Natural Resources Conservation Service

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) is the lead agency responsible for conserving and protecting natural resources on private lands, which constitute about 75 percent of all acreage in the contiguous United States. NRCS' $1 billion budget funds various technical and financial assistance programs to help farmers, ranchers, other landowners, and communities conserve and protect soil, water, and related resources. NRCS has nearly 11,000 employees who work with individuals and communities to develop conservation plans and apply conservation or resource management practices on the land. The agency has not been successful in gathering and analyzing information from these county offices to provide a comprehensive picture of its activities and accomplishments. As a result, Congress, NRCS staff, and others have questioned the agency's accountability for how it spends its funds and what it has accomplished. In 1988, the head of NRCC called for a new agencywide effort to improve accountability by providing better information and resources and analyses on how the agency uses its resources and what it achieves with its funds. This report (1) describes the agency's new approach and the status of its implementation and (2) assesses the extent to which the approach will improve accountability.

GAO noted that: (1) NRCS' new approach to improving accountability is based principally on implementing the requirements of the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 and establishing four new databases to compile better information on the: (a) agency's accomplishments; (b) full cost of programs and activities; (c) workload at the local level; and (d) future workforce needs; (2) in addition, NRCS' Oversight and Evaluation staff, who conduct reviews to assess quality, accountability, effectiveness, and consistency in the agency's delivery of conservation assistance, is an important part of the agency's approach; (3) NRCS plans to use the information from its new databases to measure its progress towards meeting its strategic objectives, more accurately account for staff time and funding, analyze workload to develop budget proposals, and estimate future staffing levels and skills needs; (4) NRCS has prepared agencywide strategic and annual performance plans, as part of Department of Agriculture's strategic and annual performance plans, which were submitted to the President and Congress; (5) its state offices have also begun developing annual performance and business plans; (6) the agency has also used its performance goals to guide its allocation of fiscal year 2000 funds to its state offices; (7) equally important, NRCS has largely completed the databases and begun using some of the information for agency decisionmaking and reporting on its performance; (8) if implemented as planned, NRCS' approach is likely to improve accountability by providing better information and analyses on how the agency uses its resources and what it accomplishes; (9) the agency could better integrate the financial management function and the accountability approach; (10) unless the agency more accurately accounts for its costs, it will continue to lack the financial information needed for internal decisionmaking and for external reports to Congress and other stakeholders that demonstrate NRCS is implementing its programs cost effectively; (11) with respect to planning, the agency could make its annual performance goals more results-oriented and better indicate progress made during the fiscal year toward achieving its strategic objectives; and (12) NRCS' Oversight and Evaluation staff--who provide an important internal review of the effectiveness and efficiency of the agency's programs, activities, and operations--could be more independent if it were to report directly to the Chief or Associate Chief of NRCS, rather than to one of the managers subject to review by the group.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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