Keeping the Public Trust:
A New Era of Accountability

Remarks by Bruce I. Knight, Chief, Natural Resources Conservation Service at the National Association of Conservation Districts Conservation Partnership State Leaders’ Meeting
Orlando, FL
February 9, 2003

Thank you, for the invitation to be here today.  I am excited to be here for my first NACD Annual Meeting.  I have heard that there is some interest in hearing about my vision for the future of NRCS.  My answer to that is that you will have to wait, because that’s what I’m going to talk about on Tuesday.

Today, I want to talk more specifically about some of the things that I think those of us in the conservation partnership will have to do differently in the future, both because of the farm bill and because of a number of Presidential initiatives designed to improve management in the Federal government.  I know you are interested in the Federal budget, so I will save a few minutes at the end of my remarks for that.

THE CONSERVATION PARTNERSHIP
NRCS, NACD, and the conservation districts have had a very comfortable relationship for decades.  We were partners from the beginning, and we retain a special bond.  The formal agreements between the districts, governors, and the Secretary provide a framework for local conservation activities.  This relationship is unique, and has produced great results for private land conservation over the years.

We made the partnership more inclusive in the last decade, by expanding it to include NASCA and the National Association of RC&D Councils, and have embraced the Conservation District Employee Association.  And we have many other partners and stakeholders at the national and local levels, including local communities, various State and Federal agencies, NRCS Earth Team volunteers, agricultural and environmental groups, professional societies, universities, conservation organizations, agribusiness, and others.

Outsiders looking in sometimes find it hard to figure out exactly how the partnership works.  The roles of each of the four formal partners are quite different, as are the roles of all of the informal partners and stakeholders.

KEEPING THE PUBLIC TRUST
As we invest the Federal dollars and search for ways to leverage them, we can expect many of our old partners to become more involved.  We can also expect contributions from many new partners.  It is only natural that more partners making more contributions will mean greater expectations for fairness and openness.  Partners should expect nothing less.

The Congress has placed great trust in NRCS to handle the massive farm bill investment.  And they will expect greater accountability.  We will have to work with our partners to document the accomplishments coming out of the Federal investment.  That will require better planning, budgeting, and reporting, both within NRCS and partner organizations.

Over the past four years, NRCS has invested in the development of an Integrated Accountability System to provide our leadership more timely budget and performance information.  You have played a key role in developing the foundation piece of that system — the Conservation Partnership Workload Analysis.  So, I recognize that accountability has also been a priority for you.

We opened our Performance Results Measurement System so that the efforts of our district and state partners could be recorded.  We also added features to allow all our employees to record, not just the time spent on federal programs, but on state and local programs, too.

There are some areas, however, where improvement is needed.  Over the past few years, USDA has been in the spotlight for shortcomings in delivering programs to minority farmers.  The Department is working hard to correct those shortcomings and expects all its agencies and all the partners of the agencies to do their part.  Wherever the Federal dollar goes, there also goes the responsibility for fair and equal treatment of all potential customers or clients.  Every organization in the partnership, either formal or informal, at the national level or the local, simply has to understand this and live up to it.

The bigger the pot of money and the greater the involvement of partners, the more scrutiny we can expect from the news media and other watchdog organizations, both nationally and locally.  More money can produce more controversy, and the combination of money and controversy produces more public interest.  The Inspector General’s Office has made it clear that they follow the money, so we can be assured that there will be more external oversight.  What we must do is make whatever adjustments are needed to be sure our deliberations and our decisions are open, fair, and proper.

I’ve heard that public relations experts ask their clients if their decisions and their actions can pass the “60 Minutes test.”  In other words, do you want to be on camera with Mike Wallace explaining your position? 

In the old days, agencies would sometimes ask themselves if their actions had the potential for winning one of Senator William Proxmire’s Golden Fleece Awards.  If you remember the Golden Fleece, it was not good for anyone’s image to get one.  Proxmire presented his last Golden Fleece award in 1988.  But in 2000, a group called Taxpayers for Common Sense brought it back.

In the 70s and 80s, Proxmire gave USDA a few Golden Fleece Awards:  For studying how long it takes to fix breakfast, for putting pregnant pigs on a treadmill to reduce their stress, for trying to find out what kind of people are vegetarians, for studying the food preferences of Social Security recipients, and for having a contest to come up with an employee song.

Thank goodness none of these were for conservation on private lands!  I’m not saying any or all of these were dumb ideas, but the Golden Fleece made them look dumb.

