The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has a vast training operation in place, but how effective is it? To get at this question, the IRS commissioned a study by Deloitte Touche in 2009 to identify ways to improve the agency’s ability to assess the effectiveness of its training programs. Among its findings, the study noted multiple systems and inconsistent approaches used for training evaluations – which created not only a significant manual workload, but also prevented the IRS from using the training evaluation process consistently and reliably to support its business needs. Thus, the study also aimed to identify the functional requirements of a new Evaluation Management System (EMS) to help the IRS meet the Federal mandate to demonstrate the value of training and development programs in terms of contribution to mission accomplishment (5 CFR 410).IRSlogo

PTG has been pleased to be on board since 2014 to help the IRS move forward in addressing its training evaluation needs. Under a subcontract with GP Strategies, PTG has been working with IRS staff to help determine whether training objectives are aligned to mission critical occupation (MCO) business goals and to implement a Level 4 strategy for three mission critical occupations. PTG has fully integrated its proprietary EMS tool, Training Evaluation and Measurement for Performance Optimization (known as TEMPO®), with the IRS Learning Management System (LMS), allowing far more robust reporting and data analytics through dashboards and showing the benefits of training toward achieving the organization’s goals. In conjunction with Kirkpatrick Partners LLC, PTG has also provided IRS employees with access to the Kirkpatrick Bronze and Silver Certification courses.

One dashboard that PTG has been particularly excited to develop for the IRS has been the Chain of Evidence Dashboard. This collection of graphic representations of data gives the IRS the ability to monitor all four Kirkpatrick levels of evaluation on a real-time basis, thus enhancing the organization’s agility in making changes to meet the needs of customers and stakeholders significantly. Imagine how this “cool tool” from PTG could help your organization, too!