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The best place to start for IT training or retraining is your local One Stop career center. These centers are run by regional public/private-sector work-force boards, which sprung from the 1998 Workforce Investment Act. They assess individual and company needs, then try to match employers to potential employees. They also match job seekers to the appropriate types of training.

These local work-force boards all operate differently, depending on the needs of their communities. And each local board has plenty of discretion in how to use its funds. Sometimes a board funds entire classes for students or offers loans to students. Other times it just pays for the equipment used in the IT classes it coordinates, or helps employers pay for training of current or future employees.

"There is a lot of government money out there that is being distributed," says Jana Hambruch, director of channel development for The Beacon Institute for Learning, a Plantation, Fla.-based training-program developer. "People just need to know where to find it."

The North Valley Private Industry Council, a regional work-force board in Sunnyvale, Calif., emphasizes retraining displaced IT workers. "We do a steady business of people caught in layoffs from tech companies," says Rob Gamble, employment and training manager for the council. "We put a lot of emphasis on retraining options to make sure they can get back into the market." For example, Novapic recently paid the full tuition for 25 people who wanted to become Sun systems administrators.

Work-force boards also help set up training for employers concerned that their IT staffers are falling behind technologywise. These organizations also draw on other funds to set up training programs. For example, Novapic relies on 23 grants from various government and private groups to generate $8 million to $9 million a year for local work-force development.

On the other side of the country, the Northern Virginia Regional Partnership (NVRP) work-force board has used nearly $10 million to create career and training programs for 6,000 people. Recently, the partnership has won more than $4 million in public and private grants to create new training programs. Most of the partnership-sponsored programs can be completed in less than six months.

The NVRP sponsors George Mason University's Train to Technology program, which offers entry-level training certificate courses, including a 360-hour MCSE program (). Students pay $5,000 to $7,000. GMU, through federal funding, pays for the classroom and lab equipment. The NVRP also offers a fast-track, five-month evening and weekend course, designed for people with little or no IT experience who are already working, and a full-time technology retraining internship for college graduates.

For those IT workers who pay for some or all of their own training or retraining, tax relief is available. The HOPE Scholarship offers a $1,500 tax credit against the first $2,000 in the first two years of college or other post-secondary training. There is also the federal Lifetime Learning Credit for college juniors, seniors, graduate students and working Americans. It's a 20 percent tax credit for the first $5,000 of tuition and fees through 2002, and for the first $10,000 thereafter.

More help may be on the way, too: Congress is considering The Technology Education and Training Act of 2001, which would encourage businesses to form partnerships with schools, universities and job training centers. It would offer businesses tax credits of up to $2,000 for programs that lead to technology certification for their workers.