Today, all of us in the partnership have great pride in how we have conducted ourselves and what we have done for conservation.  Our job now is to handle our increased responsibilities in such away that we can look back two or twenty years from now with the same pride.

THE PRESIDENT’S MANAGEMENT AGENDA
President Bush has asked all Federal agencies, including NRCS, to do several things that will point us in the right direction -- toward better service and greater accountability.  There are five parts to the President Management Agenda.

First is strategic management of human capital.  We can expect significant changes in our workforce over the next few years.  For one thing, about 25 percent of our field force is within 5 years of retirement eligibility.  We need to fill the leadership vacuum that these retirements will cause.

Second is competitive sourcing.  Our workload is increasing because of the farm bill.  That means we will be looking at our costs and, in some cases, finding commercial services that can do some of the work we now do.  Look for increased competition for fee-for service work.  It also means some of our own employees will be required to compete with commercial sources for jobs.

Third, we will be looking for ways to improve our financial performance.  We will look for ways to better track payments and improve the accuracy and timeliness of our financial information. 

Fourth, we will be expanding the use of electronic government.  We already have a number of e-government successes, including e-forms, the Electronic Field Office Technical Guide, the Customer Service Toolkit, the Integrated Accountability System, TechReg, and others.

Here at the NACD annual Meeting, we are demonstrating a number of e-government features, including the internet-based registry for technical service providers and the new “Thunderbook” that lets users download information from the Field Office Technical Guide onto their laptop computers for use in the field.

We have also redesigned the NRCS web site to better serve both our partners and customers.  This spring, we will extend that redesign to our Region, State, Center, and Institute web sites.

And fifth, we will improve our budget and performance integration.  We are just starting the process of redoing our strategic plan to tie our performance firmly to each program and authority, the Administration’s agricultural policy, and the President’s Management Agenda.

We will also be improving our performance measures to distinguish the unique contribution of each program toward meeting our strategic outcomes.  Our strategic planning effort is scheduled to be completed by early 2004, with an interim revision due April 1, 2003.

AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT

To live up to the growing expectations of the administration and the Congress, we will need to improve some of the ways NRCS works with – and keeps track of its work with – all of its partners.  Among other things, we will need more rigorous cooperative agreements, renegotiated more frequently, and more Requests For Proposals – that is a more formal process for cooperative ventures that involve public funds.

In addition, we have to make the Technical Service Provider process work, with good quality control and fair prices.  The Technical Service Provider process alone will add a couple dozen new partners to the partnership.  Because of our experience working together, it falls on the traditional members of the partnership to be the leaders in making the adjustments to the new responsibilities we all have.

I am confident that we can work together to operate in ways that are fully accountable for the public trust, and I look forward to maintaining our close relationships.

BUDGET
I promised to talk a bit about the budget.

But, before we talk about the budget proposals, let’s put it all in context.  First of all, the economy is stalling and revenues are decreasing.  Deficits are increasing.  Second, as a nation, we are in a war on terrorism.  Third, authorization versus appropriations:  authorization, which is what the farm bill is, works a lot like what the sale barn publishes in my local newspaper.  As anyone in the cattle business knows, that number is always inflated and doesn’t really reflect the total sales.

Now, for the 2003 budget.  As you may have read in the papers, the 2003 Federal is still a work in progress.  President Bush submitted amendments to his 2003 budget request just after the first of the year.  The Senate then passed an omnibus budget bill.  Senate and House conferees are working to come up with a bill that both Houses of Congress can agree on.  In fact, staff are working on this issue as we speak.

One of the things the President wanted to accomplish in his budget amendment was to provide support for technical assistance needed to implement the farm bill conservation programs.  As important, the amendment proposed to resolve the technical assistance on a permanent basis.

The President’s 2004 budget request continues this trend.  It includes a record $3.9 billion for conservation programs.  That is more than half a billion over the 2003 level.  The President’s 2004 proposal also includes a technical assistance account to implement farm bill conservation programs.  Creation of the technical assistance account would resolve the long-standing confusion regarding the policy for use of programs funds.  This would simplify management of program funds, and help ensure fund integrity and accountability.

The amounts in the 2004 budget request for NRCS are available on the Internet, so I will just stress that the President’s request demonstrates his full support for conservation on private lands.

I’ve been telling producers all over the country that we have the opportunity to help make the largest investment in conservation on private lands in history.  I’ve also called the coming decade the “Next Golden Age of Conservation.”  The funding contained in Presidents budget proposal will keep us moving on schedule into that Golden Age.

Thank you.