GAO: Highway Administration Needs Better Grasp of OJT Program
The Federal Highway Administration needs to strengthen assessments of its on-the-job training program, through which states provide job opportunities in highway construction, GAO has said.
It is unclear the extent to which FHWA’s OJT training program enables women, minorities, and economically disadvantaged individuals to reach journey-level status in the highway construction trades, although stakeholders believe it can create some opportunities, said GAO.
FHWA’s decentralized management of the program — in which state transportation agencies and FHWA’s division offices are generally responsible for program implementation — has led to a wide range of practices, and the limited amount of useable information available on program results varies among states, according to GAO-11-703.
It said that as a result FHWA does not know how well the program is doing, and it’s unclear how many trainees participate in the program or the demographics of those trainees – though GAO estimates that several thousand likely participate in a given year.
FHWA agreed to strengthen OJT program criteria, create and implement an oversight approach for the program, and evaluate the extent to which supportive services programs have met their goals – and then use this information to inform future funding decisions.
