NRCS-ARS PARTNERSHIP MANAGEMENT TEAM
PROCESS TO COORDINATE TECHNOLOGY NEEDS OF U.S. AGRICULTURE AND PARTNERED RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
BACKGROUND:
NRCS and ARS have individual missions that come to a common focus in certain areas of endeavor. Where they most strongly interface is in forming science-based technological approaches to the solution of real-world problems or needs related to the sustainable practice of agriculture in the context of natural resources, the natural environment, and society's expectations regarding food and fiber, economics, environment, and quality of life.
The formation of science-based technological approaches and products involves research and development (R&D) and constitutes a critical endeavor that often is very costly and has potential to economically impact society one way or the other depending on how well it is done and how timely it is.
The term "research and development" covers a wide array of activities and approaches of greatly differing scope and resource and time requirements. The sources of agricultural R&D include universities, state experiment stations, and other entities as well as ARS. ARS has funding and a mandate to serve the research needs of NRCS. Certain problems may require expertise not available in ARS, or, at a given time, all of ARS's resources may be fully assigned to high priority R&D when a new project must be commissioned. Under these circumstances, seeking R&D services outside ARS is fully justified.
A primary reason for the formation of the PMT was recognition that the NRCS has a justifiable critical interest in the research of ARS, particularly that encompassed by the Natural Resources and Systems research components. Likewise, ARS has an interest in and a responsibility to understand NRCS and the technical and social issues with which it deals. The fundmental principle upon which the PMT is founded is that within a true partnership, each Agency should be aware of and have an appropriate degree of influence on the policy and work of the other, without controlling the other.
The overriding "raison d'etre" for the PMT is prioritized pursuit and delivery of specific technological knowledge and products needed by the NRCS in the course of serving the natural resource conservation needs of the Nation. The benefit to ARS will be assurance that its research is demonstrably relevant and has positive impact.
Note here that natural resource conservation is inextricably bound up with the practice of agriculture and with any other human use of landscapes, the focus of which is nearly always on some product or benefit other than resource conservation per se. Natural resource conservation measures are generally applied to offset or retard negative impacts on resources or the environment which would otherwise be caused by primary measures applied on the land to produce the desired social or economic benefits. Natural resource conservation measures are systems components. Therefore, while the natural resources research area of ARS is of most direct interest to NRCS needs, the animal and plant science components are of only slightly less interest insofar as their work contributes to farming systems for the production of food and fiber.
The NRCS and the ARS are agencies of nation-wide organization and structure. The NRCS has offices in 2500 agricultural areas of the U.S., and ARS has laboratories in over 100 U.S. locations. The NRCS field offices deal directly with agricultural clientele, and it is at this level that problems and needs in the agricultural sector of the U.S. are encountered and identified.
Some of these problems and needs may be met through the interaction of local entities, such as NRCS and local problem- solving sources including other government agencies, universities, consultants, etc. Some may directly involve ARS scientists. It is the policy of the NRCS and the ARS that problems be solved and needs met at the lowest possible levels of the two organizations and their local governmental and private sector partners and colleagues. However, some problems and needs are appropriately addressed at the national level.
In what follows, the Partnership Management Team recommends interagency policies and procedures to deal with agricultural resource problems and needs. The functions covered by these policies are effectively 1) those of the former SCS Research Needs Committee and 2) a new ?customer' function of helping ARS to assess its national programs for relevance. In the case of the former SCS Research Needs Committee, a new paradigm is to be implemented in that the new approach is designed to facilitate designation and initiation of actual working projects that will yield results and products of specific use to NRCS and its clientele. It is expected that in the course of pursuing these projects, knowledge gaps will be identified that elucidate specific research needs to be addressed at more fundamental levels and that these specific needs will be transmitted to the U.S. agricultural research community, including ARS units and national program managers. The new ?relevance' function is to be carried out in the context of assessing whether ARS national programs are appropriately addressing the knowledge gaps uncovered in the search for new and improved technology that will contribute toward NRCS meeting its mission goals.
In what follows, the term "need" refers to problems, opportunities, lack of information, procedures, or tools, and other issues faced by NRCS for which science-based knowledge or other products will enhance its ability to satisfy. "Project" means research and development project undertaken to address a specific need. "Products" are the results of such projects, whether they be tangible or intangible.
