01/23/06 F.S.A. moving forward from the bottom

01/23/06 F.S.A. moving forward from the bottom

The groundwork to move past last year's "F.S.A. Tomorrow" debacle, and move U.S.D.A.'s Farm Service Agency forward in a way that will streamline operations and improve efficiencies in county offices is underway. Earlier this month, F.S.A. Executive Director Theresa Lasseter sent a memo to State Executive Directors asking for their input on this matter. LASSETER: We've asked our state directors to look at their states, see how they're organized, and how they're operating, and how workload has shifted, and to develop a plan, along with their state committee men, to submit to Washington, and let us see if this would be a better operating plan for each state. Now compared to the previous dictate of "F.S.A. Tomorrow", which called for closure or consolidation of over 700 county offices nationwide, and which received criticism for its lack of across the board input, Lasseter says this is a process that should be inclusive, and that should meet the needs of individual states. LASSETER: What we really need to recognize is that there is no one size fits all for F.S.A. & that every state is different. And there is no one who knows the state better than those state directors, and state committee men, and farmers and ranchers and stakeholders in those states, along with the employees. Now that does not mean there will not be some county office closures when this latest process is complete. However, F.S.A. does not have a target number as before. And in the meantime, state Executive Directors will be busy developing their plans. The new F.S.A. Assistant Director for Farm Services Larry Adams, a former State Executive Director in Ohio, says the plans will be driven not just by input, but by available dollars and getting the most bang for the buck. ADAMS: We're trying to stretch those dollars as best we can and those are the battles that the county executive directors and the county committees are struggling with across the U.S. We are all trying to do more with less, and it's a challenge but I'm sure that our people are up to the challenge and will get the job done. Adams says, as states continue their work on plans, F.S.A. on the federal level will focus on upgrading its outdated computer systems. ADAMS: We're a service agency so we want to make sure that the services that we're delivering to producers are carried out in a timely manner, and in order to do that, we need to make sure that the computer systems and the software that we are using works in a timely fashion. And all of us that have had any dealings with computers know that computers can be difficult to deal with.
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