

It will be the framework that all activities will fall under. We also realize that states and local areas are at various places along the roadmap, and also the roadmap isn't linear. It's likely that steps will happen simultaneously, and you may be revisiting some steps along the way.

So I'm just going to quickly go through some of these steps. The first step is the one we're in right now starting spring 2015. It's joining the Innovation and Opportunity Network. And so activities that will happen under that are like the one happening today, the kick-off webinar where you're going to also learn the ION themes. We're also going to encourage everyone to do the quick start action planners.

You'll learn more about them a little bit later, but they're on the WIOA collection page and they cover topics such as partnerships, state and local leadership and governance, One-Stop Center service design, youth services. You'll also notice that there are icons under each of the steps, and those are indicating kind of key technical assistance activities that we're going to be doing.

Launch of ION: A Peer Learning Community Focused on Implementing WIOA Wednesday, June 3, 2015 Page 6 of 25 So if you look to the legend at the right you'll see, for instance, the first icon is voices of experience. And for those of you that joined early were able to view some of the voices of experience that we are already doing, which are videos, podcasts, and other types of media that are highlighting best practices, success stories, things that your peers are doing as they implement WIOA.

The Act Now webinar series is another one that will be going to do pretty soon, and that is just a webinar series stating what you should be doing now to implement WIOA. And it is aligned with the key themes that are in the QSAP.

So then I'll move to the next step. So the next step we believe that you will be doing and probably many of you are already doing is advancing the vision and creating a strategy. And this will be to identify how the vision that you'll hear today really translates to your individual state and how you will implement a plan to progress towards that vision.

We anticipate that you'll meet with your regional ETA office to talk about the plan as well as share how you're moving forward with other states and local areas. And as I mentioned previously, we'll begin the Act Now webinar series, which will be a series about the things that you should be doing now as you prepare for WIOA. And then we'll continue to launch the voices of experience.

The next phase, which we anticipate to really be in full implementation in fall 2015, is to implement the strategy that you've put together. We intend to convene state and local teams, which include partners and people from all level of the state workforce system both we're hoping virtually and in person to talk about your progress. What are some of the things that you've come across, challenges? Also what are some of the successes that you have had? And then we'll also launch additional technical assistance on the ION themes.

Then moving to steps four and five, that continuous implementation and assessing progress we anticipate will start this year, but it will be a step that will continue for quite some time. And this is where we'll do periodic check-ins with you to see how you're progressing against your goals, also to identify where are maybe additional technical assistance or challenges that you're having.

We're also planning deep dive institutes which will be focused on three key areas, fiscal, state planning, performance to dive in a little bit more with you of how that implements -- how you're moving forward with WIOA and then also continue delivery of TA on the ION themes. Then we're also hoping in step five that you relook at your quick start action planner that maybe you've already done or you will do following this virtual event and see how much you've progressed since when you first took the assessment tool.

And then finally the sixth step, which is a very important part of any transformational change, is sustaining change. We will continue technical assistance on the ION themes at that point, but most of the technical assistance I anticipate that we'll be providing at that point and with our partners will be based on what we've learned over the last year or two years and also very much based on what we're hearing from you as we move forward.

Launch of ION: A Peer Learning Community Focused on Implementing WIOA Wednesday, June 3, 2015 Page 7 of 25 So this is our first draft of the roadmap to transformational change. I intend that you will see versions as we move forward along our technical assistance strategy but look forward to working with all of you as we move towards transformation. And I will turn it back over to you, Amanda.

MS. AHLSTRAND: Great. Thanks, Rebecca. I guess moving forward what I want to emphasize here is that we're all part of an ongoing and bigger change. And as the secretary said in his speech, this is also part of a bigger movement in his mind and I hope in all of ours.

We really do have an opportunity here as we move to the Opportunity Act. But in support of change we hope that the ION really is a support to all of us and build the community of, again, sharing our experiences on this journey, on this road, and having the assistance of the ION we hope will help all of us.

I also now -- oops. Sorry. I want to turn it back over to Joe. We're going to check in with you again on a polling question related to your accessing of technical assistance I believe. Joe.

MR. BARELA: Great. Thanks, Amanda. So if I'm hearing correctly, the network is a community or movement, and we're trying to create a roadmap so the community network can move from implementation to sustainability. So I think I'm getting it. So thank you.

MS. AHLSTRAND: That's good.

MR. BARELA: The question I have for everyone today, the next polling question you'll see pop up on your screen, is have you or your workforce partners accessed any of the USDOL, ETA WIOA training and/or technical assistance, such as a QSAP, webinars, fact sheet, or anything else we have on workforce3one.org? So the poll should be coming up on your -- and we already have people taking it.

So it looks like of those on the line today we have about 87 percent saying that they've accessed some type of technical assistance resource. So that's fantastic. We hope those of you that have not do so sometime in the near future, and those that have, please continue to do so. Those are available again at the collections page on workforce3one.org. So, Amanda, turning it back over to you.

MS. AHLSTRAND: Thank you, Joe. And just -- I mean, just quickly here, thank you for accessing the resources that are available. If you haven't, we're always interested in your feedback on what would be helpful, and we're going to be looking to you to kind of take what you're providing as technical assistance -- it sounded like a lot of you were already down that road -- as you're moving forward and share that with the community.

So I think this represents that while work is happening across the country in your local, regional, and state parts of the system, these types of things are ongoing. You're asking questions on your challenges of your partners, of each other. You're working on those partnerships. You're participating and providing and designing training, and then you're sharing innovations and success locally, regionally, or at the state level.

