PICs, TECs and LECs: lessons to be learnt from the differences between the USA Private Industry Councils and Britain's Training and Enterprise Councils

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Abstract
This paper examines the administrative lessons to be learnt from comparing England and Wales’ TECs, Scotland's LECs and the programmes developed by PICs in US Service Delivery Areas (SDAs). It demonstrates that the smallness of budgets, the fragmentation of metropolitan labour markets, inheritance of staff, lack of continuity of the Boards, and difficulties of developing a national strategy are common problems to the two systems. The problems of smallness and fragmentation are most extreme in the USA. The discussion concludes, however, that the PICs offer some lessons not yet fully digested in Britain. Chief of these has been the greater success in catalysing partnership by working with other local agents‐‐chiefly colleges and local government. This partnership structure is to be enhanced by President Clinton's legislation to replace PICs by Worker Investment Boards (WIBs). TECs and LECs were set up as independent local bodies and many still have to learn the benefit of joint local working strategies developed with local government and college training providers.