3 The Opportunity Ahead: A Call to Action for American Skills and Jobs and governors to take up the issue locally, engaging corporate leaders and small business, and increasing communication between a variety of education and training institutions to meet demands across sectors. Creating more on-ramps to join the tech workforce is a significant lever to increase access to the middle class and ensure long-term global competitiveness for American companies. The Administration, alongside the public and private sector and state and local governments, can seize the opportunity to make a substantial difference in employment and wage growth nationwide. To begin addressing the opportunity to close the gap between employer needs and a workforce ready to fill them, the Administration will take the following actions in partnership with the private sector: National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE) to Increase Access to Cybersecurity Education and Training. NICE, which is designed to improve cybersecurity education from K-12 to post-graduate schools in the United States, is taking new actions to expand the number of individuals who are prepared for in-demand cybersecurity jobs. NICE aims to expand pathways to cyber skills and jobs by developing an interactive U.S. map that shows where cybersecurity job openings exist while identifying for applicants the skills the jobs require and the training programs available to applicants seeking each job. NICE is also developing a plan to expand pathways to cybersecurity skills and jobs by expanding the list of high-quality cyber training programs certified by the Department of Homeland Security and the National Security Agency, particularly in community colleges. Expanding Innovative Coding Bootcamps. Three cities – Kansas City, Missouri; Louisville, Kentucky; and Minneapolis, Minnesota – together with the Wadhwani Foundation, are creating new public- private partnerships, working closely with local IT employers and city leaders to attract coding bootcamps. Each will quantify employer demand for IT positions and specific skills necessary to fill those jobs, and will identify funding immediately available to provide tuition support. The Wadhwani Foundation will provide support to document and evaluate these efforts as they move forward. Department of Veterans Affairs Accelerated Learning Competition. To ensure that veterans can take full advantage of innovative learning models, the Department of Veterans Affairs will sponsor a $10 million competition to identify leading practices among alternative learning models and will evaluate the employment outcomes of accelerated learning programs (ALPs) for post-9/11 veterans. The competition will be a multi-staged event leading to direct funding of veteran participation in IT-centric ALPs, including coding bootcamps. This two-year demonstration project will start in FY 2015, with the help of funding through the VA Center for Innovation, and has the potential to scale to other communities based on demonstrated outcomes and the availability of resources. 76