Federal Register, Volume 64 Issue 10 (Friday, January 15, 1999)
[Federal Register Volume 64, Number 10 (Friday, January 15, 1999)]
[Presidential Documents]
[Pages 2793-2797]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 99-1185]
[[Page 2791]]
_______________________________________________________________________
Part VII
The President
_______________________________________________________________________
Executive Order 13111--Using Technology To Improve Training
Opportunites for Federal Government Employees
Presidential Documents
Federal Register / Vol. 64, No. 10 / Friday, January 15, 1999 /
Presidential Documents
___________________________________________________________________
Title 3--
The President
[[Page 2793]]
Executive Order 13111 of January 12, 1999
Using Technology To Improve Training
Opportunities for Federal Government Employees
Advances in technology and increased skills needs are
changing the workplace at an ever increasing rate.
These advances can make Federal employees more
productive and provide improved service to our
customers, the American taxpayers. We need to ensure
that we continue to train Federal employees to take
full advantage of these technological advances and to
acquire the skills and learning needed to succeed in a
changing workplace. A coordinated Federal effort is
needed to provide flexible training opportunities to
employees and to explore how Federal training programs,
initiatives, and policies can better support lifelong
learning through the use of learning technology.
To help us meet these goals, I am creating a task force
on Federal training technology, directing Federal
agencies to take certain steps to enhance employees'
training opportunities through the use of training
technology, and an advisory committee on the use of
training technology, which also will explore options
for financing the training and post-secondary education
needed to upgrade skills and gain new knowledge.
Therefore, by the authority vested in me as President
by the Constitution and the laws of the United States
of America, including the Federal Advisory Committee
Act, as amended (5 U.S.C. App.), and in furtherance of
the purposes of Chapter 41 of title 5, United States
Code, the Government Employees Training Act of 1958
(Public Law 85-507), as amended, and Executive Order
11348, ``Providing for the Further Training of
Government Employees,'' and in order to make effective
use of technology to improve training opportunities for
Federal Government employees, it is ordered as follows:
Section 1. Establishment of the President's Task Force
on Federal Training Technology. (a) The ``President's
Task Force on Federal Training Technology'' (Task
Force) is established. The Task Force shall provide
leadership regarding the effective use of technology in
training and education; make training opportunities an
integral part of continuing employment in the Federal
Government; and facilitate the ongoing coordination of
Federal activities concerning the use of technology in
training. The Task Force shall consist of the heads of
the following departments and agencies or their
representatives: the Departments of State, the
Treasury, Defense, Justice, Interior, Agriculture,
Commerce, Labor, Health and Human Services, Housing and
Urban Development, Transportation, Energy, and
Education; the Office of Personnel Management, General
Services Administration, Environmental Protection
Agency, National Aeronautics and Space and
Administration, Small Business Administration, and
Social Security Administration; a representative from
the Small Agency Council; and representatives from
other relevant agencies and related Federal councils,
as determined by the Chair and Vice Chair of the Task
Force.
(b) Within 30 days of the date of this order, the
head of each agency or council shall designate a senior
official to serve as a representative to the Task
Force. The representative shall report directly to the
agency head or the President's Management Council
member on the agency's or council's activities under
this order.
[[Page 2794]]
(c) The Director of the Office of Personnel
Management (OPM) shall be the Chair and the
representative from the Department of Labor shall be
the Vice Chair of the Task Force.
(d) The Chair and Vice Chair shall appoint an
Executive Director.
(e) The Task Force member agencies shall provide
any required staffing and funding, as appropriate.
