E-learning site to debut next month

Federal employees will be able to take free courses about sexual harassment, diversity, ethics and other topics on a new e-learning Web site that will debut next month, Office of Personnel Management officials said Thursday.

The new site is an attempt by the Bush administration to use the purchasing power of the 1.8-million federal employee user base to lower the costs of training and to reduce redundant training efforts across the federal government.

Norm Enger, OPM's e-government program director, and Mike Fitzgerald, the agency's e-training director, said OPM and the Transportation Department's Administrative Services Center plan to launch the new site on July 23. The site was going to be called the National Learning Center, but officials decided Thursday to change the name to the Gov On-line Learning Center. The site will be available at www.golearn.gov when it debuts.

To run the site, the agencies have awarded a contract to GeoLearning, a West Des Moines, Iowa-based learning management system provider. The GeoLearning system handles online enrollments, course management and tracking reports. Courses will be provided by Nashua, N.H.-based SkillSoft, Naperville, Ill.-based NetG and San Antonio-based Karta Technologies.

The Bush administration's plan to unify training across the government comes after many federal agencies have spent years developing their own e-learning programs. The National Security Agency, for example, runs a program called FasTrac, through which 56 agencies, including the Navy, Health and Human Services and Labor departments, provide online training to their employees. The Treasury Department's Franchise Business Activity in San Antonio, Texas, handles contracting for the NSA program.

While up to 40 courses will be free to federal workers on the new e-learning portal, OPM and the Transportation Department will start charging federal agencies for more extensive online training programs offered by the new site in November.

Enger said agencies will not be required to use the e-learning portal, but officials say they hope that federal e-learning managers will decide that they can get the best service and prices through the OPM-Transportation site. FasTrac administrators say they have lower prices than Transportation, but that they're willing to work with the OPM-Transportation officials.

Some e-learning vendors said they don't like the plans for the new site, in part because it may cost them business in the federal market. "On the surface, I think it's a good idea," said Matt Adams, public sector vice president for Saba, a Redwood Shores, Calif.-based competitor of GeoLearning. "It's just how they have adopted it. It wasn't a full and open competition. The other question is, what do you do with all the investment that agencies have already made. Do you throw the baby out with the bathwater?"

OPM and Transportation selected the site's contractors from among companies that were awarded spots on an existing Transportation contract more than a year ago. Fitzgerald said companies had the opportunity to compete then. Companies will also have opportunities in the future to participate in the contract as the scope of the site expands, Fitzgerald said. "We're not locked into any one vendor," he said. "With this industry, today's players are sometimes not tomorrow's players. This doesn't lock anyone out." Fitzgerald said he has talked with officials from other agencies that have created similar sites. "We're open to forming partnerships with them," he said. OPM officials decided to work with Transportation after its Virtual University project won accolades from the federal Chief Information Officers Council and other groups. Transportation officials also volunteered to help administer the new site. Over the past few years, the Air Force, Navy and Army have developed their own extensive online training programs for military personnel and civilian employees. Veterans Affairs, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Bureau of Prisons are among other agencies that have e-learning programs under way.