Provincial governments have given their stamp of approval, in
the form of cold hard cash, to an e-learning pilot project for
public service workers originally approved by the feds.
The 38-month, $10 million portal project, dubbed Campusdirect,
that includes products in French and English for courses on project
management and leadership development, was launched in April
2003.
Barbara Lukaszewicz spoke about Campusdirect at the e-content
institute's Information Highways conference in Toronto on March
28.
Lukaszewicz, director of e-learning programs at the Canada
School of Public Service, said that Campusdirect has now been
provided with permanent funding, $5 million annually, in order to
serve the whole federal public service.
By the start of April Campusdirect will be available free of
charge to all 250,000 federal public servants, she said. In the
past clients had to pay to use the portal.
"This means it will be on the desktop of every single federal
public servant, which is phenomenal for us," said Lukaszewicz.
"Senior buy-in is often cited as a missing ingredient from similar
initiatives, but that support is no longer a factor for this
project."
"One of the things they did with Campusdirect from the beginning
was focus it at the organizational level," said Gerald Blais,
manager, business development for Campusdirect, Canada School of
Public Service. "We had to be integrated as part of the
organization's overall learning strategy."
Unlike classroom learning, we weren't preoccupied with filling
seats, so we weren't targeting our marketing strategies around the
end-users, he said.
The provincial government funding will be invested heavily in
marketing, according to Lukaszewicz.
The course catalogue will be expanding their from 300 to 800
titles, and focus more on custom-designed learning for the federal
public service, continued investments in IT, and client support,
she said.
"And it isn't just public service employees who are expected to
increase their knowledge and skill-set," Lukaszewicz said.
"Managers will also be held accountable by a new policy introduced
by the federal government."
Lukaszewicz said under the policy, all managers in the federal
public service will be required to take an assessment test of their
knowledge with respect to financial management, human resources
management, contracting and information management.
"If they don't pass the tests, they will have their delegated
authorities taken away," she said. "The tests must be passed by the
end of December 2006."
Ottawa-based consultants, Hickling Arthurs Low (HAL)
Corporation, won an open bid to provide objective evaluation.
David Low, chairman of HAL, said that from the surveys conducted
in their assessment of the project, the users were satisfied with
their e-learning experience.
"Small departments, and those with small training budgets
particularly, there were opportunities created for them that didn't
exist before Campusdirect arrived on the scene," said Low.
"Campusdirect was able to reach more users, because it covered the
whole country as well as all of the departments."
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