Texas is shifting to an integrated, systems-oriented approach to providing work force services for its residents and employers in which all services are guided by a single mission and vision. Implementation strategies are clearly focused on achieving common results. Accountability means being able to ensure taxpayers, residents, employers, and society that public investments are being prudently managed and yielding positive returns. The current accountability system for Texas work force development services can be characterized as follows: largely programmatic and categorical; driven for the most part by federal legislative and regulatory requirements; focused primarily on performance management rather than evaluation; founded upon an artificial and inappropriate distinction between systems and program goals; suffering from roles/relationships confusion among the major state work force partners; disproportionately focused on process not outcomes or impacts; emphasizing participant results to near total exclusion of employer-oriented measures and management or evaluation mechanisms; ad hoc evaluations whose findings have been poorly integrated into policy decision making; and very uneven across various programs and agencies. Steps recommended to move towards a systems evaluation approach to accountability are organized into three phases to be taken before June 30, 1997; from July 1997-June 1999; and from July 1999-June 2001. Major tasks, actors with responsibility, and timelines have been identified. (Contains 41 references.) (YLB)