I thought as I posted these we might develop our own indices of research utility. So far, I’ve thought of these questions.
1. Whom is this information intended to help?
2. How are they involved in design and feedback (e.g. FIA has a super-formal approach, others may be more organic)
3. What specific questions of theirs does it answer?
4. Would a reasonable person think that the answer to that question was already known?
5. What is the spatial scale to be helped?
6. What is the temporal scale to be helped?
I’m sure we can think of more questions in developing our own IRU’s.
Other questions?
I have many thoughts about this. But one table setting piece I’d like to raise is a lack of accessible data that the field of agency and civilian researchers can access. For years at Headwaters Economics, we complied data, often from pages and pages of PDFs posted on agency websites, put them in pretty visualizations and made the data available for download in an Excel spreadsheet. It was one of the most popular and valuable things I did and they still do. As I’m trying to understand current budget cuts and RIFs, we’re lacking the basic data (at least data in any useable format) to understand the context. I’m starting to track down and make public staffing and budget information. Then, maybe, do some research. Anyone have public data they’ve painstakingly compiled and lovingly maintained that you want to share with the field?
Mark, thanks for what you contribute! I remember how helpful you were when I was looking for county data on receipts.
I had my own summary of what’s been going on, but I only had the numbers due to a person inside who did not see the harm in sharing. Historically, I couldn’t get any numbers to be reported consistently.
https://forestpolicypub.com/2025/03/13/history-of-recent-forest-service-employee-numbers-recap-and-context-opportunities-for-learning/
https://forestpolicypub.com/2025/03/10/forest-service-employment-numbers-did-the-fs-add-20-more-perms-in-the-last-two-years/
https://forestpolicypub.com/2025/03/14/has-there-really-been-a-30-decline-in-fs-employment-in-the-last-30-years-as-colorado-congressional-delegation-claims/