New site offers free online courses for federal workers

Federal workers can take free online courses on about 30 subjects ranging from project management to coping with stress through a government-sponsored Web site that debuted Tuesday.

At a press briefing in Washington, officials from the Office of Personnel Management and Office of Management and Budget unveiled the Gov Online Learning Center at www.golearn.gov. Federal employees can take the courses, which take from two hours to eight hours to complete, at no charge to themselves or their agencies.

The launch of the Web site is the first step in the Bush administration's plan to make the Gov Online Learning Center a "one-stop" shop for e-training in the federal government. The learning center is one of the 24 major initiatives that the Bush administration is sponsoring as part of its e-government strategy.

Mark Forman, associate director for information technology and e-government at OMB, said the site would eliminate redundant online learning systems in various agencies, lowering the cost of courses through economies of scale. But Forman and officials from OPM either did not want to divulge, or did not know, the cost of the learning center so far.

OPM and the Transportation Administrative Services Center run the site. The administrative center, which is a fee-for-service operation at the Transportation Department, awarded a contract for a learning management system last month to GeoLearning, a West Des Moines, Iowa-based firm. The learning management system serves as the backbone of the site, handling student registration, course management and tracking.

Three companies will provide the courses. They are Nashua, N.H.-based SkillSoft, Naperville, Ill.-based NetG and San Antonio-based Karta Technologies.

While the site will offer a limited number of free courses, OPM and the Transportation center will start charging agencies for additional courses and services later this year.

Many other agencies have already set up online universities and e-learning sites. The National Security Agency and the Treasury Department's Franchise Business Activity, for example, run an e-learning site called FasTrac that 56 agencies use to access courses from the same three companies that the OPM and Transportation site uses.

Forman said that several agencies have already begun to develop migration plans for moving from their own online learning programs to the Gov Online Learning Center site. Other agencies have resisted the effort, he said. Asked about the NSA site during Tuesday's briefing, Forman said, "It's a core competency issue, isn't it?"

The Bush administration is not requiring that agencies drop their existing training programs, however, and officials say that the Gov Online Learning Center will complement many of the programs already in existence, while eliminating some redundant efforts.

Free courses available on the new site include "Emotional Intelligence at Work," "Foundations of Grammar," "Management Skills for the Diverse Workforce," "Leading through Change," and "MS Word 2000 Fundamentals."