College students around the country have by now completed that annual springtime ritual known as 'cramming for finals.’ But students at such institutions as Little Priest Tribal College in Winnebago, Neb., Sitting Bull College in Fort Yates, N.D., and White Earth Tribal and Community College in Mahnomen, Minn., were able to be more 'high-tech’ in their end-of-year studies because of the efforts of a team of USDA employees.

That team refurbished surplus USDA computers and then arranged to have them shipped to Tribal Colleges and Universities, or TCUs, around the country.

It was part of a USDA project titled “PCs for TCUs.” Ken Kessler, a management analyst in the Office of the Chief Financial Officer, served as its project leader.

The project originated in December 1999 when OCFO was to donate several surplus OCFO computers to some public schools on American Indian reservations. “Then we found out about the White House Initiative on Tribal Colleges and Universities,” he said. “One of its purposes is to respond to a critical shortage of reliable, Y2K-compliant computers at TCUs across the country.”

“So USDA developed a project to take our surplus USDA computers, refurbish them, make contact with officials at Tribal Colleges and Universities, and offer to donate our refurbished computers to interested schools.”

USDA has a history of donating surplus computers to educational institutions in need. In fact, in his “Secretary’s Column” in the September 1996 USDA News, Secretary Dan Glickman pointed out the Department’s participation in yet another effort at “recycling its extra computers” by donating 150 in the Kentucky Highlands, the Mississippi Mid-Delta, and the Rio Grande Valley in Texas. The October 1997 USDA News carried a story about how employees stationed in Europe donated surplus computers to the agriculture facility at the University of Sarajevo in Bosnia. And USDA is currently participating in a “Computers for Learning” program which streamlines the transfer of excess and surplus federal computer equipment to schools and other non-profit organizations.

“But the difference in this latest USDA initiative,” Kessler noted, “is in the destination of our surplus computers: all to TCUs.”

“In addition,” he added, “of the various federal departments involved in providing surplus computers to TCUs, to my knowledge USDA is the only department which is making a point of cleaning and repairing its computers before donating them to the schools.”

To get USDA’s project started, in March he put together a team which included Rural Development computer specialists Cedric Bragg and Beverly Washington-Hazel as technical team leaders. The National Agricultural Statistics Service provided five computer specialists.

Under Secretary for Research, Education and Economics Miley Gonzalez sent a memorandum to all USDA agencies, inviting them to participate in the 'PCs for TCUs’ project. Kessler then followed up by contacting all agency-level chief information officers.

Washington-Hazel described the approach that the team used in refurbishing each computer. “Generally we blew out the dust, checked the keyboard and the mouse, cleaned the units up, made certain they were Y2K-compliant, ensured that no data were stored in the computers, and tested to ensure each PC was fully functional,” she explained. “And then,” Bragg emphasized, “we ultimately found a home for each of them.”

Actually, 'finding a home’ had its complications. “We needed to find an equitable way to distribute our refurbished computers--and we needed a private sector group to help us accomplish that,” Kessler advised. So the American Indian Higher Education Consortium served that purpose.

Kessler soon received constructive feedback from an official with that group, who wrote “in the past, computers have been donated by various government entities and, once received by the [Tribal] colleges, were found to [be] of poor quality and useless. We want to ensure that our experience with USDA in this regard is a positive one that builds on our relationship with the Department and does not produce unwanted problems.”

According to Garet Moravec, a NASS telecommunications engineer and chair of USDA’s American Indian Council, Kessler reached out to his organization for assistance. “We did some brainstorming in the American Indian Council,” Moravec recounted. “We all wanted to make sure that USDA was setting standards and was giving something of quality to the Tribal schools--and it did.”

The second complication involved shipping the computers to the TCUs. “The government is not allowed, by law, to pay shipping costs for a project like this,” Kessler advised. “And private sector shippers would charge $100 in shipping costs per computer--which the TCUs simply couldn’t afford.”

But, working with Earl Brittingham, chief of the Landover Service Center with the Office of Operations in Landover, Md., and his staff, Kessler found out that it was legal to use a government bill of lading to ship the computers--and that would cost the schools only about $25 per computer.

“Then we worked out a system with the American Indian Higher Education Consortium in which it would pay for the shipments up front but would ultimately be reimbursed by the schools,” Kessler related. ”So neither USDA nor the taxpayers were paying for the shipment of USDA’s surplus computers.”

The “PCs for TCUs” project formally ended on June 2. “Through this project we provided over 450 such computers to 24 TCUs in nine states,” he affirmed.

And have the team members received any feedback from the recipient schools?

“At one college there used to be only two personal computers in each dorm,” Kessler recounted. “But now there are 10 per dorm--so the students no longer have to stay up until 2 a.m., merely to get access to a computer so they can complete their course work.” 

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