One thing about being old is that you’ve seen a great many initiatives come and go.. and hopefully we learn from some of those experiences.
However, the Secretary’s memo (covered yesterday) with no ROs.. was way out of the normal range of “things to do.” Three regions has been around for awhile, most notably during the Transformation effort (developed by FS employees).
The only thing I could figure was that it was a bargaining chip with Congress so they would settle for three. As far as I can tell from my look at the National Performance Review (I was comparing USDA ideas from then to the memo) at the time USDA thought that Congress would have to agree to such reorganization plans.
Aside: I read in the NPR documents about a combo of agencies in USDA, later I was part of a completely different combo of agencies (CSRS and ES, then CSREES and now NIFA) so I don’t really understand where Congress fits in all this.
Anyway, come to find out through the Rumor Mill that the FS wasn’t involved at all in these ideas and heard about the memo at the same time as the public. To which I would say that makes total sense with “no RO’s” being so far outside the bounds of the previously considered. Plus there seemed to be a lack of clarity, as I pointed out, between what Stations do (administer research) and what Labs do (research). If I were the Admin, I’d find the author(s) of this memo and banish them forthwith, for giving the impression that the whole front office of USDA is clueless. Or maybe this is a trick by a DOI mole at USDA to make the FS want to leave and join INT? Just kidding, I think.
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In the comments, I’d appreciate if there were no presumed intentions here, nor generalized diatribes against the current Admin. I’d like TSW to be a place that even Admin folks can be without generalized diatribes and especially thinking we know anyone’s intentions (hospitality for everyone).
Because any Admin has disagreements within, as well as disagreements with Congressfolk, and Congressfolk of one party disagree with each other as well. So it may be some kind of random process by which certain people’s ideas meet with success on certain issues.
This Admin has some good and some bad ideas, as well as some totally out to lunch ideas. Hopefully if they are reading this, we can help them distinguish the really, really bad ones before the ideas get ripped apart by their own Congressfolk (as well as the standard “everything they do is bad” groups).
This is not really accurate. As I recall the agency looked at multiple scenarios last year, including ones that included NO regions and consolidated regions to deal with the budget crisis resulting from the previous administration telling them to spend all Ira funds in 2 years. Most of the rfs, Stations, and DCs were called in by chief for a series of big scenario and budget meetings to address. That was all before this current admin – my guess is that is they may have looked at that. I heard that this was even talked about at an outside first products meeting last year from folks who had talked with some RFs.
Thanks so much A… I wish some documents would find their way into my possession about this so we could discuss.
Did the previous Admin “tell them to spend all IRA funds in two years”? Has anyone else heard this?
Many things I don’t get.. but how could getting rid of regions (long-term, finding new jobs for people, etc.) help the short-term budget problem (evidenced by “no temporaries”)? I wish someone knowledgeable about how this all went down would contact us..