The Animal Plant Heath Inspection Services Agency (APHIS) of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) protects the United States $5 trillion in imports and exports. In Spring 2002, driven in part by the aftermath of September 11, APHIS began to research enterprise systems that would be able to train, manage and track veterinary personnel, temporary employees and Department of Justice subcontractors on how to handle incident response issues associated with rare, infectious animal diseases that pose a threat to the U.S. food supply. In order for this program to be successful, an average of 200 people from each state, approximately 10,000 total, would need to be trained and tracked at the state, local and private levels on an ongoing basis.

During the research phase, the APHIS Training Technology Team researched multiple systems that would enable them to accomplish their goals. In addition, the APHIS team looked internally, within the USDA, to see how other agencies were meeting the challenges associated with providing learning and knowledge distribution to their employees. This internal review led APHIS to evaluate and ultimately select mGen Enterprise for the veterinary program.

Deployed in 1999 by the USDA's Office of Communications, the mGen Enterprise Learning Management System (LMS) had been successfully utilized by the Risk Management Agency as the platform to deploy and track Congressionally mandated training for U.S. dairy farmers and brokers. As a result of the positive outcome and response this program received, additional USDA agencies, such as Rural Development, also began to take advantage of the existing USDA infrastructure and mGen Enterprise capabilities to address their specific learning and knowledge
initiatives. While mGen's previous success in the USDA played a large role in its selection, one of the most important reasons why APHIS selected mGen Enterprise was the fact that the system already addressed the critical security issues associated with personnel information and access to content that is sensitive in nature.

The mGen Enterprise system is one of many applications that will be used by APHIS in its new Incident Command Center. From this Center, APHIS will conduct and track all initiatives associated with the veterinary program and crisis management, which includes identifying resources available in surrounding cities, towns, counties and states. mGen Enterprise will provide APHIS with a centralized database that tracks associated resources and their capabilities down to the state and local levels. In addition, the system will deliver a blended learning environment, comprised of online courses (29 currently being developed by USDA associated agriculture universities), classroom based certifications and educational expertise.

Organizational Readiness & Reporting Capabilities
mGen Enterprise's ability to match certifications, skills and training records to individuals, will allow for APHIS to quickly and easily identify and track key personnel. This is important because if an incident occurs, the APHIS command center will have instant access to field personnel data, which enables them to deploy assets to contain the incident. In addition, on an ongoing basis, APHIS will be able to use the mGen system to identify skills gaps or personnel training requirements within the agency, which allows to them to be better prepared for an incident before it occurs.

Distributed Administration
mGen's Administration system provides the ability for APHIS to set up and hand down training administration posts, in which designated administrators may grant capabilities to view and manage specific personnel data, sensitive course material and collaborative areas. The unique "visibility" aspects of the system will enable APHIS to provide administrative access and capabilities down to the state and county levels, while still maintaining control at the Incident Command Center in the Washington, D.C. area.

News and Information
The News & Information system allows for APHIS personnel to author, collaborate and immediately distribute internal news and alerts as well as news received from external Internet feeds. Users who access the APHIS system will be able to customize their personal home page in the same manner as major personalized portal providers such as My Yahoo®.

Knowledge Communities
mGen Knowledge Communities are collaborative environments for specific topics and will provide APHIS with the ability to set up secure and private access to expertise in categories such as cattle, swine, poultry, etc. These collaborative areas, which include Threaded Discussion, FAQ's and Shared Files, will provide APHIS personnel with access to Subject Matter Experts and facilitate and peer to peer interaction, in which information on best practices can be easily shared and retained.

Video Library
Through mGen's Video Library, APHIS will be able to provide their personnel with over 500 hours of training and procedural videos that can be delivered to the LAN or by 56K Internet access. Videos will be categorized and fully searchable.