I was solemnly assured by a number of people (all ASCS/FSA employees) that the SCS/NRCS conservationists spent all their time riding around in their pickup trucks and never could be found in the office. And ASCS employees never lie. So what's with this Federal Computer Week article on the NRCS "streamlining plan" which reports:
Currently, the USDA field conservationists report spending as little
as 20 to 40 percent of their time in the field working with customers
The expected outcome of the initiative is for field staff to be able
to spend up to 75 percent of their time in the field with customers, the
plan said.
The initiative will free up the equivalent of an additional 1,200 to
1,500 field technical staff that will be redirected back into customer
contact, the USDA said in its plan.
Here's the
plan which is only 5 months old (only the latest news on this blog). It's actually part of the USDA plan. Funny, though, it sounds basically like the vision which Kevin Wickey and other NRCS people were trying to implement back in the Glickman days. Which as I understood it, was putting everything on a laptop which a conservationist would need in the field.
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