Launch of ION: A Peer Learning Community Focused on Implementing WIOA Wednesday, June 3, 2015 Page 8 of 25 ION is here to help bring that up to a national level so we can connect people from across the country and all different parts of the system. So again, thank you. Thank you for the work you're doing, but also thank you in advance for participating in the ION moving forward.

A little time out here I guess to do another partnership sharing. One of our colleagues, Mark Greenberg who's the acting assistant secretary over at the Administration for Children and Families, he and his team have been a great partner with us. To date since the passage of WIOA, we're moving forward. But those parts of the system that are TANF and coming to the table are clearly a partner, and I know that Mark sends his hopes and support for us moving forward through the ION.

I think we're ready now to talk a little bit more in depth on some progress that's being made across the country. Joe introduced Bruce, Adam, and Stephanie a little bit early, but here is their information again. And let me turn it over to Joe again to kick this off, and thanks, everyone, for joining us today. We look forward to seeing you on the video.

MR. BARELA: Thanks, Amanda. And again, we're very excited to have our panelists, our practitioners with us today and really the voices of experience that we have gone out and heard from that are doing phenomenal things as they get ready to implement July 1 the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act.

So joining us today -- and you'll see coming up on your screen, if you don't have them already -- is Bruce Ferguson, and Bruce is with Career Source Northeast Florida, Adam Peck who is the executive director with Tulare County Workforce Investment Board, and Stephanie Steffens- Veck -- look, that rhymes; we have a Peck and a Veck -- who is the director of the Colorado Workforce Development Council. Thank you for taking the time, and welcome.

Bruce, do you want to tell us your story?

BRUCE FERGUSON: Sure. Good afternoon, everyone. And just to share a little bit about what is going on in Florida in our area in particular, we're in the northeast corner of the state around Jacksonville and have six different counties that are part of our local workforce area. We are well underway towards moving to the requirements of WIOA, and in some ways in Florida we feel like we've gotten a bit of a head start.

We already have all the Wagner-Peyser funding and program stuff under our umbrella, if you will, at the local level, along with unemployment compensation, veterans employment and training, the Trade Adjustment Act, some TANF, as well as SNAP. So there are a lot of these core partners that are already in our centers and really under our workforce umbrella. We are really looking forward to the addition of vocational rehabilitation as well as adult basic education and other partners that can kind of get under that umbrella.

So we've been through, at our local level, some of those cultural changes and integration that go along with this type of landmark legislation. So it's kind of nice to feel like you're maybe a little bit ahead of the game in those kind of areas and so forth. The partnerships that we can

Launch of ION: A Peer Learning Community Focused on Implementing WIOA Wednesday, June 3, 2015 Page 9 of 25 strengthen and develop through this, in my mind, is really where we can leverage some of the greatest strength of this legislation.

We are fortunate in our area our regional workforce area virtually exactly overlaps a regional economic development partnership, the JAXUSA Economic Development Partnership, that serves our area. So we work really hand in glove with that organization and will only continue to strengthen the relationships that we have with them. They at JAXUSA provide us with an incredible amount of information regarding our region's targeted industries.

And as we talk about career pathways and those sorts of things as we move into WIOA, that knowledge of those industries in our region is going to be extremely important to us as a workforce board and to workforce boards across the country. I've got to encourage everybody. Engage your economic development partners in your regions. Understand their needs.

From our perspective as a regional workforce board, we see ourselves as a support arm of economic development and really the people part of economic development. As you talk to those economic developers, you'll understand more and more that talent in your region and our specific region is really a key driver for when companies look to expand and grow or relocate companies within your particular area beyond the typical types of tax incentives and things and infrastructure needs that they have.

Labor force availability and the skill sets that they need not only just to start that company up but to carry it on for the next 20 or 30 years, that talent pipeline development and the knowledge that you need of your local industries is critically important. So that's one of the things that we've got going for us.

The demand-driven system that we see really embedded into WIOA is something that we've kind of taken to heart for quite a while now. We truly view the business community, the employers as the primary and ultimate customer of our system. We need to understand what their talent needs are today, understand their future skill needs, and ensure that the training that we are steering the job seekers that come to us are going to get them on that path.

The job seeker is really our pride. It's a critical piece of what we do. And as we saw in the slides earlier, we meet those job seekers in our career centers, wherever they come from. Some are in need of kind of a complete skills overhaul, if you will, and others we are simply kind of polishing the apple and moving them relatively quickly into the labor market and into the gainful employment.

I really think the other big focus and the thing that we have to do and the thing that we're working on hard is to be that convener of the various partners in our region. We're not the be all, end all solution as the workforce board. We're not the experts in every type of service that we need to provide. We need to bring those expert partners on board with us. I need to be able to pass those off.

We have some that are experts in ex-offender placement and training and working with that population. There's no need for us as a workforce board to reinvent that. Go find your partners.

Launch of ION: A Peer Learning Community Focused on Implementing WIOA Wednesday, June 3, 2015 Page 10 of 25 Go find your experts in those various areas, and those are the things that we're working hard on to improve those relationships and bring more of those in. So we're excited about the new legislation. We're well underway, we think, in Florida and in our Jacksonville region as well. And I'll hand it off to the next person.

MR. BARELA: Great. Thank you, Bruce. That was very insightful and helpful and we'll come back and we have some questions we'll ask of you and all the other panelists we have with us today. So at this time I'm going to turn it over to Adam Peck who's with Tulare Workforce Investment Board. Adam.

