The last time the Forest Service employee directory went down, in 2022, we reported it to them and they put it back online.
This time I received this email:
Subject: RE: [External Email]Broken links
Hello, the Forest Service made the decision to remove the employee directory. People looking for service can search by staff area and function versus specific employees. Staff areas and units are responsible for keeping their contact information up to date and shared inboxes staffed.
I think this individual is more sanguine than I about how some units are at keeping their contact information up to date. Does this decision help with transparency and accountability? How can the public hold units accountable for keeping their websites up to date and shared inboxes staffed? Perhaps a “citizen complaint hotline”? Otherwise it’s not clear what accountability mechanisms there are.
The rumor mill says that perhaps this decision was a response to an unauthorized use of the stripped emails. I completely understand that that would be a problem. At the same time, this appears to be an example of the well-known organizational response of punishing everyone, including the innocent, instead of finding and focusing on the guilty.
The Press Office said they were getting back to me with a more in-depth explanation, so I’ll post that when I receive it.
Anyway, here is the new “contact us” site. It helps you look up a forest on the map and go to their website. I think they’re trying to be super-helpful to people, and maybe they had focus groups of users help them to design it. I know it’s not cool these days to make it easy to talk to a human being who knows stuff about the topic.. but still..
Great work, Sharon. Keeping them honest.
Making it easy to talk to a human being who knows stuff about whatever it is one is calling about is VERY COOL. I just hope agency people realize that soon.
Good grief! How “inclusive” of them…..
If it was a priority to be responsive, transparent, and accessible, the agency would have kept the employee directory as well as the “new” way of making contact.
This is a multi-layered issue. Yes the public can no longer see contact info for FS employees but it also extends internally when trying to find contact information. Part of it I believe is due to security/safety concerns. Part of it is the IT systems/policies/procedures instituted by the USDA (all USDA agencies IT services are now managed at the Department level not the agency level.) The outcome is no public access to individual FS contact info and internally we cannot see duty location information (Forest/Unit and state only) when looking in available online address books (email and other MS services). Most FS employee will have detailed location/contact info on their email signature lines, but if you haven’t received an email from them you are out of luck.
Do I think the FS is trying exclude the public from contacting employees? No, they are trying to balance individual concerns for safety in todays super charged political environment, and being hampered in maintaining correct/accurate contact information and keeping employees from being bombarded by the public. Yes the old way of looking up an FS employee online is fast and easy but anyone can call an FS unit for information. Granted some information may be funneled upward to the Region or WO office for certain highly charged issues 🙂
I simply don’t know if I understand the security/safety concerns that are being addressed but omitting an external employee directory. So when employee email addresses, phone numbers, and position/location information was previously available, these public employees were somehow at risk? Perhaps—but it seems like a stretch.
Carl… as a former FS employee who worked on a series of unpopular schemes, I totally understand “individuals’ concerns for safety”. But I have to wonder if sometimes “today’s politically charged environment”, like “climate change” is something that’s both true, and also can be used to keep people from asking about other reasons. Because it’s hard to argue that the environment is more politically charged than two years ago, when the answer from the same organization was “sure we’ll put the link back”.
I’m assuming no real negative intention here, but I know how things that make sense to individual departments (silos) can lead to decisions that are not ultimately in the best interest of anyone. Especially people who didn’t participate in the decision. And it could be I’m just not good at finding things that are obvious to others.
So for example, I was on the NOGA webinar today and wanted to email a person to ask questions. They stated their first and last names, which I could use to email them. Let’s take one person who identified himself as “senior advisor” but I happen to know works in EMC. I can go to EMC on the web, but there is no place to contact anyone there that I could find. If I go to “contacts”.. I can find Junior Ranger, but not NEPA. But I guess I can fill out a contact form and then someone has to sort out where it’s going. Is it a person? Is it AI? Will he she or it understand what I’m asking?
I also tried Region 5, here’s the link to “contact us.” It turns out if you’re media, there’s a handy list with emails! It’s even updated as of July 2, 2024. The rest of us get a contact form.
Also, we have also been told that “everyone’s on a detail” so we may not know what unit they are on at any given time. And yet employees don’t leave their knowledge, experience and wisdom behind when they go on a detail, so we might want to contact them. Maybe we want to offer them a job!
I think this system might work well if every question that the public had was related to a known Forest or District, but sometimes the questions we have are not. Finally, I should note that while R-5 has a handy updated list of forest media contacts, Region 1 does not. Here’s their contact page.
Also when I go to a forest there, the BD, there are phone number but no email address for the Districts (or contact form?).
I get that people interested in talking to RO and WO people might be a minority. Still, I think legitimate questions can be asked about “is responsiveness to the public working as well as it should?”
Sharon, LOL (with a smile) “AI” in the FS??? No, we haven’t advanced that much in the IT arena since you left 🙂 so yes the first touch of your inquiry will be a person but probably not with the expertise that can answer your question and then it’s a matter if they route it to the appropriate person.
The point of my post is that it sucks both internally and externally. The tools and processes that I have internally to find FS employees really suck. But looking at each of the decision points in the last couple of year I understand why we are here. The real world issues of the USDA/FS IT infrastructures/systems, IT security demands, and dollars/personnel allocated to the FS has created sub optimal “responsiveness to the public” (also internally) when it comes to finding and contacting individual FS employees.
Not to defend the outcome but “everyone’s on a detail” is a problem (no, everyone is not on a detail.) The issue is for those detailed there are no convenient process to keep track of them (are they still on forest, working remote, email stays the same but other duty location info????). It is basically word of mouth.
Andy, my point was not to blame the USDA, it is just that with the $/resources available to the FS, a decision was made to stop maintaining the People/Contact data base used in the past and spend the $/resources elsewhere. Yes, other USDA agencies do maintain online people/contact info for the public, and go figure the FS R&D shops still have a people/contact page for each station. I think it was a plain old economic decision and where to spend the money to support the core mission of the agency.
Again, I’m not trying to defend the decisions made to discontinue the People webpage. But give our current budget would I spend money to maintain the old system, maybe not. Is there a better way so the public can contact FS employee….? Yes and at what cost?
I understand what you are saying, Carl, so thanks for responding. Like you said, if R&D can do it… and as Andy said, other USDA agencies can do it, then we would have to think the difference is the much larger number of employees in NFS. Conceivably, though “security demands” would be the same for R&D as for NFS. Also it could be argued that due to having so many more employees, it’s more important for them to be able to keep track of each other and not rely on “word of mouth.” Just out of curiosity in the new budget structure, does IT have its own line item? Because I can think of other budget items that could be de-prioritized..
FSEEE would be delighted to host and maintain a public, searchable FS employee database AT NO COST to the federal government. If anyone with decision-making authority is reading this note, please email me at [email protected] and we can make this happen.
FSEEE already has most of the employee data, “scraped” from the FS’s on-line directory before it was removed. We use it to send our newsletter gratis to over 30,000 FS employees. Those who don’t want the newsletter (they don’t know what they’re missing 😉) can hit the delete key or opt-out easy-peasy.
Andy, thanks. That’s a cool offer. Still, in the interest of transparency, etc., I’d like to see the USFS do it. They had a directory for years, so why not continue it. There are pros and cons, sure, and maybe some folks here have insights. If so, do tell!
I doubt blame or credit for removal of the FS email directory can be laid at USDA’s feet. Other USDA agencies, e.g., NRCS, continue to have on-line employee email directories available to the public.