ITAC Activities

Greg, Thank you for this information. It will help all of USGS, in this case Water, to know what is in the works on their behalf.

Katherine

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Katherine:

Sherry Smith is actually the primary contact, but Gary Blackburn and I have been involved a great deal lately because a product the Department is considering (Training Server from Thinq) has an outstanding Workforce Planning Module that links with its core Training module.

The DOI Training Director's Council is doing the product comparisons and working on the Exhibit 300, although I do believe that they want the product from Thinq. FWS, BLM and NPS are using that product and the focus has been the needs of Training Centers themselves within DOI, not the complete picture in terms of Training Management and Employee Development, areas where we are trying to get them to also focus on. It does have some deficiencies that are shown on my response to Dave Anderson in the DOI HR Office after seeing the product. If those are addressed the system would replace TMS, EDNA and the current Skill Inventory process to provide a full featured Training/Workforce Planning system should it be adopted by the Department. It is a COTS product and no significant development from scratch would be needed.

The whole thing is complicated by the fact the fact that OMB/OPM have an E-Learning E-Gov initiative going and may not allow funding for a product other than what they have sanctioned as officially supported systems.

Because of what is going on, I believe that changes (at least significant ones) to TMS are frozen until the dust settles and we know further what is likely to happen. Again Sherry Smith can provide more detail if you need it.

See my comments below:

Dave:

Thinq came out this week on Wed. and demo'ed their product to both the Personnel and Employee Development Offices at USGS. Our people involved with Training Management have been asking Gary Blackburn and myself advice on their strategy for the future particularly with linking what we are doing with a skills inventory system and we insisted that we all needed to see Thinq because maybe it can solve both of our problems and has the integration between skills and training already solved. Gary and I had never seen the product before and did not have very high expectations. The entire focus on that product has been on the training side by the training staff who really have no appreciation or a full understanding of Workforce Planning.

We were extremely impressed with its Workforce Planning module which comes with the product at no additional cost and can work for us as is (no changes). Its Skills Inventory process was easy and straight forward with supervisory and peer review and the electronic integration with Training is outstanding. Skill gaps could be associated with Training Courses that employees could sign up for to address the skills gap.

We are extremely proud of what we have done with Skills Inventory ourselves at basically no cost knowing it was not the perfect solution but at least we could get started on something and could throw it out should something better come along. This is that product and it is certainly superior to our solution. We were shocked to see that a vendor had actually done this for a reasonable price with an easy to use interface. The company itself seems to be focusing on the training side of things not knowing that they have an outstanding solution that addresses a big need in Workforce Planning.

Whatever skills content we have developed can easily be loaded into Thinq. It has very robust data import/export capabilities. It is certainly something that each Bureau in the Department could put to use and they could decide themselves the granularity of the skills questions that are asked.

The training staff here has their concerns that I have addressed to you before:

1. It does not capture an external training instances (over 3/4 of training at USGS is taken externally, not at a training center). This is also true of the National park Service who had voiced the same concern. We made it clear to the vendor that this is a must have capability.
2. There is only one level of supervisory approval. At USGS there may be 2 or 3 approvals that have to take place. I can't speak for the training group here, but I doubt this fatal because if we have to, USGS can change its process for training approval.
3. For an external training class that is over $2,500, a Training (purchase) order must be completed and an electronic interface with FFS is needed for these. I can't speak for the training people here, but since we only have 200-300 of these a year at USGS, we can probably live with that capability for a while by using a paper form.

I do understand that moving forward is going to be a challenge because of the goLearn product DOT and OMB are proponents of. Thinq did mention that they are putting in a bid to become a third provider. We'll have to see if it (goLearn) addresses the WFP side of things as well (if at all) as Thinq. I believe I will be going to the demo of it at DOT with one of our staff involved with Training.

We are definitely onboard with the Department on this product at least in terms of the concept and functionality (provided they can add the external class capability). It's a tougher sell to upper management at USGS if there is going to be a big up-front cost that was not budgeted for. Let us know if there is anything we can do.

Does the 300 for Thinq even address the WorkForce Planning side of the house?

Thanks,
Greg

I wanted to give you a big picture view of what is going on that I know about and hope it is not too confusing, but that seems to be the norm these days. Things do change weekly and I'm not always in the loop.

Hope this helps.

Thanks,
Greg

Gregory K. Huttman
U.S. Geological Survey
Human Resources Information Systems Specialist & Survey City Manager
Office of Personnel
Phone: (703) 648-7259
Fax: (703) 648-5200

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Several of our districts have expressed frustrations about the current Training Management System (TMS). Many of their concerns have been brought to out Information Technology Advisory Committee ( ITAC) in Water. This is because the ITAC makes recommendations on major IT systems and purchases affecting the water discipline. It has also been very beneficial to have a group like ITAC which can organize customer feedback for a system or product being developed. Therefore, ITAC is particularly interested in learning more about the new TMS being developed and we are hopeful it can alleviate many of the frustrations associated with using the current one. ITAC would like to request a briefing at some point, but for now would like to know who we should interface with so we can learn more and perhaps offer to assist in soliciting customer requirements/feedback.

Katherine

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Katherine Lins
Acting Chief, Office of Information, WRD
U.S. Geological Survey
440 National Center
Reston, VA 20192
703-648-5014