Over the last quarter century, the U.S. economy has shifted dramatically, with growing emphasis on high-skilled, knowledge-intensive jobs. Survival in the increasingly competitive global marketplace has required businesses to recruit employees with high-level skills and abilities, including critical thinking, problem solving, teamwork and decision making skills.
Unfortunately, the South’s economic and educational achievements have historically been below that of the nation as a whole, putting the region at a significant disadvantage. Southern Governors are working to revise and refine their state’s education and workforce development initiatives, while looking for ways to improve the alignment of their workforce capabilities with the needs of current and prospective employers, so that Southern citizens will have the skills necessary to compete for the next generation of jobs.
To assist them in their efforts, in 2008, under then chairman West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin III, SGA entered into a 6-month pilot project with a company called Decision Data Resources to provide Southern states with access to a comprehensive and dynamic workforce database tool called Workforce Innovation Technical Solution (WITS) and Innovation Economy 360 (IE360). WITS/IE360 provided states with a one-stop shop for accessing critical state and federal demographic and innovation information to help them maximize the return on state workforce investments. WITS/IE360 is an example of how SGA seeks to provide its member Governors with new tools and resources. Several SGA states continued their relationship with WITS/IE360 after the SGA pilot project came to completion.
Read more about Governors’ activities on workforce development: