1. Purpose. To share best practices and insight from the field about implementing and establishing the Individual Training Account/Eligible Training Provider (ITA/ETP) system through the ITA/ETA Demonstration project report, ETA Occasional Paper 2005-03: Evaluation of the Individual Training Account/Eligible Training Provider Demonstration: Final Report, recently released on the Internet.



2. Background. In the summer of 1999, the Department of Labor issued a Solicitation for Grant Applications for the ITA/ETP Demonstration. The purpose of this grant process was to identify a national group of sites that were committed to quickly implementing ITAs and establishing ETP systems.
   
   Main goals of the demonstration:
   
   
   • To support system-building at the state and local levels.
   
   
   
   • To rigorously test several key models or approaches to the establishment of an ETP provider process and ITA payment system.
   
   
   
   • To identify key components of effective ITA implementation.
   
   
   
   • To develop a learning network for information sharing across demonstration sites and to the larger employment system.
   
   
   
   Thirteen grantees were selected to participate in the demonstration project. Six grantees were local workforce investment areas that applied individually or on behalf of a group of local areas and the other seven were states. Of the seven states, four collaborated with some subset of the state's local areas, while the other three states developed statewide systems and strategies. The evaluation's two rounds of data collection, which included visits to 28 separate local areas over both rounds, spanned a period of tremendous growth and maturation of states' and local areas' ITA and ETP systems



3. Publication Description. This final report presents findings from the evaluation of these grantees' efforts, including their accomplishments with grant funds. Most importantly, the report provides information of assistance to states and local areas in planning or improving their ITA/ETP systems.
   
   Key findings in the final report are:
   
   
   • Most grantees have strongly embraced ITAs as the preferred method of delivering training services to adults and dislocated workers under the Workforce Investment Act (WIA).
   
   
   
   • Customized training can still play a strong role in meeting the workforce system's diverse needs.
   
   
   
   • Some grantees noted the important role that contract training plays in meeting the needs of their hard-to-serve customers, for whom an ITA might be less effective.
   
   
   
   • Local sites, as is their prerogative, established caps on the amount of the ITAs they would issue. These vary widely from about $1,700 per customer in some local areas to as much as $10,000 in others.
   
   
   
   • Customer choice is evident in the way that sites are working with customers to help them select training programs and vendors.
   
   
   
   • The ITA/ETP process is presenting substantial challenges to training vendors that relied heavily on workforce development funding under JTPA.
   
   
   
4. Inquiries. To view an abstract of this publication as well as to download the full report as a PDF, visit the ETA Occasional Paper series Web site at: http://www.doleta.gov/reports/searcheta/occ/
   
   Limited hard copies of this publication are available. To obtain a hard copy of this publication, please write: Dissemination Team, Division of Policy, Legislation and Dissemination, Office of Policy Development and Research, Employment and Training Administration, U.S. Department of Labor, 200 Constitution Avenue, NW, Room N5637, Washington, DC 20210; or call the publication order line at: 202/693-3666.

EMPLOYMENT AND TRAINING ADMINISTRATION
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR
Washington, DC 20210