InnovateUS – an online learning initiative that delivers at-your-own pace and live skills training to public sector professionals in areas like data, digital, and community engagement – recently announced that it has secured $2 million in funding from Google.org and access to Google Career Certificates to support its mission to upskill and educate public sector professionals free-of-charge over the next three years. And this initiative will offer online courses and workshops for workers to gain a wide range of data, digital, and artificial intelligence skills.
InnovateUS is using the funding to offer training to 50,000 state workers across more than 15 states over three years. And Google.org will provide a pro-bono support team of Google employees to help InnovateUS with the user experience and design of the learning platform.
Managed by public sector leaders and delivering learning opportunities – including weekly workshops and online courses at no cost to public sector professionals – InnovateUS encourages ongoing career and professional development for public workers and empowers the nation’s largest workforce with learning designed to improve trust in governance. And current and upcoming courses include Innovation Skills and Public Problem Solving, Human-Centered Design, Fast Field Scanning: Finding What Works, and Responsible AI for Public Professionals.
InnovateUS will award 2,000 Google Career Certificates at no cost across these states as part of this plan. And the Google Career Certificates equip people with job-ready skills in the fields of cybersecurity, data analytics, IT support, and more — with no experience or degree required. The certificate graduates are connected to the program’s employer consortium of more than 150 companies (including Google) that are committed to considering public servants for relevant roles. To date, over 200,000 people have completed the program in the U.S., and 75% of them report a positive career impact, such as a new job, promotion, or raise within six months of completion. Plus, InnovateUS will also provide access to weekly live workshops for 5,000 public workers and asynchronous training to another 1,500 workers.
KEY QUOTES:
“As technology is increasingly incorporated into citizen services and governance, we must invest in public sector professionals, helping them to learn how to use the latest tools to serve residents better. We created InnovateUS because it is critical that such learning be free and easily accessible to the public sector. Expanding these resources with this support from Google.org will help expedite the responsible use of AI and other technologies to improve people’s lives.”
— Beth Simone Noveck, Director of the Burnes Center for Social Change and the GovLab, which supports InnovateUS
“We are proud of the work Google.org does with the public sector, especially its support for InnovateUS in its efforts to equip public sector professionals with the skills and knowledge they need to drive innovation in government. We believe that by investing in the training of our public workers, we are investing in the future of our country.”
— Karen Dahut, CEO of Google Public Sector
