Saving America Money

Businesses are always looking for ways to save money, and government agencies are no exception. However, adjusting the routine to cut costs can be hard on employees. According to Lori Ann Jacobs, the virtual environment (VE) program coordinator at the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS), agencies don’t accept change easily. “We like to do it the way it’s always been done,” she said.

But sometimes change is necessary. In 1997, the government established executive order No. 12862 to set new customer standards and audit requirements for various government agencies, including the IRS. While adhering to this order, the IRS found that its national customer service call site phone assistors were not providing unified answers to tax questions. A review of the problem revealed large gaps in employee learning programs, but the IRS did not have the tools to implement an agency-wide system to address deficiencies.

Developing a Virtual Platform
During this same timeframe, the IRS began to implement an e-learning system. The organization developed an intranet interface to give employees access to asynchronous online training such as MS Office applications and various IT courses.

In 1999, U.S. President Bill Clinton issued another executive order, No. 13111, urging federal agencies to use new technology to improve employee training and productivity. The mandate required all government agencies to transition to an e-learning format by 2007.

That year the IRS acquired an online delivery tool to deliver synchronized learning using its existing infrastructure. However, the tool needed to be updated to train more than 26,000 revenue agents, revenue officers, tax specialists and customer service representatives, as well as 10,000 new employees hired for seasonal tax work. This was a daunting task, since all course content was produced on paper using traditional classroom delivery methodology.

The IRS identified various online instructional tools, delivery systems, training development tools and courses that could be taught electronically in a blended method. Officers knew they had to look for an all-encompassing e-learning collaborative system that would work for different users. For instance, of the 100,000 IRS employees, 22,000 had a handicap, ranging from mobility, to sight, to hearing. For any collaborative e-learning application to be productive, it needed to be accessible to everyone.