1. Training on WIOA State Plan Submission Process and Portal
February 2016
Presented by:
U.S. Department of Labor
U.S. Department of Education

2. Presenters Heather Fleck
Employment and Training Administration, U.S. Department of Labor
Brian Miller
Rehabilitation Services Administration,
U.S. Department of Education
Jim Doyle
Rehabilitation Services Administration,
U.S. Department of Education
Ken Schellenberg
Rehabilitation Services Administration,
U.S. Department of Education
Karla Ver Bryck Block
Office of Career, Technical and Adult Education, U.S. Department of Education #

3. Overview of WIOA State Planning Online Submission Portal Benefits
Agenda
Overview of WIOA State Planning
Online Submission Portal Benefits
How to Use the Portal
Federal Review Period #

4. WIOA State Plan Overview
WIOA requires States to submit a Unified or Combined State Plan to receive core program funding
Plan must outline a 4-year strategy with a 2-year update
States must submit a Plan by April 1, to be considered timely #

5. Final ICR is now available (see resources)
State Plan Overview
States must comply with planning requirements specified in the information collection request (ICR), OMB no
Final ICR is now available (see resources)
DOL and ED guidance available soon #

6. State Plan Overview
State Plan must address how state will develop a unified and integrated workforce system
Content areas include both strategic and operational elements– “common elements” across programs
Plan must also address program-specific elements for each included program #

7. Portal planning requirements mirror the ICR
State Plan Overview
Please carefully review the program guidance and ICR before submitting your State’s plan
Use the online submission portal at &usp=Y#skipnav to submit the State Plan
Portal planning requirements mirror the ICR #

8. Presenter: Brian Miller
Organization: Rehabilitation Services Administration, U.S. Department of Education #

9. Benefits of Using the State Plan Submission Portal
Benefits of utilizing the State Plan online submission portal include:
Customer friendly interface with built in technical assistance and guidance
Allows for multiple workforce partners to simultaneously submit both common and program specific material
Facilitates version control across workforce programs and computing platforms #

10. Benefits of Using the State Plan Submission Portal (Continued)
Ensures that all submissions are 508 compliant
Allows for easy editing of material prior to final submission
Makes the State Plan readily available to both workforce partners as well as stakeholders once published #

11. Benefits of Using the State Plan Submission Portal (Continued)
Pop-up messages indicating missing material ensure that submissions are complete
Current plan elements are retained and carried forward as appropriate to facilitate subsequent modifications of the quadrennial plan
Once approved, all State Plans are available to the public
Enables states and stakeholders to easily search across all State Plans for information, promising practices, comparisons across states, and topical areas of interest #

12. Presenter: Ken Schellenberg
Presenters
Presenter: Ken Schellenberg
Organization: Rehabilitation Services Administration, U.S. Department of Education
Presenter: Jim Doyle
Organization: Rehabilitation Services Administration, U.S. Department of Education #

13. How to Use the Portal Overview
The Department of Education has created a portal for use by the WIOA partners for submitting Unified and Combined State Plans.
The portal will allow each of the agencies included in the State’s Unified or Combined State Plan to complete their portions of the plan. The output will be a single Plan which will be accessible and formatted for the public.
We are organizing the information by replicating the Information Collection approved by OMB and dividing this up into discrete prompts. Once the State has responded to each of the prompts, the State will be ready to submit their Plan consistent with OMB’s approved form. #

14. How to Use the Portal Ensuring Uniformity
The portal will ensure each State is submitting a true Unified plan that is consistently formatted for each of the programs included in the plan.
The portal contains all required elements of a Unified or Combined State Plan, pursuant to sections 102 and 103 of WIOA. Each element can be accessed independently and saved independent of the other sections by various users.
The portal contains a pre-formatted copy of the plan – when exported to Word or PDF you will be able to see the structure. You can view or export a blank Unified or Combined plan and view the Navigation pane in MS Word (it’s also visible if you use the Outline View). #

15. How to Use the Portal Web portal basics - How to request access
Visit the webpage Internet Explorer is recommended.
Step 1 - Choose the agency to whom you report data from the dropdown list, and enter the contact information requested. #

16. How to Use the Portal
Step 2 - Select the Federal program associated with the information you will be entering. #

17. How to Use the Portal
Step 3 - Select the State ‘Grantee’ with which you are associated for the purposes of reporting. Please note the list of available grantees will be filtered down based on the user’s options chosen in the previous steps.
Step 4 - Select the access level required (Read only, Edit only, or Edit and Submit)
Step 5 – A summary of what happens next.
Once you obtain a username and password, and log in:
Click on Data Entry. You will have two sections. At the top, Reports To Do will list draft reports to which you have edit access. #