ADAM PECK: Thanks. Well, I really agree with everything Bruce had to say. I suppose I won't get away with just being able to say that, though. So I'll add a bit more.

Just a little bit structurally about the WIB here in Tulare County. We're in central California in the middle of the Central Valley, and structurally our workforce board is an incorporated 501(c) -- incorporated board nonprofit that then has an agreement back with the local elected official for the -- that has the staff that support the board as a county department. So we are county staff at the same time, but all the actions, all the investments made with Title I money are made by the workforce board and none are passed through to the Board of Supervisors in that instance.

We happen to contract out operation of our One-Stop Centers, though it still remains important to have the option just as the availability of competitive providers of those services change over time and as a way to properly oversee to have that as an option to bring those services back. That's a key element of the NPRM that we continue to look at.

And in terms of some of our plans for movement towards WIOA, we've had a couple things in mind. One, we really thought we were going to transition the board composition a little bit later. The recent TEGL by DOL, not just because it said you should do this now but the reasoning that was provided in that TEGL that said, look. There's a lot of planning that's going to occur over the next year; and really, shouldn't that planning be done by the board envisioned in the Opportunity Act?

That's been very compelling and has led us to move much more quickly than we were intending to move on some important changes in board composition, such that we will be taking a recommendation from our executive committee of our board to our board of supervisors, our local elected official, in the next couple of weeks so that by July 1 we have a workforce board in place that is compliant with the new law and is what -- the group of people sitting around the table with the law and vision to make the important decisions that are yet to be made because the truth is I don't know.

I feel like we are moving quickly and moving much too slowly all at the same time. I'm sure we often feel that way. I've -- we've kept a couple of things in mind, which is enough is known to act. We've heard that many times, and we try to -- there are often times we don't feel that that's the truth.

Launch of ION: A Peer Learning Community Focused on Implementing WIOA Wednesday, June 3, 2015 Page 11 of 25 We feel like not nearly enough is known to act, but the -- that positioning is important to being able to do things because the truth is at the federal level there's a lot of work to be done to provide input on important issues. At the state level they feel like they need more information, and the locals feel like they need more guidance from everyone until we get guidance.

Then we complain that you're being too prescriptive, but that's just the way we work. But I think we all have to move. At the same time I've talked about it as -- as heard from many others, flying -- building the plane as we fly it, and that's how I think the orientation we have to have. And the orientation that don't step back and try to build this big system and big strategy, start getting people to run in the same direction as you towards building that system and strategy.

So the other thing -- the other saying I have and from Virginia Hamilton of how might we? So in talking to partners that you've never been able to build a partnership that you wanted and you hope that guidance that comes down from the feds and the state will break down silos to make those partnerships work better, instead of waiting for those partners to get the explicit direction, start the conversations again with them of, well, how might we serve our shared customer? Or how might we work with businesses together in a way we haven't and so that you are well positioned of what you want out of a future guidance that may come down?

And so to build that willingness to get out and experiment and try small things. As an example, I have a real problem with changing my board structure when my bylaws haven't caught up with it and my agreement with my local elected officials haven't caught up with it.

And so I could spend several months in tweaking those so that they really did support the changes we're making structurally to the board. But then that would be months that I spend tweaking documents instead of doing that at the same time as that new board is set in the beginning to really dig deeply into these things. So that's just kind of some of the mindset I have as we move forward to implementation.

MR. BARELA: Thanks, Adam. And we're going to turn real quickly to our final panelist, Stephanie Steffens-Veck with the Colorado Workforce Development Council. Stephanie, thanks for joining us today.

STEPHANIE STEFFENS-VECK: Thank you, Joe. I appreciate it. I appreciate the opportunity to get to be here to speak on behalf of the states. We've learned so much from all of our different partners and all of the various states, and so we appreciate the opportunity to get to be here on their behalf.

As Joe said, I am Stephanie Steffens. I am the director of the Colorado Workforce Development Council, which is a governor-appointed business-led council of state agencies and local system partners collaborating to create a demand-driven talent pipeline that meets the needs of our economy. And so we've been working on that for several years through several different ways, and what I've been asked to address today is what effect does that have on implementing WIOA, and how do we -- what have we done to date to make sure that that's happening.

Launch of ION: A Peer Learning Community Focused on Implementing WIOA Wednesday, June 3, 2015 Page 12 of 25 So first of all, I guess what I would say is that when we got the new act, we were very excited to read it and to analyze it and to say that we were fortunate that it really embraced the strategies that Colorado had been working on for quite some time in developing a demand-driven system through sector partnerships that drive career pathways, through career pathways that drive system alignment, and through the work that we've done with business services standardization that allows for more of a standardized approach for the business customer while at the same time retaining the flexibility for each local workforce center to be able to serve their business customers in the best way possible but by doing that through common shared measures and through common services that are called the same thing and that have the same expectations on the business side.

So that was what we were already working on that we just were super excited that the law was going to empower us to move forward and help us create an exceptional talent development system for the state of Colorado.

So we really embraced that, and the first thing that we did is we worked with our local workforce directors and our Colorado Department of Labor and Employment to pull all of the partners together early on. The Department of Labor and Employment and the Rocky Mountain Workforce Development Association pulled together all of the directors in a two-day strategic planning session the end of last September. So we didn't waste any time at all.

At the same time I recognized that if the council's role was to convene and coordinate and to provide technical assistance resources and support to our local areas that our state agencies and all of their local system partners, I didn't have the capacity or the staff to do that alone. So we created a grant funded position for a project and change manager specifically for implementing this new law.

We were able to get support from the governor's office and from the Department of Labor to rush that through and get somebody hired as a temp that turned out to be an amazing person that we hired permanently for the next two years under a grant. And what Lee has brought is he was -- actually his first couple days -- I keep looking over there because he's in the room with me today.

But what Lee has brought to us is he was at that meeting in September. It was actually one of his first couple days on the job, and he has allowed us to have a state level person whose sole job is to ensure the collaboration of state agencies and their local system partners in making sure that we implement WIOA not only to the letter of the law but in a way that allows us to create an exceptional talent development system for Colorado.

So that's where we started last September, and some of the things that we have been doing so far to implement the law is that, in addition to bringing on Lee, he has built a state and local implementation team that represent all of the different system partners, both core partners as well as the required partners, including our human services agency and all of the optional partners that fall under that as well as our Department of Corrections and some other required partners or optional partners.

Launch of ION: A Peer Learning Community Focused on Implementing WIOA Wednesday, June 3, 2015 Page 13 of 25 And together they have created a implementation plan for all of the different components of WIOA, planning groups that are working together to break down every part of it from strategic planning to training frontline staff and everything in between. They have worked together to conduct stakeholder sessions all over the state, many, many sessions across the state with all of the different system partners, utilizing our local workforce area development boards to pull those partners together and to really utilize that system and to demonstrate that it's a local control system with the state supporting it that will really make this work happen.

Additionally, what we've really tried to do is focus on our strong public-private partners, our regional state relationships, our local control. So again, some of the more specifics would be we at our state legislature this year passed nine different pieces of legislation that were passed and partnered -- they were bipartisan in partnership with all of the different state agencies and local partners and two of which really directly affect implementing WIOA, one of which moved our Division of Voc Rehab into our Department of Labor and Employment and allows that cohesion of those core partners.

Another of which addresses the other core partner that isn't already in the Department of Labor, which is the Colorado Department of Education, and it allowed us -- it formalized a relationship we've had for a long time by creating a position that is housed with us but is shared with the Department of Education for postsecondary and workforce readiness and work-based learning, apprenticeships, and adult basic education work to make sure that all of that is aligned in our multiple pathways that we are building out through our career pathways system. So that was very exciting.

We were very pleased to get to protect and to save our local-based Wagner-Peyser services. So in Colorado our job matching services through Wagner-Peyser are provided by merit staff at the county level in our local regions and we were able to preserve that and we were very excited because we believe that it allows that integration that really empowers Colorado's local control that makes us as strong as we are.

We also have already designated our local areas, including one new local area. So we now have 10 local workforce areas with one being our rule consortium or balance of state that has 10 sub- regions. And we will have or hope to have, expect to have our regional planning map approved by July 1st.

We're in the last process as our council members are voting on that through today to approve our regional planning map that will break the state into five large regions for super-regional planning that aligned -- we were really excited that we were able to align our economic development regions with our workforce regions and in almost every instance truly respect both regions without having to have little tiny regional planning. Instead we could have big vast regional planning with only five regions. So we're excited about that.

The governor has created a workforce cabinet that is being chaired by the executive director of the Department of Labor but also has the executive directors of every other department that affects workforce. They set goals for the administration for the next four years, and we're working to align those goals with our WIOA strategic plan and our state plan and make sure that

Launch of ION: A Peer Learning Community Focused on Implementing WIOA Wednesday, June 3, 2015 Page 14 of 25 our local up planning matches up with the governor's administration plan and that we're all working together both from the top level administration as well as at the bottom up planning that will happen through WIOA.

So we're excited about that, and last but definitely not least is that we have a strategy for our statewide plan and that we have utilized a piece of legislation from last year and a technical assistance opportunity through the National Governors Association to create an annual talent pipeline report.

And we're using that report from last year and the one we're creating for this year to ensure that all of our planning is data-driven and that it's not just going by our gut, although that's important, but that we're using data to drive all of our decisions and really focused on the talent pipeline, not any one system.

So I guess what I would say is we're using our strong partnerships, the opportunity of this new law to take what we thought was a great foundation and really help launch us into being the best system we can be.

MR. BARELA: Great. Excellent, Stephanie. Thank you.

MS. STEFFENS-VECK: You're welcome.

MS. AHLSTRAND: Thank you so much to all three of you. We're going to turn now to some questions that we had prepared for today as well as incorporating some that we're getting through the feed as we're here live today. So let's start with the first one for all three of you. In a word, WIOA is about opportunity, specifically for innovation. So if each of you could take a quick minute to tell us about one innovation that either you've already begun to implement that you haven't had a chance to talk about yet or one that you know is on the near horizon, that would be great. Let's start with you, Stephanie.

MS. STEFFENS-VECK: Well, I think for Colorado one that we have started to implement is the systematic and meaningful alignment of DVR in with our employment and training division at CDLE. We really didn't have a relationship between Division of Voc Rehab, which was very -- it was several levels down in the Department of Human Services. So by working collaboratively with the Department of Human Services in the legislature, we've moved that physically into the Department of Labor and Employment.

It is happening as we speak. We are working on teams to make that happen, and then we're also working at the local level to make it real and to make sure that it isn't just in name or in location but it is truly happening at the local level in the best possible way to ensure that all people have the best opportunities for the services that they need to get a good job.

MS. AHLSTRAND: That's great to hear that focus on the customer is certainly very important, and I think all three of you have talked about that in your previous statements. The same question, is there an innovation that you would like to talk about, Adam?

