 Bruce Clark. I'd like to talk with you for a few minutes about the training, education, and skills development services available to court staff from the Federal Judicial Center. I'm sure that as a unit executive, manager, or a training specialist, you're well aware of the importance of training in keeping the federal courts running smoothly. You know that in an era of growing complexity and tight budgets, there's a real need for training programs that can help court employees hone their skills, learn new ones, and keep up with developments in technology. And you understand the bottom line payoff of successful skills training. It helps staff do their jobs better and saves the taxpayers money. And since you've worked with us before, we know you're likely to turn to the center as a resource, as a partner in training, as you consider creative ways to meet the training needs of your staff. You probably also know that we now conduct more than 90 percent of our programs for court employees in cities where those employees work, using instructors we've trained, or the latest video, computer, or satellite technology. But you might not be aware of the full range of programs we offer, or the precise ways these programs can pay off. And that's why we've made this video, to give you an overview of center services available to you and your staff, and how they can help. I'll be telling you about some of this, but we thought you should also hear from some people who've actually used our products. Clerks, managers, supervisors, probation and pretrial services officers, training specialists, unit execs, and judges. Let's start by looking at the range of programs that are available. As we do so, we'll also hear how the programs help staff do their jobs better. The programs fall into five broad categories. Developing non-supervisory staff, developing managers and supervisors, developing training at the local level, enhancing organizational effectiveness, and developing job aids. Programs in the first category, developing non-supervisory staff, help court employees develop job skills and enhance their working relationships with co-workers and managers. Working as a commercially produced program, the Center adapted for the courts to help non-supervisory personnel improve their work skills. The program really motivated our staff. It energized them. It delivered skills that they can use in the workplace and at home with their families. It's a tremendous program and it covers some very basic principles which we are pleased to see posted at most of the workstations today. Let's be even more specific about the benefits of working. One benefit that we noticed right away was that the clerks in our office, the deputy clerks, the people doing the docketing and intake section of the office were no longer afraid to ask co-workers for assistance, for help. And so we've seen an increase in productivity in the office, in the structure of the office because of those specific skills that they learned. Like many of the programs we deliver in home districts, working is what we call a packaged program. These programs are packaged in the sense that they come with a package of instructor guides, overheads, participant materials and sometimes videos. The majority of them are taught by center-trained court staff. Some can be taught by any court employee with training experience. Center education specialists work closely with subject matter experts from the courts in developing packaged programs. And when you put the two together, you get a pretty neat blend. I always felt that we were listened to carefully and that largely our program ideas were incorporated and adopted when we came up with something we wanted to tackle. Once the package is developed, it can be tailored to meet the needs of each court that requests it. Customer service is a packaged program designed specifically for intake deputies. It teaches them the difference between legal advice and procedural information, how to enhance their communication skills and how to deal with irate customers. Customer service in the courts made it very easy for our employees to dialogue with the attorneys that would come in or to answer the questions correctly or to steer them to where to get the right answers. Those kinds of things were immediate payoffs. Other center programs in this cluster focus on safety skills training for officers and support staff. Recently we had somebody who was carrying a gun, an offender, who was carrying a gun in our office. And if we had not taken the precautions that we were taught in the officer safety program, and that is that we should have secure offices and that the person, we should know what the person has on them, we would not have known that person had a gun. The second general category of center programs for staff is those that help managers, supervisors and others in leadership positions develop skills in planning, delegating, counseling and communicating. Frontline leadership is a program in this category that helps supervisors and mid-level managers enhance their leadership skills. Frontline leadership was introduced to our people. They learned how to take on a new assignment. They learned how to get their main ideas across. They learned how to do appraisals. They practiced each of those skills using the basic principles of frontline leadership. Instruction in our managing employee relations program focuses on legal issues in personnel management, solving employee relations problems and developing staff policies and procedures. We had been through a period of transition in our management in our district and several of the supervisors expressed the need for some additional training on how to manage their employees. I contacted the federal judicial center and asked if there were any materials available to put on an in-district workshop for our managers. They put me onto a program called Managing Employee Relations, which was one of the biggest successes that we've had in our district. What was it exactly that made the program successful? One of the great benefits