State and Regional Roles

State Role in Building Sector Capacity

The state plays a critical role in helping state level staff and regional sector initiatives build the capacity to do this important sector strategy work. These roles may include:

Training and aligning state level partner staff

Before you roll out your state sector strategy to your regions, invest in the training and development of the state level partner staff that will be providing technical assistance to regions to develop sector partnerships. It is critical that the state level staff have a strong knowledge base so that they can answer questions and provide guidance. Part of this training should also include clarification of roles and responsibilities of the cross-agency staff. Colorado conducted a special training session for state level staff prior to their Sector Academy for regional teams.

Providing initial foundational training to regional partner staff

Several states, including Oklahoma, Minnesota, Washington State, and Colorado, have run formal “Sector Academies or Institutes” for cross-agency teams from their regions. These academies provide a strong base of common knowledge. However, states should not assume that one academy will meet all of the training and technical assistance needs of their regions – regions often have to begin their work before they really understand the challenges and can identify their knowledge gaps.

Providing ongoing technical assistance to regional partner staff

State staff can provide individual guidance to regions on specific issues or barriers, as well as ongoing technical assistance. For example:

• Massachusetts created a toolkit specifically for conveners in the long-term care industry
• Michigan developed protocols that guide the technical assistance site visits of state staff to the Regional Skills Alliances (RSAs).
• California developed a Clusters of Opportunity User Guide that teaches the project methodology for conducting industry cluster (data) studies.
• Maryland published a comprehensive process guide to establishing an industry initiative.
• Illinois presented technical assistance regarding analyzing the root causes of skills shortages and developing solutions to solve those problems.
• Several states are using an online regional sector partnership toolkit developed by the Corporation for a Skilled Workforce to assist their regions in the development process.
• Some states, such as Colorado, Washington, and Pennsylvania use a knowledgeable Sector Strategy Coordinator to provide ongoing technical assistance to the regions.

Providing opportunities for cross-regional learning and sharing of promising practices

States can facilitate cross-regional team learning by convening the regions on a regular basis for the explicit purpose of shared learning, identifying promising practices, and discussions centered on challenges. Since regionally targeted industry strategies are constantly evolving and very process oriented, these cross learning opportunities are an excellent tool to help regions address challenges as they emerge. These sessions can be held in a group meeting and/or done via some type of e-communication (webinars, list serves, Wikis, web-sites, etc.). Several states, including Colorado, Washington, and Massachusetts have posted technical assistance documents and resources on their web-sites.

Providing regional labor market analysts

Minnesota invested in labor market analysts to work with its regions to access and analyze regional labor market information. This provides a valuable resource to the regions as they develop their capacity to better use data and information to inform their sector strategies.

Regional Role in Building Partnership Capacity

Regional partners play several important roles in developing their own capacity:

• Viewing capacity building broadly to include resource requirements like personnel, technology, finances, communications and marketing, and the ability to provide products and services.
• Utilizing the intermediary to map the evolving needs of the partnership and to match capacity accordingly; as well as establish a culture of information and resource sharing within the partnership.
• Providing cross-agency training opportunities for the partnership members.
• Identifying staff training and technical assistance needs and communicating those needs to state partners that might assist with this technical assistance.