Launch of ION: A Peer Learning Community Focused on Implementing WIOA Wednesday, June 3, 2015 Page 15 of 25 MR. PECK: Sure. I would say a lot of this work is about take something you've already think you've been good at and really try to see how you can better serve your customers through the new law. And for us, we think a lot of our work is an intermediary between a number of partners and the -- a number of public partners and industry partners.

In the end I think the common denominator for the value of the WIB, there can be a lot of different things, but the common denominator is that there are many systems we deal with that have a lot of responsibilities in terms of providing skills to different parts of the workforce. But the real value we bring is our connection to industry and our ability to convene and broker conversations with and interpret for and kind of clear the field for those partners.

And so really trying to organize a lot of our work around that core value, that when we bring partners in, even if we're talking about partners in the One-Stop system, it's around the idea that we can provide for them a clear view of the career pathways, career opportunities that exist for whatever job seekers they serve and that a manner by which we can kind of easily describe to those customers and to the systems that serve them how they do.

So we're building -- we have a -- we're part of an initiative called Innovate Tulare-Kings which also involves our neighboring county. So when it comes to either the K-12 system career pathway efforts or the different One-Stop partners, that we have a cohesive way -- we're building on the manner by which we have a cohesive way to work with industry to articulate those pathways and the credentials that are the markers along that pathway and then provide that in a comprehensive way to the network of partners that we work with.

MS. AHLSTRAND: Great. Thank you so much, Adam. And I know a lot of your answer to that question Bruce also talked about -- you both have talked about in your earlier statements, but turning to Bruce, is there another innovation that you would like to highlight here for everyone?

MR. FERGUSON: Well, I think one of the ones for us is we turn our real focus in WIOA to out- of-school youth. That's something that under WIA we had really focused more of our attention and dollars on the in-school youth population. So it's been a big shift for us both from a policy perspective and so forth as to what do we need to do to focus our efforts on this out-of-school youth, and how can we have the biggest impact?

And it goes back to partners for us. Again, we've been working with a local nonprofit operation, New Hope. They work with ex-offenders, and we've actually engaged them with -- in a pilot project with our court systems, both judges, the prosecutors, as well as public defenders for youth that are first-time offenders, nonviolent, and so forth, and putting them into what we call a deferred sentence. While they're on that deferred sentence, they're still under court supervision and so forth, but they'll be working on employment and skills training and so forth as a condition for that.

And then at the end of the program, if they participate and complete, they will not be incarcerated. We'll hopefully have them on into the workforce. And so that's really one of our first and most -- I'm most excited about what that can bring. And again, that's not us as a

Launch of ION: A Peer Learning Community Focused on Implementing WIOA Wednesday, June 3, 2015 Page 16 of 25 workforce board actually doing that, but it's being part of that convener and funder and bringing all the right parties together to do it. So we're excited about that one.

MR. BARELA: Thank you, Bruce. And I think that leads into the question that I have for Stephanie and Adam, building on that services to youth populations. What innovations or ideas are you thinking about to better serve youth under the new regulations? So, Adam, do you want to take that question?

MR. PECK: Sure. We're again talking about our Innovate Tulare-Kings effort is really -- some of this is because of a great investment that's been made by the state of California within schools. With limited in-school dollars remaining, we're really going to tie -- connect our in-school efforts and investments more directly with the career pathway programs that are emerging in a number of school districts here locally.

So given our role as coordinating a lot of the work-based activities for those different career pathway programs and given the opportunity for -- within eligibility for areas of high poverty, which we have several pockets of throughout Tulare County, we are going to much more heavily integrate our Opportunity Act in-school youth services with those -- the career pathway programs that are really growing in a robust way in our community. And we think it's a way of making the few dollars that we can spend in school leverage much more heavily.

MR. BARELA: Adam, thank you. Stephanie, how about Colorado?

MS. STEFFENS-VECK: So I think there are a lot of different things that are happening at the local level, but I'll highlight a couple that are happening specifically at the state. And I agree completely with Bruce and Adam. I think that in-school youth was definitely a lot more of the focus before, and this is a huge opportunity to really serve the students that need us most and to challenge us to figure out how to do that. And so we're embracing that.

One way I guess I should say that we're embracing it is we are launching -- we're using it to encourage us to do a lot more work-based learning, recognizing that kids that aren't successful in school, there's a reason and it's probably because we need to incorporate more of an applied learning component, and we need to help them see the value of education. And part of the way of doing that is to help them see the value of work.

So we are working -- actually just got the final draft of an executive order from the governor to create a business board that's working with our council to create a program referred -- that we're referring to as business and schools collaborating together that we will use to create very intentional work-based learning opportunities for specifically harder to serve adults and opportunity youth but ultimately everyone and using our strong system of career and technical education in Colorado to leverage that in our career pathways to get kids and adults who are still the harder to serve adults, long-term unemployed back on really meaningful pathways through work-based learning.

Launch of ION: A Peer Learning Community Focused on Implementing WIOA Wednesday, June 3, 2015 Page 17 of 25 So I would think that's one of the big things that we're excited about that didn't exist before and that we're using this opportunity to put some pressure on ourselves to do a better job of really addressing the issue.

MR. BARELA: Sounds great. Thank you, Stephanie. I am going to ask a question that's coming in specifically for Bruce, and I want to remind our participants today as the panelists are speaking, if there's something you would like to ask them specifically, I want to encourage you to use your chat box to enter that question. And we'll try to get to those either through the panel presentation or when we're done with the entire webinar when we open it up to general questions.