of the Managing Employee Relations program was that our supervisors discovered that their problems were not unique, that there were creative ways that other managers within the court had dealt with the problems of a relatively flat organization where promotion may not be something that's available to everyone. This area also includes the center's leadership development programs for probation and pretrial services officers and for federal court managers. These are two to three-year self-directed programs for staff who want to enhance their management and leadership skills. Some participants in these programs have been promoted to positions of increased responsibility. I think the leadership development program helped me understand a little better what it means to have power and to not be intimidated by that but to also understand how it can be used in such a positive, constructive way. The power of a good leader is not to be underestimated and I think I really have a good sense of that as a result of my participation in the program. The leadership development programs are time consuming as well as challenging. Are they worth it? As it turns out, in addition to training future leaders, the programs benefit the courts in many other ways. For example, they require participants to design projects that propose solutions to management problems in their districts. These proposals often get put to use in the courts because they provide innovative solutions to pressing problems and because they save money. My in-district project was the development of a pretrial services social services policy to be utilized by the pretrial services officers within the district. Simultaneous with that in-district project was the implementation of an on-site urinalysis laboratory within the district. The utilization of that on-site laboratory and the implementation of it resulted in a cost savings of probably 40% per urine specimen and the turnaround time was reduced from two weeks to approximately six to eight minutes per specimen. You may well be asking, is this the exceptional case? The answer is a resounding no. Some of our in-district projects and out-of-district projects were so creative that the government ended up saving tens of thousands of dollars through innovation of the participants in the leadership development program. The Center's Probation and Pretrial Services Office Management Online Network is another program that helps develop management, leadership, and supervisory skills. It's a series of computer-based conferences for staff with primary responsibility for administering office operations. Participants learn new office management skills, share effective practices, and discuss ways of improving office operations all over the computer. A third cluster of programs help develop the training function at the local level. For example, the Center conducts programs for court training specialists that help them identify and meet staff training needs. I was a public school teacher for seven years before I became a federal probation officer and I think I knew how to teach but through the train-the-trainer program for the Federal Judicial Center, I also learned how to train. A Center packaged program structured on the job training teaches trainers and other court personnel skills for providing one-on-one training to employees. As far as on-the-job training has gone, I think we just tend to tell people what we do and how we've done it and there's been no formal process for it before. So the structured on-the-job training program allowed people to go through a process of analyzing whatever it was, the job entailed and actually writing down the processes that needed to be followed and the order in which they needed to be done. As part of this training function, Center staff work with courts interested in developing multi-year strategic training plans. We do this with individual court units or combinations of units within a district. Both Center staff and in-district court training specialists service facilitators for the program. The Center has also developed programs that enhance organizational effectiveness. For example, our maximizing productivity project helps court executives increase their employees productivity and work satisfaction by implementing management strategies like total quality service, team-based management and process improvement. It's the first time that supervisors and management from all the court units in our district came together to learn about how to more effectively manage employees, but also more importantly to learn from each other and develop networks within the court unit. You could have been working in the same building for years with other managers and never really had a conversation about some of your common problems. What happened after these managers got together, exchanged ideas and developed a network? They discovered that there were many things that we were duplicating as far as management was concerned, and as a result of this program, some of our budget issues, some of our supply issues, and some of our court management issues have been combined and therefore duplication of effort has been eliminated. Other center programs with a focus on organizational effectiveness include executive team development and strategic planning workshops. The last cluster of programs provides staff with job aids they can use in the office on a daily basis. These include resource documents like this effective practices guide, one of a series of guides containing descriptions of innovative practices that probation and pretrial officers have found to be particularly helpful. They also include our risk prediction index for probation officers and our discats and CD-ROMs on the federal rules of procedure. One nice feature of the federal rules interactive program is that it allows your staff to train when they need to train. So it's right there. It's not like you have to go down the hall even to get the answer. You don't have to go find the clerk or find another manager. You have available to you a resource that