This Fund Is A First
"We're trying to develop 'inventors' in our agency who can help us all provide better service to our customers--and now we've got a fund set up to aid in that effort."

Peter Kant was describing an internal "venture capital fund" which the Food and Nutrition Service established on October 1. Money in the fund is designed to help implement--agency-wide--such creative and innovative, employee-developed 'good government-type' initiatives. Kant, FNS executive quality manager, heads up the effort to encourage those initiatives within FNS.

He explained that in January 1999 FNS began an effort titled "Leadership 2000 and Beyond." "It focuses on such workplace tools as Total Quality Management or TQM, customer service, professional development, and employee-led innovations," he explained, "to help us manage our workload better while improving programs and service delivery."

That last item, "employee-led innovations," is the goal of a program contained within the overall umbrella of "Leadership 2000 and Beyond," and is called "License to Improve."

"Under 'License to Improve' we ask FNS employees to come up with ideas that address an urgent challenge within the agency, improve customer service, deliver quality programs, achieve measurable results, demonstrate a cross-functional approach to problem-solving, and have a positive effect on employees," Kant noted.

"A unique benefit to the 'License to Improve' program," he added, "is that if an employee comes up with an idea which meets those criteria, then he/she is empowered to work with his/her supervisor to implement that idea in his/her own FNS office, without further review or approval by senior officials."

But FNS then went one step further. "Sometimes an employee comes up with an idea that not only works in that employee's own office, but would benefit the agency as a whole if it were implemented across-the-board, agency-wide," Kant pointed out.

So, under the mantle of its "Leadership 2000 and Beyond" effort, FNS established an internal venture capital fund to help implement those ideas agency-wide. He noted that costs that might be associated with that implementation, such as printing documents, computer equipment or software, and travel, would be paid for from this fund. "To the best of my knowledge, this is the first and only fund like this in USDA," he affirmed.

FNS also set up an Innovations Board, composed of seven employees from its headquarters, region, and field offices, to review those "License to Improve" projects that have been submitted for consideration for implementation agency-wide.

Patricia Dombroski, chief of FNS's New York City Office and member of the Innovations Board, said that the seven-member Innovations Board has held two informal conference call meetings thus far this fiscal year, and then is scheduled to hold its first official monthly meeting in late November.

"It is scheduled to review 17 submissions," she recounted. The submissions came from teams of FNS employees in such locations as Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Concord, N.H., Denver, Robbinsville, N.J., and San Francisco.

Rebecca Martinez, FNS food stamp program specialist in the agency's regional office in Denver and the union partner to the Innovations Board, added that the proposals submitted dealt with such issues as translating FNS food stamp retailer guides into Korean and Spanish, for use by grocery store owners who handle food stamps; creating community liaisons of FNS employees to work with school officials to more easily administer FNS's Summer Food Service Program; and publishing, on the USDA home page, proposed changes to FNS regulations for review and comment right on the home page.

FNS quality coordinators Cecilia Fitzgerald and Jeff Greenfield, who staff the "Leadership 2000 and Beyond" effort, will notify those employees of the status of their submissions.

"FNS employees now have an unprecedented opportunity to markedly build upon our previous level of service, so as to serve our customers even better," Kant emphasized.

--Martha Newton

Inspectors & PCs: It's A Match
USDA employees around the country may take it for granted that they rely on personal computers and/or laptops in their offices to carry out their component of USDA's mission. But meat, poultry, and egg products inspectors in the Food Safety and Inspection Service have been a work force that traditionally has not used computers.

So that's why it was significant when FSIS recently completed the nationwide implementation of its "Field Automation and Information Management" initiative, or FAIM, by delivering a PC to David Hatch, an inspector at a meat plant in Cedar City, Utah, during the first week in October.

"We're not referring to him as the 'last inspector' to receive a computer at a work station, because this is now an ongoing effort," affirmed Peter Kuhmerker, director of FSIS's FAIM Division.