18. How to Use the Portal State Plan Structure
The State Plan is organized into expandable panels that, when opened, will show details for each section (for people using screen readers, you’ll hear the main sections as links. Click the link to open the section). #

19. How to Use the Portal
Once you open up a report panel, there will be an edit button for each major question (sometimes several questions are gathered together into one group). Click Edit on any section to edit it. #

20. How to Use the Portal
An Edit box will open up. Responses can be entered through several methods. The user can type responses directly into the Edit box, or the user can paste text from another source into the Edit box. See Saving your MS Word text into the portal. #

21. How to Use the Portal Saving your information to the portal.
Each screen that contains an edit box will be followed by a set of three buttons: Save (ALT+S), Previous Section (ATL+P) and Next Section (ALT+N), as shown below. Clicking any of these options will save the information entered on the screen.
This allows the user to have the option to save each response independently before moving to a different portion of the Plan. #

22. How to Use the Portal Ensuring Accessibility
We will automatically take your text and place it in the proper place in the outline. Further, we will remove your font size and font face choices and make them consistent with the rest of the plan. Underlines, italics, and bold text will be retained. If your text includes tables, the tables will be retained and will be consistently formatted by the system.
The portal – as mentioned – includes edit boxes following each prompt identifying the information needed. Once the information is entered into the text box you will have little-to-nothing to do to make the final document accessible.
If your text is pasted in from another document (i.e. MS Word) and is accessible, the system will accept it. If your text is deemed too long for the answer to be considered accessible, the system will alert you (see Your Responsibilities below).
(While the system will accept virtually limitless text, Section 508 requires us to consider accessibility. Text longer than about 3½ pages needs to have headings added to ensure that it can be easily navigated for people using screen readers.)
If your text includes tables, the system will convert the tables to a standardized accessible format. If your tables are not accessible, the system will alert you so the tables can be modified as appropriate.
The goal of the system is to provide a consistently formatted, accessible document with as little effort as possible on your part. #

23. How to Use the Portal Saving your MS Word text into the portal
RichText editing v. Basic editing
The web portal has two modes for editing text. The web portal will allow you to toggle between the modes.
RichText editing allows you to paste in formatted Word text and will preserve bold, underlines, italics, tables, and so on. It will remove a lot of the font style information in order to make the final document uniform in appearance.
Basic editing allows you to paste in plain text. It removes all formatting, but adds HTML code to allow for paragraph formatting.
Suggestions to consider:
Draft your responses in MS Word and use tools such as spell check and track changes to develop a high-quality draft. When your draft is finalized, run the Accessibility Checker. Fix any issues encountered (MS Word will provide tips about how to fix each error, with links to online resources).
Do not include the following special characters:~ < > #

24. How to Use the Portal Answers that include a table
Use the RichText mode and paste in your table as you would any other Word document. You may paste a table from Word or from Excel. The portal will check for merged cells and flag them as an error.
If your text includes tables, you need to ensure the accessibility of the table. Don’t use merged or split cells – keep the structure simple and consistent (every row should have exactly the same number of cells)*. Also, the first row of the table – and only the first row – will be marked as a header row for the contents of the table. #

25. How to Use the Portal Answers that include an image
Images present special challenges to users with visual disabilities. Accessibility standards do allow the use of images, however, if the content of the image is fully described.
Additionally, there is a technical challenge: the web portal does not (at this point) support uploading of images. However, we can display an image that you have stored on another location on the web (you may need assistance from your technical folks to help with the HTML code to display the image).
Resources:
See Using the Portal on the help menu for additional details.
Microsoft provides further information on creating accessible tables. See Use simple table structure.
*If there are no merged rows and merged columns, the system will adjust your tables automatically. It will tag the first row as the header and will make it grey. Also the contents of the cell will be adjusted: numeric information will be right-justified and textual information will be left-justified.

