In the Headlines

Four new clients, four different ways that Geographic Solutions' Virtual OneStop is helping workforce development organizations identify and solve their unique problems.

The Chicana Service Action Center is located in the heart of downtown Los Angeles. In providing services to the community, the Chicana staff faced the daunting prospect of trying to track which services they offered were being used, and by whom.

When looking for a system to help them with this task, the Chicana Service Action Center used an interesting analogy. They said that providing services to customers is like birds coming to a feeder. The customers (the birds) come to the center and access many different services (feed). In the past, customers flocked to the centers and received services without being tracked adequately, leading to a problem with determining what services had been provided, when they were provided, and to what type of customer. All that the staff knew was that the resources (food) were being used and needed to be resupplied.

With the power of Virtual OneStop, the Chicana Service Action Center will be able to track all of the services they provide and better manage their service delivery system.

Maricopa County is the largest county in Arizona, and has a very diverse population both among jobseekers and employers. Geographic Solutions is providing a complete Virtual OneStop system to Maricopa County, and one focus of the system will be employer services. The Maricopa County staff takes the initiative in proactively working with employers to maximize the power of Virtual OneStop to bring employer and employee together. Geographic Solutions is modifying VOS in order to help Maricopa County not only continue to work with employers, but enhance their abilities to provide employers with superior services.

Sandwiched between Orange County to the south and Los Angeles County to the north, Santa Ana is implementing the full Virtual OneStop system. The system will help Santa Ana reach more customers, improve customer service and reduce staff time by eliminating paperwork and duplicate data entry since VOS interfaces with the California Job Training Automation system (JTA).

Geographic Solutions has partnered with the Oracle Corporation to provide a customized One-Stop Delivery System for the Job Service of North Dakota. Special features in the North Dakota system include advanced search capabilities for individuals seeking jobs and employers posting job orders (in order to better narrow down search results for both parties), and the development of the Background Wizard, a feature which allows a user to enter their background information, such as employment history, educational background, and job availability into the system once, then use that information in many different ways (such as to build a resume). The North Dakota system is currently in the end stages of testing.