Action: Eliminate narrow restrictions on employee training to help develop a multiskilled workforce.35 The Government Employees Training Act (GETA), which authorizes agencies to manage and determine their training needs, defines training as a tool for "increasing economy and efficiency in government." The rules written behind this 1958 wording severely limit how agencies can use training today. Training too often is ad hoc and seldom linked to strategic or human resource planning. Managers generally are not able to get the information to determine the return on their training investment. Even worse, existing restrictions dictate that any training be related to an employee's official duties--thus ensuring that our Justice Department secretary does not become a paralegal. These rules keep federal employees single-skilled in a multi-skilled world. By early 1994, OPM will draft legislation to amend GETA on three fronts. OPM will redefine the objective of federal training as the "improvement of individual and organizational performance." It will relate the use of training to achieving an agency's mission and performance goals, not to a worker's official duties. And OPM will seek to end the distinction between government and nongovernment training, giving public employees access to the best training services available, no matter who provides them. Clarifying the purpose of training in GETA will reinforce the need to use training to improve performance and produce results. Removing the distinction between government and non-government training will deregulate the in-government training monopoly, introducing competition that will improve the quality of learning opportunities for federal employees. And linking training to an agency's mission will ease employees' efforts to become adept at all the skills they need as empowered workers. We urge Congress to join in the quality effort by passing these important amendments early in 1994.