The Future Workforce Now: Reimagining Workforce Policy in the Age of Disruption initiative helps U.S. states develop practices and policies for preparing a current and future workforce during significant changes caused by disruptive technologies. Some of these technologies are robotics, big data, artificial intelligence and 3D printing.

Funded by the National Governors Association (NGA) Center for Best Practices, FHI 360 and the Fab Foundation are working to answer these questions:

• What are the disruptive technologies and how do they impact different industry sectors that are important to the economies of the 50 states?
• What do these disruptions mean for education and training delivery institutions and how do those institutions adapt?
• What are the policy themes, directions and actionable recommendations needed to prepare the future workforce for success?

Research

NGA, FHI 360 and the Fab Foundation are writing reviews and identifying policy implications for each focus question.

Roundtables

The initiative is conducting roundtables to discuss each focus question. Agendas for each roundtable will be based on the reviews and discussions from prior roundtables, identifing key questions for presentations and conversations. A summary paper will be prepared after each roundtable.

Toolkit

The initiative concludes with a state policy forum for governors and state leaders to identify potential state policy actions and publish a toolkit that state leaders can use for developing actionable policies, best practices and real-world examples as they respond to the technological disruptions in their local labor markets.