26. How to Use the Portal Your Responsibilities to Ensure Accessibility
While the system will assist you in creating a final accessible and uniformly- formatted output, we depend on you to provide accessible content. Here are the considerations you need to make when answering each single question.
Text answers that are four pages or less
If the answer to a single question consists of text that is roughly four pages or less (or to be precise, 12 thousand characters or less), the system will accept it. All you have to do is paste in the answer.
Text answers that are longer than four pages
If your answer to a single question consists of text that is more than four pages, you should ensure accessibility before you paste it in. Run Microsoft’s Accessibility Checker to ensure your text is accessible. Usually, this means assigning heading levels to your document using the built-in “Heading 1,” “Heading 2,” etc. styles. Microsoft has provided helpful documentation on accessibility, including videos and step-by-step instructions for using the built-in Accessibility Checker. Please refer to Microsoft’s Creating accessible Word documents page for more information. #

27. Presenter: Karla Ver Bryck Block
Organization: Office of Career Technical and Adult Education (OCTAE), U.S. Department of Education #

28. Submission of the State Plan
According to WIOA, the Plan is submitted to the Secretary of the Department of Labor.
The portal enables all agencies to access the Plan as soon as it is submitted and to begin the review process. #

29. Common Section of the Plan
The federal review team will have a Lead Reviewer who will coordinate the federal review.
The person designated by the Governor to submit the plan will be the State’s point of contact.
Communication on the common section will occur only between these two individuals:
Streamlines the process
Maintains clear lines of communication #

30. Program-Specific Sections of the Plan (Unified or Combined Plan)
The federal program staff will communicate directly with the state program staff with questions or issues identified in the program-specific section of the Plan.
Any follow up revisions or edits made by state program staff will need to be reviewed by and submitted through the Governor’s point of contact. #

31. For Unified or Combined State Plans:
Approval Timelines
For Unified or Combined State Plans:
The common elements of the State Plan and those portions covering the core programs and programs administered by the Department of Labor or Department of Education, must be approved or disapproved within 90 days of submission.
For Combined (only) State Plans:
Those portions of the plan covering programs administered by HUD, USDA, and HHS must be approved or disapproved within 120 days of submission by those Departments. #

32. Approval Process For the six core programs:
Decisions regarding approval or disapproval and funding status may be determined separately from the determination of approval, disapproval, or completeness of the program-specific requirements of optional programs and activities described in the Combined State Plan.
For example, if all the common planning elements and program-specific requirements for the core programs are met, approval and funding may proceed regardless of specific issues that may be identified in the program- specific sections for any Combined State Plan partner programs. #

33. Frequently Asked Questions
Are states allowed to submit an entire plan as one large, undivided document?
States are strongly encouraged to submit their plan using the format outlined in the State Plan Information Collection instrument approved by OMB and available through the portal.  While a state’s entire plan could be entered as the answer to a single field, this is strongly discouraged. Doing so will result in output that is difficult for reviewers to decipher and may slow the review process.  
Should states break their plans down into smaller parts to answer each question within the portal?
Yes. The portal allows states to break plans into smaller pieces, which will allow Federal reviewers to target comments more effectively. #

34. Frequently Asked Questions
Can states submit PDF files into the portal?
No. States cannot submit PDF files along with their portal submissions. The portal does not have the functionality to process PDF files at this time.
Does the portal support images such as photos and charts?
Images (including charts) are supported. However, states must host charts and photos on a publicly available website and make a good- faith effort not to change the URL for the images for several years.
Does the portal support tables?
States may submit tables, so long as they are accessible (i.e compliant). Merged cells and other inaccessible table features are not allowed.
If your text includes tables, the system will convert the tables to a standardized accessible format.  If your tables are not accessible, the system will alert you so the tables can be modified as appropriate. #

35. Frequently Asked Questions
What is the default level of read and edit rights when a user administrator authorizes a State user to access the portal? For example, will an individual from the state have edit rights to his or her specific program and read only access to the “common elements?”   Or, is the level of access the State user receives up to the user administrator’s discretion, based on the request? 
There are no default read and edit rights. State users will select the read and edit access levels that work best for them. When state users request access, they set their own access level to the program they select. Access level selections include: VIEW, EDIT, or EDIT AND SUBMIT. The portal automatically allows state users to receive VIEW level access to the remainder of the report. User Administrators can authorize what state users request and can override their selections. #

36. Resources Innovation & Opportunity Network ETA WIOA Page:
ETA WIOA Page:
Resources on Adult Education and WIOA
reauthorization.html
Resources available through RSA #

37. Resources Additional Resources available through ETA:
WIOA related Guidance:  fm
WIOA Fact Sheets: 
Resources and Tools for Workforce Professionals: 
Guide to State and Local Workforce Data, Third Edition: 
nfo #