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Brent R. Orrell, Acting Assistant Secretary, US Department of Labor Employment and Training
WIRED Academy
May 1, 2008
Boston, MA
Thank you, Doug, and thank you all for a great welcome. When I started just a little over two months ago, I eagerly anticipating meeting and working with the WIRED Regions.
My first WIRED experience was with the Pacific Mountain region in Washington State and the energy and excitement of the partners, leaders, and elected officials was contagious. This is my first chance to be with all 39 of you and I am looking forward to learning about each of your strategies and goals.
From my perspective, WIRED is a special and unique government initiative. It's not just because it is seeking transformation or focused on innovation or targeted at regions, although those are all part of it. It is more simply that WIRED corresponds to reality. The underlying framework and assumptions reflect the world in which we now live.
It is a world in which vibrant specialized regional economies increasingly serve as the platform for innovation and drive national and international growth. The race is to the swift and the networked, and, dare I say, the WIRED.
The private sector has spent the last generation in a relentless drive for efficiency. This has brought tremendous benefits to United States as more innovative and productive industries rise to the top of the global economy.
During that time, however, the public sector has not been subject to the same forces. This has left us with a hierarchical organizational structure that is out of synch with the new economy. It has also fed the public's perception that government services are slow, or bureaucratic, or simply out-of-touch.
For reasons we are all familiar with, Washington and state capitals have had difficulty changing the public sector, and simple inertia makes top-down approaches largely ineffective. But by starting with change at the local and regional level, where people understand the effects of these programs, I believe we can fundamentally rewire public systems to support regional economic growth.
WIRED begins that effort. It offers both the framework and resources that individuals and institutions can rally around. It creates a new communication network for entire regional economies. And it provides the organization that can lead to the long-term sustainability of the efforts of those regions.
I know sustainability is a major concern for everyone in this room. I believe that the key to achieving sustainability of your work lies in the leveraging of existing programs and funds. Have we identified and engaged every possible opportunity or at least those opportunities that hold the greatest promise?
Looking just at the Labor Department, there is clearly more that we can do. The trade program provides generous training and support benefits and should be leveraged. The apprenticeship program brings employers and organized labor to the table. The foreign labor program provides valuable information about where the greatest demand can be found.
When we expand our search to other federal agencies, the opportunities grow exponentially. By engaging all of these programs, we not only broaden our access to resources, we also begin to open the silos that define public investment. And this includes not just high-end programs for engineers and scientists, but also the programs focused at the other end of the economic ladder.
For if the visions that each of you has are to be realized, they must offer opportunity to those that need it most. Unfortunately, there are far too many people in all of our regions that fall into this category.
Now, obviously I don't pretend that we can turn welfare recipients into aerospace engineers, but I do believe that we can prepare them to work in the industries that support aerospace or that grow up around a successful region. This opens the door of opportunity so that the children and grand-children of that welfare recipient can then become an engineer.
While there are certainly great challenges in serving this population, there are also a vast array of resources to help you do so. This is how I see sustainability in the long-term; the opportunity for continuous upwards mobility of all of the citizens of a region. And it is this legacy I hope we can all strive for.
Looking at the agenda for these two days, you can see that we have a powerful line-up of speakers that really focus on the sustainability of the WIRED efforts. Later this afternoon, Professor Stephen Goldsmith will be joining us. When he was Mayor of Indianapolis, he led the effort to bring innovation and efficiency to government.
Then tomorrow morning, we have Rick McGahey from the Ford Foundation focusing on the greater role that the philanthropic community now plays in education and workforce development. And also speaking is Sheila McGuire from Public/Private Ventures. She will be unveiling a new report focused on strategies for engaging disadvantaged populations.
While each of these speakers will provide valuable insight and expertise, they cannot substitute for direct experience and assistance. And trying to create sustainability strategies and engage new partners is a daunting task. ETA has provided federal liaisons to assist, but with admittedly mixed results.
But as I learn more about the WIRED regions, I see that each of you have had success in partnering with certain agencies and programs. Metro Denver has a close relationship with the Department of Energy. Mid-Michigan has used the Commerce Department to promote international trade. Tennessee Valley is close with both the Defense Department and NASA. And all of the Gen IIIs are in direct alignment with the workforce programs.
The point is that collectively in this room, you have the knowledge and experience to open the doors of dozen of public sector programs and probably non-profit and private sector opportunities that most have not even thought of. So whether during breakout sessions, the reception, or in the hallways, learn and share as much as you can with each other.
We at ETA are committing ourselves to a similar goal by creating more opportunities for ETA leads from all three generations to discuss the successes and challenges we are seeing and look for ways that they may help other regions. And I am personally committed to continuing our engagement with other federal agencies in hopes of leveraging resources and programs in support of your goals.
Before we get started today, there is one more thing that all of you need to be aware of. The Inspector General at the Labor Department issued a report yesterday that was very critical of number of our grantees under the High Growth Initiative. The key issue they cited was the lack of measurable outcomes demonstrating that these projects constituted promising practices.
We disagreed forcefully with the IG's conclusions and stand behind the Department's High Growth investments as a prudent and successful program to expand the opportunities for American workers.
Nevertheless, the focus of the IG's audit should put all of our WIRED regions on notice. WIRED has always been about more than just training figures. But with that flexibility and focus on innovation comes an increased risk that the auditors and investigators that follow us will question the use of funds.
Many of you focused on the common performance measures as a way to protect against that risk and that is certainly one component of demonstrating value. But many of the projects that you have undertaken do not easily lend themselves to judgment from the common measures. That is why the individual metrics that you developed are so critical to capturing the overall importance and impact of these investments.
So please bear in the mind that while we consider the sustainability of your projects and the long term success of your regions the best indicators of success, there are others that are going to ask direct and difficult questions about your use of taxpayer dollars and the products, results, and value that was received from them. The ETA leads and our grants office will obviously be more than willing to help on areas where you have questions.
I am confident of your to showcase the success of your work, and I am honored and excited to be the newest member of the WIRED family. I will be around throughout the next two days if any you have questions or wish to speak with me. For now though, let's get started with the first session.
