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Traditional management training has often been too expensive or too poorly designed to be a credible vehicle for improving managerial skills and agency performance. The Senior Managers Program of the U.S. Department of Education offers an alternative. The year-long program integrates training with on-the-job application of skills to provide both a more effective learning environment and immediate results to demonstrate the value of the training. Each training workshop is followed by a planned and monitored intervention in the participant's work unit, and teams of participants work on significant agency problems identified by high-level officials. In addition to this novel approach to linking training with organizational change, the program seeks to develop a managerial support network to promote continued growth and agency improvement after the formal training program ends.

U.S. taxpayers spend over $80 billion a year to meet the Federal civilian payroll. Yet there are signs that a significant part of this investment is being wasted. For example, about $ 2 billion of the total is spent to pay employees who are on sick leave and, in a recent year, over 18 percent of the workforce left government service.While controls are placed on many government assets to guard against waste, similar concern is not directed at the waste of human resources. There are many questions we can't answer, such as what it costs when workers file grievances and EEO complaints, what it costs for excessive use of leave, and whether supposed cost saving steps (e.g. cutting training funds) really save money in the long run.Pressure to improve government's productivity, cut the deficit, and improve quality of service to taxpayers makes better control of our human resource i

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