Sec. 2. Duties of the Task Force. (a) Within 18 months
of the date of this order, the Task Force shall develop
and recommend to the President, through the Assistant
to the President for Economic Policy and the Assistant
to the President for Science and Technology, a policy
to make effective use of technology to improve training
opportunities for Federal Government employees. The
policy should promote and integrate the effective use
of training technologies to create affordable and
convenient training opportunities to improve Federal
employee performance. The Task Force shall seek the
views of experts from industry, academia, and State and
local governments as the Task Force proceeds, as
appropriate. Specifically, the Task Force shall:
L (1) develop strategies to improve the
efficiency and availability of training opportunities
for Federal Government employees;
L (2) form partnerships among key Federal
agencies, State and local governments, businesses,
universities, and other appropriate entities to promote
the development and use of high-quality training
opportunities;
L (3) analyze the use of technology in existing
training programs and policies of the Task Force member
agencies to determine what changes, modifications, and
innovations may be necessary to advance training
opportunities;
L (4) in consultation with the Department of
Defense and the National Institute of Standards and
Technology, recommend standards for training software
and associated services purchased by Federal agencies
and contractors. These standards should be consistent
with voluntary industry consensus-based commercial
standards. Agencies, where appropriate, should use
these standards in procurements to promote reusable
training component software and thereby reduce
duplication in the development of courseware;
L (5) evaluate and, where appropriate, coordinate
and collaborate on, research and demonstration
activities of Task Force member agencies related to
Federal training technology;
L (6) identify and support cross-agency training
areas that would particularly benefit from new
instructional technologies and facilitate multiagency
procurement and use of training materials, where
appropriate;
L (7) in consultation with the General Services
Administration, the Office of Personnel Management, and
the Office of Federal Procurement Policy of the Office
of Management and Budget (OFPP), promote existing and
new procurement vehicles that allow agencies to provide
innovative training opportunities for Federal
employees;
L (8) recommend changes that may be needed to
existing procurement laws to further the objectives of
this order and forward the recommendations to the
Administrator of OFPP; and
(b) develop options and recommendations for
establishing a Federal Individual Training Account for
each Federal worker for training relevant to his or her
Federal employment. To the extent permitted by law,
such accounts may be established with the funds
allocated to the agency for employee training. Approval
for training would be within the discretion of the
individual employee's manager. Options and
recommendations shall be reported no later than 6
months from the date of this order.
Sec. 3. Duties of All Federal Agencies. (a) Each
Federal agency shall, to the extent permitted by law:
[[Page 2795]]
L (1) include as part of its annual budget
process a set of goals to provide the highest quality
and most efficient training opportunities possible to
its employees, and a set of performance measures of the
quality and availability of training opportunities
possible to its employees. Such measures should be,
where appropriate, based on outcomes related to
performance rather than time allocation;
L (2) identify the resources necessary to achieve
the aforementioned goals and performance measures
articulated in its annual performance plan;
L (3) and, where practicable, use the standards
recommended by the Task Force and published by the
Office of Personnel Management for purchasing training
software and associated services; and
L (4) subject to the availability of
appropriations, post training courses, information, and
other learning opportunities on the Department of
Labor's America's Learning Exchange (ALX), or other
appropriate information dissemination vehicles as
determined by the Task Force, to make information about
Federal training courses, information, and other
learning opportunities widely available to Federal
employees.
(b) Each Federal agency, to the extent permitted by
law, is encouraged to consider how savings achieved
through the efficient use of training technology can be
reinvested in improved training for their employees.
Sec. 4. Duties of Specific Federal Agencies. (a) In
light of the Office of Personnel Management's
responsibility for developing Government-wide training
policy, coordinating and managing training policy
programs, and providing technical assistance to Federal
agencies, the Office of Personnel Management or other
appropriate agency as determined by the Task Force
shall:
L (1) in consultation with the Task Force, the
Department of Defense, the National Institute of
Standards and Technology, the Department of Labor, and
other appropriate agencies as determined by OPM,
publish the standards for training software and
associated services recommended by the Task Force; and
L (2) ensure that qualification standards for
civil service positions, where appropriate, reflect
standard industry certification practices.
(b) The Department of Labor or other appropriate
agency as determined by the Task Force shall, subject
to the availability of appropriations:
L (1) establish a specialized database for
Federal training within the framework of the Department
of Labor's ALX, or other appropriate information
dissemination vehicles determined by the Task Force, to
make information about Federal training courses,
information, and other learning opportunities widely
available to Federal employees;
L (2) establish and maintain a training
technology website for agencies to post training needs
and to foster communication among the agencies and
between public and private sector organizations to
identify and meet common needs; and
L (3) establish a staffed help desk and
technology resource center to support Federal agencies
using training technology and to facilitate the
development of online training courses.
(c) The Department of Defense or other appropriate
agency as determined by the Task Force shall:
L (1) in consultation with the National Institute
of Standards and Technology, lead Federal participation
in business and university organizations charged with
developing consensus standards for training software
and associated services and lead the Federal review of
the standards; and
L (2) provide guidance to Defense agencies and
advise the civilian agencies, as appropriate, on how
best to use these standards for large-scale development
and implementation of efficient and effective
distributed learning technologies.
