Delivering training and development opportunities across a governmental organization isn’t always easy. You’ll usually have many different departments, each with its own learning and development (L&D) requirements. Training has to be engaging, even when covering complex regulatory topics, and security is a top priority.
A government learning management system (LMS) makes L&D easier. It reduces the need for manual processes and makes employee training more streamlined, effective, and appealing.
But what separates a government LMS from a regular LMS? Let’s look at what you should consider when choosing an LMS for a public sector organization.
Why do you need a government LMS?
An LMS is one of the most critical pieces of technology that exists within a government organization. It drives mandatory training across a diverse set of users and audiences for the purposes of:
- Upskilling
- Competencies
- Career development/advancement
- On-the-job training (OTJT)
- Career field education and training plans (CFETP)
- HR/Compliance training
- Onboarding and related-training
- Competency-based training and management
- Workplace safety training
- Online learning and continued education opportunities
- Product and service launches
- Readiness for defense departments
- Communities of expertise or communities of practice
- Research and collaboration
An LMS helps to streamline and improve training consistency and also makes learning more engaging for your employees. With personalized learning pathways and micro-lessons, learning is easy to access (and more enjoyable, too).
When you choose an LMS specifically designed for government, public sector, and federal organizations, you get a couple of extra benefits as well. You can count on security, easy compliance training, and effective tracking and reporting.
7 things to look for in a government learning management system
What are the non-negotiables when it comes to a government LMS? Here are some things that should be on your government LMS checklist.
Security
Public sector organizations tend to deal with extremely sensitive information, so security is a top LMS priority. A government learning management system should have rock-solid security as a standard.
Your software provider should provide regular security patches, encrypt data at rest and in transit, and have robust security testing practices.
Customization and flexibility
A government LMS should be highly flexible to meet a wide variety of users across different agencies, components, and programs. It should also easily integrate with other critical government systems and applications to make up a total learning architecture.
You’ll also want your LMS to support branding customization, incorporating your organization’s logo, colors, and messaging throughout the platform. This customization improves the user experience by creating a familiar and cohesive learning environment. It also helps learners trust the platform and the relevance of the training it provides.
Accessibility and localization
Public sector organizations have a responsibility to make their services accessible to users of all abilities, and the same goes for their LMS.
A government LMS should meet all relevant accessibility standards. This means all employees should be able to access and use your training platform and content. You’ll want an LMS that supports text accessibility standards and offers learners multiple ways to interact with content.
Easy translation into various languages is a great way to make learning content accessible, so look for an LMS with multiple language options.
Compliance and competency training
Compliance is an essential part of any government learning and development program. You need an LMS that allows you to deliver compliance and competency training and lets you easily assess and certify learners’ competency at the end of a course.
A good government LMS will let you see, at a glance, which employees are up to date with compliance training and will automatically alert managers and enroll employees when they need to renew their compliance training.
Reporting and tracking capabilities
Whether you need to track employee compliance or not, reporting and tracking is another must-have government LMS feature. These tools help you see which employees have completed which courses. They also help you assess the efficacy of training and make it easy for you to pull compliance reports.
Any reports you get from your government LMS should present data in a way that is easy to understand and provide actionable insights that give you a jumping-off point for improvements.
Scalability and integrations
Government agencies tend to involve a large number of employees, so you need to be confident that the LMS you choose can keep up with demand.
It should be able to handle a large number of learners logging in simultaneously and adapt to changing needs and requirements.
Integrations are also important. The LMS you choose should integrate seamlessly with the workplace software you already use.
Multi-tenancy setup
Federal and state government agencies have large communities of users that make up different programs, components, and agencies. A multi-tenant LMS setup allows you to serve all of them within a single larger LMS instance.
Each client organization, or tenant, has its data and configuration virtually partitioned, and each can have its own branding, course, certifications, roles, and dashboards.
Multi-tenancy keeps the user experience consistent and streamlines LMS management. You can make admin and software updates globally via the main site, so you don’t have to duplicate the process.
How Moodle helps public sector and federal workplaces
Moodle is a learning management system that ticks all the boxes for government, public sector, and federal organizations. With excellent scalability, flexible deployment options, and the option for multi-tenancy LMS setup, Moodle has everything you need to run successful training programs.
Learners can access engaging, personalized learning pathways via any device, and L&D leaders can easily track compliance, automate enrollments, and create a consistent learning experience.
Moodle also has extensive experience deploying LMS environments with millions of users across federal and state agencies, either on secure AWS cloud hosting infrastructure, or on-premise government infrastructure.
So whether you need to onboard new employees, bring everyone up to speed with the latest regulations, or better engage your employees by investing in their careers, Moodle can help.
