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The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) of 2014 included multiple provisions to strengthen service quality, access, accountability, and coordination across many programs. The report describes early WIOA implementation efforts, based on data collected during pilot site visits to four states and eight local areas in fall 2017. The purpose of the site visits was to help inform the design of the WIOA implementation study and to identify key stakeholders’ initial perspectives on WIOA requirements across five domains. The timing of these visits allowed the study team to document early experiences with the state, regional, and local planning processes and to understand why stakeholders chose different approaches for implementing key WIOA provisions.

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Key Takeaways

• More strategic governance and planning. The study suggested that delays in guidance resulted in delays in planning and much uncertainty at the local and regional levels around American Job Centers (AJC) operation, co-location, and performance reporting, among other issues.
• Improved AJC operations. Two of the most common concerns reported were the competitive procurement of AJC operators and coming to agreement across partners about sharing costs and physical spaces.
• Improved services for businesses and employers. Although the study indicated that AJCs had increased their focus on employer engagement in response to WIOA, employer services in 27 of the 40 AJCs were not integrated across programs, and the collection of data on employer services was limited.
• Improved services for youth and adults. AJC staff reported that WIOA encouraged greater access to training and work-based learning for customers, but that this shift required a change in mindset for case managers to focus more on career planning and barriers to employment.
• Stronger performance accountability and reporting. Local areas reported concerns about the integration of performance requirements across partners and their potential effect on service delivery and resource allocation.
• More strategic governance and planning. The states reported that codifying a process for partner engagement, whether through work groups, partnership agreements, or memorandums of understanding (MOUs), was instrumental in facilitating the process of planning at the state and local level.
• Improved AJC operations. The states were split as to the level of guidance and technical assistance they provided to standardize the operator competition process across local areas, with two providing more support.
• Improved services for businesses and employers. Three of the four states introduced changes to their employer engagement approach in response to WIOA, and in two cases these efforts were led by state administrators in order to centralize business services.
• Improved services for youth and adults. Visited states reported introducing initiatives to expand work-based learning opportunities for job seekers, integrate service delivery, and increase co-enrollment across partner programs.
• Stronger performance accountability and reporting. The four states were hesitant to move toward shared data management systems across core programs.

Research Gaps

• Based on the experiences of the four states, there were several areas in which guidance and/or technical assistance might have been beneficial for further progress in implementation. These included guidance on designating regions that align with local labor markets and technical assistance on creating an infrastructure to develop regional plans. States also would likely have benefited from more guidance on how to set up IFAs, particularly with partners that may not be physically co-located in AJCs, and in generating more interest from potential bidders to operate AJCs in local areas. States expressed an interest in receiving more guidance on facilitating statewide employer engagement and sector-based strategies and in tracking data on serving employers in a more systematic way. Lastly, a number of states voiced a desire for more technical assistance on tracking performance measures across the WIOA core programs, particularly for the AEFLA and VR programs, and guidance to help ensure that changes to performance indicators do not lead to service reductions for customers with higher barriers to employment. (page 15)

Citation

English, B., Sattar, S., Mack, M. (2020). Mathematica. The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act Implementation Study: Early insights from state implementation of WIOA in 2017. Chief Evaluation Office, U.S. Department of Labor.

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The Department of Labor’s (DOL) Chief Evaluation Office (CEO) sponsors independent evaluations and research, primarily conducted by external, third-party contractors in accordance with the Department of Labor Evaluation Policy and CEO’s research development process.