So, Bruce, question coming in. "Does career services use a single MIS system for all programs?"

MR. FERGUSON: Yes. For the programs, all the WIOA programs, Wagner-Peyser, all of those we do have what's called EmployFlorida.com that is our statewide MIS system. The one that is a -- just a bit of an outlier that we do have a separate system for for part of the case management, we do have a separate system for our TANF population, for our TANF demographic. But the job search, all the resume and that stuff is all done through that Employ Florida marketplace for all the different programs.

MR. BARELA: And, Adam or Stephanie, do you want to take that question for your state or your local area?

MR. PECK: I would say for -- in California there's a system called Cal Jobs that integrates WIOA and Wagner-Peyser. Sometimes local areas have some additional components of a system and upload to that state system but -- and then we're not as integrated at the local level when it comes to TANF and some of the other things Bruce talked about. But between Wagner- Peyser and Title I services, it's integrated through Cal Jobs.

MS. STEFFENS-VECK: So in Colorado we have Connecting Colorado, which is a system that all of the local areas in the state use for all of Title I and Title III. We have built the bridge from the TANF system, CBMS, to be able to do the data reporting. With DVR coming into CDLE, we'll be -- we're building the bridge with their data collection system to make sure that it works with Connecting Colorado.

And then the other thing that this isn't the exact question but related is we're using this opportunity to more aggressively address our eligible training provider list and have that connection with Connecting Colorado and with our Department of Higher Education and our college in Colorado system. So the system -- the good system between -- for Title I and Title III was already in place and works good, but we are making it even better by integrating it with those other systems as well.

MR. BARELA: Thank you. Thanks for sharing that, everybody. The next question for our panelists -- and I'm going to stay with Stephanie -- is trained and motivated staff are essential to creating opportunity and actually achieving that opportunity for the populations that access American Job Centers.

Launch of ION: A Peer Learning Community Focused on Implementing WIOA Wednesday, June 3, 2015 Page 18 of 25 Can you tell us what is Colorado doing or plan to do in looking at staff capacity or professional development as they go from WIA to WIOA?

MS. STEFFENS-VECK: I'm glad you asked that question and that Lee was here to give me the answer. Actually we have been working, as I said, since September on training and what does training mean and how can you start to train when you didn't even have the rules and regs. We decided to approach it that we could build the training-based on what we did know and tweak it on what might change when the rules and regs came out.

And so we actually will be piloting a webinar-based frontline staff training program in the next couple weeks, and it will start in July. So we are going to start training local frontline staff through a webinar series that's been developed in partnership between the local partners as well as the state staff at the Department of Labor and the other agencies.

So we're jumping on it right away, and then we'll also be hosting a convening of all of our state human services directors and our state workforce directors the end of -- or I guess the first part of October to see what more needs to be done and how we take it to the next level with -- once we figure out where we're going and what more we need.

MR. BARELA: Thank you. Adam, would you like to go next?

MR. PECK: Yeah. It's -- I think it's an important time. Sometimes when you don't have the specifics strategy, you feel like you want to train about it can be difficult, but really it's about having staff at the level that they can really help in a deep way with that strategy. And of course we in Tulare County have a good group of staff that were here during the last transition, JHB to WIA.

But then a whole other group of folks who this is all brand new to, kind of the way breaking down regulations. And so some of that just competency of how to work your way through regulations, how to read them, sometimes I have staff dive into them, and they start getting lost in the preamble portion and so -- and how to kind of -- there's not a great table of contents, so how to kind of build that, how to kind of work your way through the actual text of things and to start to have conversations.

And when it comes to staff, often in our area we're much smaller than we were a decade ago. We've lost a lot of funding. So where you used to have three folks that were working together on a certain issue, they might be working alone.

So they don't have that kind of connection to other staff and changes come up to figure out what that all means. So trying to get staff both across our agency to be talking to each other, you may not be working on youth issues but the youth person may need more people wrapping their heads around an issue we're facing locally.

And then of course across the state we have an association called the California Workforce Association that is an association of all the local workforce boards across the state, and on that

Launch of ION: A Peer Learning Community Focused on Implementing WIOA Wednesday, June 3, 2015 Page 19 of 25 board we try to make sure to understand the training needs and how to get folks together, sometimes on statewide webinars, sometimes through regional convenings because we think there's value again to bring folks together.

I always -- as a director you get the chance to go see and talk to other folks about how they approach different strategies. Sometimes when you work for a local workforce board, you forget that the way we do things was a choice at some point to do things that way. It's not how everyone does it.

And so as we're facing new challenges and developing strategy, it's important for staff to talk to staff from other boards to kind of wrap their head around different ways of approaching similar problems and then of course working with the state partners to do a cross-silo, to the degree they're still silos, training to pull folks together in that way as well.

MS. AHLSTRAND: Thank you, Adam. I'm going to switch up the question a little bit in the interest of time for you, Bruce, before we transition to the next section of our conversation today. But I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit, Bruce, about how you envision possibly using the ION, the network that we're talking about here today, in your future efforts where you are in northeast Florida.

MR. FERGUSON: Right. Sure. For a resource like this I think one of the best things is being able to go and look at what is going on in other areas of the country.

It's very easy, as Adam was saying a little bit, to get just focused on what you're trying to get done at the local level and just dealing with the nuts and bolts of implementation without taking that broader view to go and use a system and use a tool that's being put together such as ION so I can go see what Adam's doing in California or what Colorado is doing in terms of their business services.