[[Page 2796]]
(d) Each Executive department shall designate at
least one subject area of training that it will use to
demonstrate opportunities in technology-based training
and assign an agency leader in the designated area.
Leaders in these training technology experiments shall
work closely with other agencies with similar training
interests. Each Executive department shall develop a
plan for measuring and evaluating the effectiveness,
cost-effectiveness, and benefits to employees and the
agency for each designated subject area.
Sec. 5. Establishment of Advisory Committee on
Expanding Training Opportunities.
The Advisory Committee on Expanding Training
Opportunities (Committee) is established. The Committee
shall consist of not more that 20 members appointed by
the President from outside the Federal Government,
including representatives of the research, education,
labor, and training communities, information technology
sector, and representatives from other critical
sectors. The President shall designate Co-Chairs from
among the members of the Committee.
Sec. 6. Functions of the Advisory Committee. The
Committee shall provide the President, through the
Assistant to the President for Economic Policy and the
Assistant to the President for Science and Technology
(Assistants to the President), with: (a) an independent
assessment of:
L (1) progress made by the Federal Government in
its use and integration of technology in training
programs, particularly in the use of voluntary industry
consensus-based commercial standards for training
software and associated services;
L (2) how Federal Government programs,
initiatives, and policies can encourage or accelerate
training technology to provide more accessible, more
timely, and more cost-effective training opportunities
for all Americans;
L (3) mechanisms for the Federal Government to
encourage private sector investment in the development
of high-quality instructional software and wider
deployment and utilization of technology-mediated
instruction so that all Americans may take advantage of
the opportunities provided by learning technology; and
L (4) the appropriate Federal Government role in
research and development for learning technologies and
their applications in order to develop high-quality
training and education opportunities for all Americans;
(b) an analysis of options for helping adult
Americans finance the training and post-secondary
education needed to upgrade skills and gain new
knowledge. Options for financial mechanisms may include
grants, tax incentives, low-interest loans, or other
vehicles to make training and post-secondary education
accessible to adults throughout their lifetimes; and
(c) advice on other issues regarding emerging
technologies in government training and financing
training and post-secondary education for adult
Americans as specified by the Assistants to the
President.
Sec. 7. Administration of the Advisory Committee. (a)
To the extent permitted by law and subject to the
availability of appropriations, the Office of Personnel
Management shall provide the financial and
administrative support for the Committee.
(b) The heads of Executive agencies shall, to the
extent permitted by law, provide to the Committee such
information as it may require for the purpose of
carrying out its functions.
(c) The Committee Co-Chairs may, from time to time,
invite experts to submit information to the Committee
and may form subcommittees or working groups within the
Committee to review specific issues.
(d) Members of the Committee shall serve without
compensation but shall be allowed travel expenses,
including per diem instead of subsistence, as
authorized by law for persons serving intermittently in
the Government service (5 U.S.C. 5701-5707).
[[Page 2797]]
(e) Notwithstanding any other Executive order, the
functions of the President under the Federal Advisory
Committee Act, as amended, that are applicable to the
Committee, except that of reporting to the Congress,
shall be performed by the Office of Personnel
Management in accordance with guidelines that have been
issued by the Administrator of General Services.
(f) The Committee shall terminate 2 years from the
date of this order unless extended by the President
prior to such date.
Sec. 8. Definitions. (a) As used in this order, the
terms ``agency,'' ``employee,'' ``Government,'' and
``training'' have the meaning given to those terms,
respectively, by section 4101 of title 5, United States
Code.
(b) The term ``technology,'' means any equipment or
interconnected system or subsystem of equipment that is
used in the automatic acquisition, storage,
manipulation, management, movement, control, display,
switching, interchange, transmission, or reception of
data or information, including computers, ancillary
equipment, software, firmware and similar procedures,
services (including support services), and related
resources. For purposes of the preceding sentence,
equipment is used by an Executive agency if the
equipment is used by the Executive agency directly or
is used by a contractor under a contract with the
Executive agency that requires the use of such
equipment. The term ``technology'' does not include any
equipment that is acquired by a Federal contractor
incidental to a Federal contract.
Sec. 9. Judicial Review. This order does not create any
enforceable rights against the United States, its
agencies, its officers, or any person.
(Presidential Sig.)
THE WHITE HOUSE,
January 12, 1999.
[FR Doc. 99-1185
Filed 1-14-98; 9:10 am]
Billing code 3195-01-P
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