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The report focuses on implementation of key changes to financial and management requirements for the American Job Center (AJC) system in order to seamlessly deliver services to all workforce customers across various partners. Data for this report are drawn primarily from site visit interviews, conducted in early 2019, with administrators, board chairs and members, employer and agency partners, and frontline staff in 14 states and 28 local areas. Other sources of information include administrative data and relevant state and local documents. The site visit locations were purposively selected to assure diversity geographically and in size, among other criteria. The findings here, based on those interviews, should therefore be viewed as suggestive of common experiences and not assumed to be nationally representative.

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Key Takeaways

• New requirements regarding the roles and competitive procurement of one-stop operators represented a major shift for the public workforce system. Prior to WIOA, most local areas did not use a competitive process for selecting operators, and many boards fulfilled that role themselves.
• Overall, cost sharing under WIOA, codified through Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) and Infrastructure Funding Agreements (IFAs), increased the number of partners making financial contributions to AJCs among the study sites while also creating new challenges for cultivating partnerships in support of streamlined AJC operations.
• The AJC certification process is intended to create common standards for providing seamless services to job seekers (Wu 2017). WIOA formalized and strengthened certification efforts that many states began under WIA. At the time of the site visits, nine of the 14 study states had some form of certification policy in place that had begun under WIA. However, with the passage of WIOA, these states formalized these efforts and created additional requirements. The other five states visited had begun certification efforts in response to WIOA’s requirements.

Citation

English, B., Holcomb, P. (2020). Mathematica. Implementation Study of the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) Regarding Title I and Title III Core Programs: New Requirements for American Job Center Systems Regarding One-Stop Operators, Partnership Agreements, and Certification. 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.