That whole ability to share what's been going on in your particular area and being able to pick those nuggets and pick those things out that will be helpful for you or maybe give you, as a region, that aha moment as to this is really important for us. So a tool and what's being put forth here through ION I think is invaluable for us to be able to do a quick scan and see what's out there and what we might want to do in terms of our own implementation.

MS. AHLSTRAND: Great. Thank you, Bruce. I don't know if, Stephanie or Adam, if you would want to add anything to that effect how ION might help you in your efforts. I saw you nodding your head positively there, Stephanie. I appreciate that. Anything else you would want to add quickly?

MS. STEFFENS-VECK: I just -- I really appreciate that you're taking the effort to do this. I -- my staff and I, Lee, Emily, and I have traveled all over the country talking about Colorado's work, and we've directed people to our websites and we're happy to share.

But I just -- there needs to be a more coordinated way to do it, and I really appreciate that you're doing this. And we know absolutely everything Colorado has done we've done either by

Launch of ION: A Peer Learning Community Focused on Implementing WIOA Wednesday, June 3, 2015 Page 20 of 25 working with other states and other local areas or by learning from something somebody else did before.

And I just really appreciate this platform as a way for states and local areas to share even more and learn from each other even more. It's very, very needed, and I think the biggest challenge is what you're addressing through the webinars is getting the word out so people know it's here and they use it and somebody else isn't working to duplicate it. But we really appreciate it, and we will be using it to collect best practices and figure out how we can do what we do even better.

MS. AHLSTRAND: Great. Thank you so much. Anything else to add from your perspective, Adam?

MR. PECK: No. I concur completely with Bruce and Stephanie on that.

MS. AHLSTRAND: Thank you. We appreciate all of your comments on that and generally. We really appreciate the time that the three of you took out of your days, and I think some of you were maybe not even in the office or supposed to be in the office today.

So we really appreciate that as well. I think your comments covered the gamete of the components that are the vision of WIOA, the partnerships that are necessary, the connections across programs, the business as driver, the importance of the boards and the strategic planning that they do at the state and local level.

Those are just a couple of the things, the customer centric design, all of you talked about those in different ways. And I know there's so much going on where you are and across the country. So again, thank you so much for your time today.

We have a little bit more time, and we may come back to some questions that you as panelists and we here and Les from Atlanta can address at the end, but I do want to turn it over to my colleague Les Range, who is the regional administrator in ETA's Atlanta office. So over to you, Les.

LES RANGE: Good afternoon, Amanda and everybody. Thank you very much. Been great information shared since we started the webinar. Over the last few months we've been telling the system that ETA is planning a robust technical assistance effort that addresses a wide range of topics, and, ladies and gentlemen, this is it. We hope that what you've seen today, that you see yourself in this roadmap, that you see where we're headed, where you need to go, where you're headed, and that the ION activities give you what you need.

To help you get there ION has ongoing activities and deliverables that have been discussed already. We're going to be addressing major themes of WIOA, such as partnerships, strategic boards, change management, system alignment, regionalism, youth, customer-centered One-Stop service design, and talent development strategies.

And all the things that we're talking about we have the benefit of our relationship with our federal and intergovernmental partners. For example, take a look at this quote from our

Launch of ION: A Peer Learning Community Focused on Implementing WIOA Wednesday, June 3, 2015 Page 21 of 25 colleague, Janet LaBreck, who's the commissioner of Rehabilitation Services at the Department of Education. We work very closely with her, and we have a great relationship with those folks in her department.

Just in terms of our technical assistance strategy, I want you to know that our strategy is two- fold. We provide technical assistance in the form of guidance, and then we perform it, we prepare it, we deliver it in the form of the kinds of technical assistance that we're talking about here today.

So we've already issued guidance, and you can see from the slide that's up there this is the guidance that has been already addressed. And Adam mentioned the fact that some of you are waiting on guidance, and I can tell you we've got a lot more coming. We've got guidance on fiscal reporting on WIOA. Next slide.

We have guidance on youth formula activities in PY 2015. There's going to be guidance on governance provisions under WIOA for state and local boards. There's going to be quite a bit of guidance on One-Stop. There's going to be One-Stop service and operations guidance, One-Stop certification criteria, One-Stop comprehensive procurement, and so in addition we're going to be talking about competitive procurement at One-Stop centers.

There's going to be also guidance for national grantees under Section 166 and 167 of WIOA, and this is going to include the Native American program and the national farmworker jobs program guidance. So lots of guidance coming out. There's going to be guidance on registered apprenticeship programs as well as guidance on unemployment insurance. So stay tuned. It's going to be delivered in a priority fashion. We'll get it out in the order of need. So that's forthcoming.

As you can see from the slide here that we're looking at delivering ION technical assistance through state teams and local partners. So it's our vision that ION will house all training and technical assistance on the WIOA collections site, and that's going to be at wioa.workforce3one.org.

There are currently some items there that we hope your state and local teams have already taken advantage of, and if not, we encourage you to do so as well as to get your partners involved. I think that the key step is getting your local partners and state partners involved.

The quick start action planners or QSAPs that you've heard discussed were launched in March and April are five important topics, state and local governance, partnership, youth services strategy, and One-Stop service design. To date the traffic on these QSAPs has been very high. The youth QSAP has the highest usage, so we know that's an important area for you.

