Jill - Phillip Vernon Wilson

Jill needs to fix her contact list.  I havn't even been able to get myself to read this as it is too boring.

Dear colleagues,

This is an update to my message of March 19^th regarding the Field Office of the Future initiative launched by NRCS and NACD.  Please have another look at the attached letter which outlines the following questions and points to be included in each state’s Field Office of the Future plan:

1.      How can we best meet the needs and expectations of our customers?

2.      How should the field offices of the future look and function?

3.      How can we focus our resources to get the most from our nation’s conservation investments?

4.      How can we design the most efficient and effective delivery system at the local level?

5.      How can we best prepare for any potential budget constraints?

Our plan needs to outline a vision of what our state’s field offices of the future will look like, including:

·        A review of field offices co-located by NRCS and conservation districts;

·        Identification of the types and levels of service to be provided in these offices;

·        Opportunities for increased operational efficiencies in light of potential budget constraints (technology, labor, cost and location); and

·        Plans for office closures if required by budget constraints.

On April 18^th, we participated a first-ever, nation-wide teleconference at NRCS in Colchester, then continued with an initial brainstorm among Vermont folks about the Field Office of the Future.  Vermont’s conservation districts were represented by Linda Corse (Windham Supervisor & VACD Treasurer), Jeff Carter (Otter Creek Supervisor & Chair of NRCC), Justin Kenney (Winooski District Manager & representing the Vermont Conservation District Employees Association) and me.  Laura DiPietro of VAAFM also attended, along with a number of NRCS staff, including Vicky Drew, Katura Wright, Jim Eikenberry and later Bob Sylvester and Dave Blodgett. 

The teleconference included representatives of NRCS and conservation districts throughout the US and its territories and the leadership of the Conservation Partnership at the national level.  This “Conservation Partnership” officially includes NRCS, the National Association of Conservation Districts, the National Association of State Conservation Agencies, the National Conservation District Employees Association, and the National Association of RC&D Councils. 

Most of the conversation focused on the Field Office of the Future.  NRCS Chief Dave White made it clear that he is empowering each state to determine its own process and develop its own plan, in recognition of the different resource needs and delivery systems across the U.S.  The national speakers on the teleconference emphasized the opportunity this provides for grassroots participation in the process.  Then there were a bunch of questions and suggestions from various states across the country.

We followed the teleconference with a lengthy discussion and brainstorm.  (Notes of this meeting are available if you’d like to see all the details.)  Bob Sylvester spoke about the upcoming technology overhaul of NRCS’ electronic systems (CDSI-Conservation Delivery System Initiative), which is aimed at reducing paperwork and enabling NRCS staff to spend more time in the field.  (This initiative will be rolled out between October and December this year.)  Dave Blodgett discussed the analysis that was done in the process of developing the current NRCS Vermont Zone structure.  We talked extensively about criteria and what new information we might need and how to gather it.

We decided to create a subcommittee that will review the various analyses that NRCS has already done, develop criteria and a process to be vetted by conservation districts and other technical partners, and see the process to completion.  The committee includes Vicky Drew, Jim Eikenberry, Jim Wood, Dave Blodgett and me.  Jim Eikenberry will be helping to coordinate the process.

The subcommittee met on May 2^nd.   We reiterated the need to think of this process as a way to improve our effectiveness, rather than as a way to defend the status quo against a looming disaster.  We also discussed some information about office redesigns, including a recent article in Seven Days.  By the end of the meeting we reframed the questions we are trying to address into two questions, something like the following:

1. In what locations do we need to have permanent physical hubs or offices in order to best serve our customers?
2. In what locations do we not need to have a permanent physical office, but need a presence in order to best serve our customers?  What conditions need to be met in order to adequately provide this presence without a permanent office?

Dave Blodgett provided further detail on the criteria used and analysis done for the NRCS Vermont Zone restructuring in 2007.  The criteria included: co-location with FSA and conservation districts, number of contracts (weighted for complexity), acres in different kinds of production, distance landowners need to travel to the NRCSoffice, etc.  Jim Wood then showed the tool he worked with (originally from Indiana) for the NRCS workload analysis he oversaw in 2009.  This tool draws on live data in the NRCS system, can continue to be used in the future, and can be re-run for specific periods with different kinds of sorting.  It includes ranked natural resource concerns, workload (actual hours spent on different contracts); workload complexity, office efficiency, and proximity to districts.  We talked about the need to update these data analysis tools with more current agricultural statistics and geographical information, as well as to ensure that the natural resource concern rankings are consistent with last year’s (2011) NRCS state resource assessment data. 

We also reviewed and revised the criteria brainstormed in the previous meeting, and discussed  other kinds of data collection needed, including surveys of customers and staff and tracking of customer visits to NRCS offices.

Next Steps:

Keeping in mind that the Field Office of the Future plan is due September 1^st, our aim is to have the criteria established by the end of May and the data analysis completed by the end of June, so that we can spend the rest of the summer discussing the implications of what we have learned.  So the general calendar is:

May – finalize criteria and initiate data analysis

June – continue data analysis

July to August  – discuss results and their implications

Mid to late August – prepare report

More immediately:

The criteria to be used to address these questions will be summarized, clarified and made available to districts and other technical partners for input in the next two weeks.  You will then be given a couple of weeks to a month to discuss them with your boards and provide feedback (depending on your board schedules).  NRCS will host a conference call or meeting(s) if desired for further discussion, questions and dialogue.

NRCS will begin data re-analysis immediately, including tracking the number and content of customer visits to their offices for a period of time, as well as a field employee survey about the structure of their workday.  Further analysis will be done if we come up with new criteria that aren’t captured in the already-planned data analysis.

We are drafting a brief customer survey on Survey Monkey.  VACD and districts will be asked to disseminate the link to and paper copies of this survey to landowners, as NRCS is not allowed to conduct surveys of its customers.

Once we get this ball rolling we will inevitably come up with new ideas that will require us to adjust our approach.  There is also a lively dialogue about this taking place among state conservation district leaders and NRCS soil conservationists, so we will be sharing our thoughts with other states as well as learning from them.

I think this is enough for now.  Please let me know if you have any questions.  Also attached is an updated version of the district/VACD staff chart I sent you previously, and here is a link to the Seven Days article mentioned above:  

Best regards,

Jill