is fingertips away from the answer that you need at that time. In other words, making job aids like these readily available to staff increases their efficiency and productivity. I think what we've done is we've created a system by using this program that has increased productivity in the office, increased the professionalism of the office, and educated the entire staff on an area that before, in my opinion, was very difficult to bring people up to the level of expertise that we were looking for. Many of the programs in the five categories we've discussed include a video component, but the center also produces video programs that stand alone. For example, the center's introducing the federal courts video series teaches new employees how the federal courts operate and how their jobs fit into the larger picture. The series contains an introductory program and programs explaining how civil, criminal, bankruptcy, and appellate cases move through the courts. When we bring a new employee into the office, I think that this is the best, the videos are the best method of, first of all, giving the new employee an overview of the whole judicial system. As always, the question is exactly how did the video series help new employees? Did it improve their job performance? If so, how? A lot of them said after they reviewed the videos, gosh, I didn't know that part of it. That's really helpful and that makes sense now, why I'm doing some things. I think it really did improve their performance. When they could look at the overall picture, looking at a case from start to finish, it helped them to clarify the deadlines that they had to keep. It helped them to know what to expect next in a case. It helped courtroom deputies to keep up with timelines. They're good. We hope this gives you an idea of the range of programs the center can deliver to your district. Of course, as time goes on and needs change, we develop new programs to meet them. Ideas for new programs come from court employees like you, center advisory groups composed of court staff and managers, from the administrative office and the sentencing commission, and from members of the center's board. Congress also creates training needs with the passage of laws or reports of legislative committees. Other center programs help implement policies of the judicial conference of the United States or suggestions from conference committees. Let's turn now to center training that isn't delivered in individual districts. The center conducts national and regional programs in areas where it's important that court staff throughout the country receive training with a national perspective. The officers participating at this training are from all over the United States, from many different districts, with different policies on certain issues. And it's extremely important that at some point early in their careers, they do get the national policies, regulations, perspective. Very important. Like our package programs, the center's national and regional programs focus on substantive skills training. Participating in new office orientation will help new officers perform their job duties better because it gives them a foundation for skills that they need to perform their job duties. They learn guideline training, they learn testifying skills, things that will help them become a better officer throughout their career. Another reason the center conducts national and regional programs is that some training needs are best met when court staff from all over the country who are doing the same job get together, get acquainted, and exchange ideas on how to do that job better. I recently attended a workshop for newly appointed court unit executives. We were from various locations throughout the country. We had never met before. And because of the center staff's compassion for us, I think, there was a very special bond. I think one of the major benefits is meeting the training specialists from all the other courts so that we get a good group of people that we can call on for resources. The federal courts are really a very small group of people. And there aren't very many people who do the same job throughout the country. And to go to a place at a central location away from your office where you're not distracted and hear how it's done and meet the people face to face and establish the contacts with these people that you can call on and months and years to come is an invaluable resource and I always thought it was one of the secret ingredients that tied us together as a national system rather than just 94 separate kingdoms under the rubric of the United States courts. That completes our overview. Listings and more detailed explanations of center programs, products, and services can be found in our brochure, Programs and Services for Federal Court Personnel, and in our catalog of audiovisual media productions. If you'd like staff from your court to participate in one of our programs or to use one of our products, just submit a request following the procedures outlined in these publications. Or better yet, call us or CC mail us because the sooner we hear from you the sooner we can help you with your training needs. There's never been a time that I've contacted the Federal Judicial Center that I didn't get immediate help. I feel like I can call the Judicial Center now and they will help me work out a program that's customized for my court. I think it's just been a valuable resource and has proved the wisdom of having an arm of the judiciary that has as one of its primary focuses the training of court employees from the bottom to the top levels. We look forward to working with you. Remember, well, why don't we let one of our speakers from the court say it? Larry? To use the resources of the center is to address educational needs, training needs that you may have in your court system, and to bring to your individual court unit a environment that I would say promotes motivation and productivity. So give us a call and let's work together as partners in training to make the federal courts the best they can be.