And we hope that as you continue to use these QSAPs, they will encourage your boards and partners to benchmark your progress and help you figure out where you want to go on the ION roadmap. We've also identified resources applicable to WIOA that are posted by topic areas on the WIOA collections site. All of the information that we see now on the collections page is

Launch of ION: A Peer Learning Community Focused on Implementing WIOA Wednesday, June 3, 2015 Page 22 of 25 going to be migrated to something called Workforce GPS, and that's forthcoming probably in the summer.

Also other tools that we have coming are additional webinars in our Act Now virtual learning series. Some of you may have participated in the Act Now governance webinar on May 13th, and if not, you can find the recording of that on the Workforce3One site. Other upcoming webinars include sessions on youth, partnerships, and One-Stop service delivery.

And another tool that we're proud of and you'll see it if you hang on at the end of the session is our voices of experience videos. We're also going to be having podcasts. If you logged in early, you will have seen the -- you may have seen three of the videos that we already have produced featuring local and state workforce leaders discussing their successes and challenges pertaining to WIOA. And as I mentioned, these videos will also play at the end of the webinar and will be posted on the WIOA site.

So, Joe, are we going to have a polling question now?

MR. BARELA: Yes. We do have a polling question that we'll get to. So on your screen you should see, what training and/or technical assistance would your workforce network benefit from in the near future as you implement WIOA?

Again, that's on the screen. If you could take a moment to fill in your needs, and you can enter multiple answers to this question. So what training and/or technical assistance would your workforce network benefit from in the near future as you implement WIOA?

Thank you, everyone. We are transitioning into -- I just want to let you know that as the ION develops, we really -- and Les said this perfectly as well as our panelists, that we really want to emphasize the important role that state -- really regional, state, and local teams will have as they start to implement the WIOA program.

Coming up on the network you will see information or technical assistance deliverables that really focus on customer-centered service delivery, virtual and in-person peer-to-peer convenings that will start supporting networks that work on thematic topics as we go through implementation, and then toolkits that are specific to some of the key areas of the WIOA program and legislation.

I'm excited to announce at this time that on June 15th we will convert over from really a static collection on Workforce3One of resources to more of an interactive community of practice. On June 15th people around the country will be able to access the community of practice, the ION community of practice and be able to post and access WIOA resources.

This is again what our panelists mentioned. We want to have an opportunity for people to share resources as they develop them in their local areas, in their states, and even at the regional level that are helping people get through this transition period, things that are going well as well as issues that they may be having.

Launch of ION: A Peer Learning Community Focused on Implementing WIOA Wednesday, June 3, 2015 Page 23 of 25 We'll be able to work with blog questions that people can participate on those as well as discussion topics in discussion rooms where people can dive down deep into specific topics of the WIOA transition. Also we'll be able to have not only the national office, regional office, states, and locals but others list activities that center around WIOA technical assistance and list those events onto the community of practice.

So again I encourage you to do so beforehand and access the collections that are there today, but as of June 15th we do hope that will be an opportunity for really what Stephanie hit a home run with is the network or platform for people to upload resources as well as take resources down and implement, talk to each other and network with each other on all things WIOA.

We are running a little bit behind schedule. We do have another supportive quote from one of our interagency partners up on the screen for you to show and to share with the audience how important technical assistance from everyone that's in the network that we participate and invite each other to look at resources as we move towards full implementation of the new law.

At this time we are going to open it up for some questions. I want to thank everyone today for their time. We are going to get as many questions as we can. Amanda, I think the first one that we have coming in is, "How can I find out about local efforts like ION in Mississippi?" Les, do you want to take this question?

MR. RANGE: Sure, Joe. Thanks. Today we're launching ION. So as we move forward not only in Mississippi but throughout the country states can look to their regional ETA offices. My colleagues in Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas, and San Francisco are having conversations with people who are key partners in the ION network.

So today's the launch. We have contacts already with the state of Mississippi and the partners there. So you'll be hearing more from us very soon on how to get started in Mississippi.

MS. AHLSTRAND: Great. Thank you, Les. And we have time for just one last question. We are at our hour and a half, and I want to thank everyone for their time today. We hope that you were introduced to the ION in a way that will make you come back. And we'll be in touch, but on that note a question came in about how people are communicating about the WIOA vision and partnerships to our stakeholders.

And I can answer that from a federal level in the sense of we go through our formal processes of asking for your comments on the proposed regs, and we do encourage you to do that. Those are still open for a couple more weeks. We issue guidance where we talk about that. We provide opportunities like this through the ION where we communicate broadly and interactively when we can about those, but I also want to challenge that question back to the audience today.

How are you communicating the WIOA vision? I think our panelists did a great job about some of the ways that they're doing that today and taking steps to implement, and I know all of you across the country in your various roles as part of the public workforce system are doing that too.

Launch of ION: A Peer Learning Community Focused on Implementing WIOA Wednesday, June 3, 2015 Page 24 of 25 But it really is a question for all of us to keep in mind and to communicate about what's working and what's not going forward. So we'll look forward to doing that with you through the ION.

Thanks and have a great afternoon, everybody.

MR. KEATING: All right. Just want to encourage everyone to stay logged in. So before you exit today we want to invite you to go ahead and stay here to give us some feedback about if you'd recommend viewing this webinar for a colleague.

Go ahead and rate the overall quality of the webinar, and while you do that, I've got a couple of windows where you can give us open-ended feedback as well. We're going to play back those videos that we were talking about that some of you may have seen before today's webinar began.

So we'll go ahead and play those videos, and feel free to stay logged in and give us some feedback. Thanks, everyone. Hope to see you on future events.

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