In this time-crunched world, customers conduct business, buy groceries, plan vacations and even earn college degrees from the comfort of their own computers. Not wanting to be left behind, the Office of Personnel Management has developed a one-stop shop for electronic training.

OPM's USALearning, formerly known as GoLearn, puts professional development in the hands of federal employees, allowing them to take classes at their convenience.

Born out of the governmentwide e-training initiative, USALearning wears two hats. First, the program offers free online courses and tools to registered users. Second, it manages three service providers from whom agencies can buy products and services tailored for their specific requirements.

"We're actually providing practical tools," said Larry Mercier, who retired as GoLearn's director in July.

Practicality pays off. As of late June, 31 agencies were using USALearning courses to train employees in a wide range of areas.

"Virtually every agency has created an online or distance learning portal that provides its employees with access to online training courses, libraries of training materials and, occasionally, interactive content," said Rich D'Adamo, president of Workforce Solutions.

USALearning aims to simplify the movement to e-training by creating a common solution for all agencies.

"Across the federal government there have always been silos of disparate learning," said Jeff Pon, OPM's acting program director for e-government. USALearning provides a "knowledge universe," in which every federal employee has access to training and mentoring regardless of their location, he said.

Anyone with a .gov or .mil e-mail address can sign up for USALearning by creating an account at www.usalearning.gov.

Registered users have access to more than 100 free online courses and books on topics such as IT security, customer service, human resources, leadership and project management.

Popular classes include "Microsoft Excel 2003 Fundamentals" and "Change Management: Managing Change." USALearning's home page provides a link to those high-interest courses as well as federally-mandated ones. In addition, users can search by class name or topic.

Not always a freebie

USALearning's federal course catalog also includes fee-based classes offered by three contracting vehicles — FasTrac, GoLearn and the National Technical Information Service, which is part of the Commerce Department and offers a wide range of secure services for e-learning. OPM recently changed the name of GoLearn to USALearning to avoid confusion with the GoLearn contracting vehicle.