The ultimate beneficiary of the science-enhanced services of NRCS will be landowners, growers, and the public. Thus, the public is the direct customer of NRCS, and an indirect, but ultimate customer of ARS. The NRCS, although a partner, is also a customer of ARS, a user of its products, in that any specific product supplied NRCS by ARS must meet the former's requirements.
Mission of Project Management:
Facilitate planning and conduct of R&D to, in timely manner, yield needed products for use by NRCS and others.
LOCAL LEVEL:
Projects should be undertaken at the lowest feasible levels of the two agencies. Criteria for determining the appropriateness of local level approaches include consideration of local availability of resources, the complexity of the project, the uniqueness of the project to the locality, and access to expertise pertinent to the project. Expertise may come from any source. It will often be most economical to approach ARS expertise, in that ARS has its own research budget and may be able to address problems and needs without recourse to searches for outside resources. At their discretion, NRCS local offices are encouraged to contact ARS scientists directly regardless of their location.
The Agencies expect that their personnel will examine potential projects as to whether they should be considered at national scale. If not, ARS scientists and NRCS professionals are encouraged to immediately begin work in partnership to resolve the issue, within the constraints of the two Agencies' policies regarding authorized areas of work, e.g., current approved CRIS documentation must authorize the general area of research required for involved ARS scientists. If this is not the case then the scientists need to consult with the National Program Staff of ARS.
The Agencies request that local groups consult with the PMT if there is doubt about the scope of the proposed project. The Agencies also require that the PMT be kept informed of local projects and their annual progress. The PMT may, if information available to it warrants, request that the parties reexamine the question of whether the problem is local in scope.
The policies of both Agencies require that local projects initiated to solve problems or meet needs be subject to the same processing and standards as national-scale projects discussed below.
PMT MANAGEMENT OF NATIONAL-SCALE RESEARCH
An Executive Secretary reporting to the PMT manages the national- scale process and the PMT office. A professional-level assistant will be provided on a rotating, as needed basis by ARS who will assign scientists to temporary details for periods of time up to one year in duration. A full-time program assistant will also be provided by ARS. The PMT office provided by NRCS will house these people and necessary equipment. Operating funds will be provided on an equal-shares basis by the two Agencies.
The Executive Secretary will be responsible for carrying out or overseeing activities that:
- Maintain database of completed and active projects and of needs for which projects await initiation. The latter, referred to below as "the list", will be kept in two sections, one being the set of 10 highest national priorities, the other being in dated, numbered order as they are received. This list is to be maintained in a form accessible to the public. Interested persons may at their own initiative submit project proposals to address needs anywhere on the list.
Technological needs statements or proposed projects, when submitted, must be accompanied by an initial study report (ISR), in conformance with good systems engineering practice.
- Preliminary processing of new needs or proposed projects as they are submitted and adding them to the dated, numbered list.
Preliminary processing includes such activities as assuring that the ISR is attached and apparently sufficient; that a proposed project is not redundant to projects already completed, currently active, or on the list; and conducting or commissioning searches for existing technology to resolve the issue represented by a stated need or project proposal. Communication may take place with the proposers, and, finally, where appropriate, the statement of need or proposed project is entered into the list.
- Periodically reprioritizing the list, giving due regard to the current political and social climate and to needs and proposed projects newly added to the list since the last prioritization.
The purpose of this activity is to assure that the PMT is ready to respond with appropriate recommendations when resources become available for undertaking new projects. It involves a number of subtasks and activities and is described in greater detail below.
This activity is to assure that the PMT is in readiness to rapidly respond to Agency management requests and Congressional and other queries. Technical and scientific reviews are the general responsibility of the Agencies. The PMT review is a management-level review and is partially in the context of providing early warning should a project appear to be going off track or stalled. One of the issues here is accountability on the part of the contractor. Projects, including locally managed projects, are required to submit minimal progress reports at completion of certain milestones or annually as appropriate and are subject to other review at the discretion of the PMT. The mechanism set in place here is specifically to avoid becoming an onerous reporting burden.
- Writing annual reports and briefing papers and reports as required by the Agencies.
To the extent that the routine parts of the above tasks can be performed in the Executive Secretary's office, they should be. However, prioritization of needs and proposed projects, recommendation of sources of R&D services, and management reviews require inputs from a cross-section of interests and expertise.
Among the above tasks, a critical function is prioritization, which is a word that refers to activities necessary to assuring that appropriate R&D responses are made to the most important NRCS (and public) needs as balanced against availability of the expertise and funding resources needed to address them. Thus, for example, a meritorious project proposal speaking to a stated need in the list could affect the priority accorded to responding to that need.
