A Strategic Governance Review for Multi-Organizational Systems of Education, Training, and Professional Development

Abstract : As one of the largest employers in the country, the Department of Defense (DoD) seeks to maintain a high-quality civilian workforce in the face of shifting organizational priorities as well as technological and social changes. Like most employers, DoD offers its employees opportunities for education, training, and professional development (ET&D) through both DoD and non-DoD providers. This network of ET&D providers and users constitutes a multi-organizational, multi-stakeholder system that is at present loosely coordinated and incompletely understood. Because of the division of financial responsibility, command authority, and workforce planning within DoD, the effectiveness of the system depends on its capacity for governance of the organizations that provide the ET&D needed. At the request of the DoD Office of the Chancellor for Education and Professional Development, RAND undertook a study to develop tools for describing and evaluating external governance in such a multi-organizational system of ET&D. This report describes an approach for accomplishing those aims. The approach described here consists of two major tasks: a structural analysis that maps governance arrangements and an implementation audit that assesses effectiveness based on operational evidence. The framework and taxonomy presented here were developed based on reviews of relevant literature and limited mapping exercises, but not through field audits or assessment exercises with organizations. The authors recommend pilot testing of the approach on a limited scale before systemwide implementation. (5 figures, 52 refs.)

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