National activities are underway in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States to extend the right to free elementary and fundamental education to adults, and to transform the many local, independently acting programs into systems of state-supported, free education for adults across the life span. This paper summarizes these activities in those three nations in these five categories: (1) scale of need, or determining how many adults are in need of adult basic skills education; (2) access to provision, or determining how many adults are aware of, have access to, and enroll in adult education and literacy education programs; (3) nature of provision, or determining the nature of the delivery system for meeting the needs of adult literacy provision, including the use of information and communication technology; (4) quality of provision, or determining the nature of and need for improved instructional quality, including teacher qualifications and establishing content and outcome standards for programs; and (5) accountability of provision, or improving methods for determining achievements of programs in terms of student learning outcomes and broader impacts for the adult, the family, the workplace, and the community. (Contains 14 references.) (KC)