The means of accomplishing prioritization is through use of a standing prioritization committee consisting of a broad cross- section of interests and backgrounds, e.g., stakeholders from a spectrum covering social to physical backgrounds, but able to view issues from a high level. The prioritization committee is to be composed of Federal agency personnel capable of representing the range of interests. The chair and committee members will be rotated on a staggered three-year basis.
The prioritization committee has two assignments:
1) Based on its broad, cross-sectional background, it gives needs in the list their priority standing and recommends same to the PMT.
The committee determines its own procedures for assigning priorities, but is expected to consider such criteria as:
2) It also serves to give priority guidelines through the PMT to ARS national program management in the development of long and short range project plans, ranging from the very applied to the very basic.
ARS's new approach to national program management of lines of research has been implemented specifically to enhance both its relevance and its productivity. These priority guidelines will be valuable to ARS program managers at all levels.
The role of the prioritization committee is shown in the attached figure. Note that its role is that of staff to the PMT and that the latter's role is that of staff to an ARS Associate Deputy Administrator and to a NRCS Deputy Chief.
The prioritization committee is supplemented by ad hoc technical subcommittees. One is appointed for each need to be addressed. Members are drawn from among scientists and research administrators of the disciplines needed. Each technical subcommittee is responsible for technical oversight of all aspects of the various projects. The technical remain active for the life of each project, although membership may change as necessary.
If new projects are to be funded, one or more potential R&D groups (e.g., ARS, academe, etc.) are asked to develop proposals for projects to meet the need to be funded. The first choice for an "R&D group" is ARS scientists on the basis that they are already funded.
An ad hoc technical subcommittee is comprised of scientists and/or scientific administrators who are technically qualified in the disciplines associated with a specific need. Its lifetime is the same as that of the project it helps to get implemented to meet its specific need. Membership may be constant or may change over the life of the project.
One purpose is to suggest sources of research and to give technical and merit review to proposals, projects, and plans. When there is more than one proposal to review in connection with a need, these subcommittees also express their sense of the priority of one proposal relative to other proposals. The issue here is not limited to competition for scientific merit. The issue is identifying the group most likely to produce a needed product that meets user requirements as well as providing a science-based solution to a need.
As stated earlier, the principle source of research is ARS, but there may be a question of which group of scientists to whom to assign a project. If, for whatever reason, ARS is not the appropriate research supplier for a specific need, then the ad hoc subcommittee should recommend one or more alternative sources. In either event, project proposals, if not already in hand, are to be solicited. A subcommittee then reviews the proposal(s) for merit and relevance, then recommends an action to the prioritization committee.
After a project is underway, the prioritization committee may call upon the subcommittee to conduct project reviews for primarily management purposes, as discussed above. However, at their own discretion, ARS and NRCS may also wish to ask the subcommittee to organise and conduct in-depth reviews of projects.
Ad hoc subcommittees, as asked by the PMT or prioritization committees, will also give technical review to long and short term goals and approaches of ARS national research programs and give a sense of whether these program groups have addressed higher priority needs of their involved disciplines.
The results of the ad hoc subcommittees' activities are fed back to the prioritization committee. The latter considers the results of the reviews and makes recommendations to the PMT. To repeat, these recommendations address five aspects of R&D:
As shown in the attached figure, three levels of staff constitute the PMT with regard to prioritization. Thus, all the output of each level of staff constitutes recommendations to the next higher level. It is the policy of the PMT that each level of staff that disagrees with a recommendation from the next lower level will inform that level and will justify its judgement.
A comment noted that some of the products to be developed in response to needs will be software. It was suggested that the PMT develop and recommend a software policy to include deciding to develop a model and certain common requirements or standards to be met by the software.
A comment noted that PMT will need to establish a form or areas that must be included in the ISR.
A comment requested flow or organizational diagrams for 1)a typical need submission through the entire process to delivery of a product and 2) the organization of ARS and NRCS all the way from the deputies to the research bench or field office levels of the Agencies.
A comment noted that the needs list is likely to have perenially lower priority needs and there should to be a mechanism to eventually bring deserving needs to the top.
Dr. James Bonta, of the ARS North Appalachian Experimental Watershed, Coshocton, has selected as a middle management development project, organization of the Executive Secretary's Office. The above requests along with other implementation details will be addressed by him in consultation with Lee Herndon and Dick Amerman who have agreed to mentor Dr. Bonta.