Hatch's computer was one of more than 4,000 that have been delivered to FSIS employees--to include meat and poultry inspectors, egg products inspectors, circuit supervisors, import inspectors, and compliance officers--in federally inspected meat and poultry plants nationwide. In addition, 5,500 FSIS employees have been trained to use the computers and associated software applications as part of the agency's FAIM initiative.

Now that he is back in his office in Lawrence, Kan., after having conducted a compliance review at a local meat distribution facility, and now that he has removed his standard-issue freezer coat and hard hat, FSIS compliance officer Steven Deines is entering findings from his compliance review, by plugging into his newly-acquired laptop--compliments of FSIS’s “FAIM” initiative. --Photo by Randy Robertson

Kuhmerker said the initiative began in 1996 "to enhance productivity, quality, and service for both inspection and administrative processes which our employees conduct in federally inspected establishments."

So, in addition to receiving 4,000+ computers nationwide, FSIS employees were provided four days of computer training at the FSIS Training Center, affiliated with Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas. Jan Leder, an FSIS supervisory veterinary medical officer based in West Point, Miss., was one of the participants in the training.

"We've used the computers to access various USDA web sites and to assist us with HACCP implementation and training," he said. "HACCP," or "Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points," is the new, science-based inspection system FSIS implemented in meat and poultry plants nationwide.

Marcia Endersby, an FSIS supervisory veterinary medical officer based in Guymon, Okla., noted that examples of FAIM's benefits to FSIS inspectors include giving them faster access to laboratory results from testing tissue samples taken from meat and poultry carcasses, in order to detect excessive levels of chemicals in those carcasses. "Previously," she said, "those lab results would take five to seven days to reach the inspector, but now they are communicated overnight by e-mail, and inspectors and managers can access them on their office computers, the next day."

Endersby added that under FAIM, inspectors now have immediate access to FSIS technical references, directives, manuals, and over 100 electronic forms. This has eliminated the need for inspectors to file and search through thousands of paper documents.

Plus, they are able to perform electronic text retrieval. "This enables them to search for specific text and phrases related to meat and poultry inspection," Leder said.

FAIM has not only benefited FSIS's inspectors, but state-employed inspectors as well. In the past 20 months, 73 percent of state meat and poultry inspectors have begun participation in the FAIM program. Specifically, 1,000 FAIM computers have been delivered to state inspection programs, and 1,000 state inspectors have received training at the FSIS Training Center in College Station.

According to Kuhmerker, state inspectors have the same hardware, software, training, telecommunications, and technical support as do FSIS inspectors. "This is contributing to a more uniform nationwide meat and poultry inspection program," he emphasized.

Part of the success of FSIS's FAIM initiative is due to a 'onestop phone number' known as FAIMHELP. This toll-free phone number is staffed by the same contract personnel who are instructors at the FSIS training center.

"The FAIMHELP office is open 16 hours a day, five days a week," noted Kuhmerker. "Through FAIMHELP we can assist both FSIS inspectors and state-employed inspectors with nearly any problem--hardware, software, telecommunications, and maintenance." He added that inspectors can also request assistance through e-mail or fax.

"We were committed to making our FAIM initiative a success, plus bringing it in on schedule," Kuhmerker underscored. "And we did."

--Shashunga Clayton

ARS's Cool MOOves
It's fire-engine red, with a line of cows sporting sunglasses and mooing about how "UDDERLY AWESOME" agricultural research is. This is definitely not your typical government product.

"It" is a combination book cover and poster that staffers with the Agricultural Research Service recently developed to promote the value of agricultural research in general and ARS's own agricultural research in particular.

The brainchild of ARS public affairs specialist Dianne Odland and ARS graphics designer Andrea Krieg, the outside of the 13" by 24" document, which features 11 cows in various expressive stages of gossipy animation, doubles as a book cover--generally for middle school students--and a poster for teachers. The inside explains how ag research relates to everyday life and features "Research AG-tivities," which are numerous ideas for class projects, from developing an agricultural careers booklet to planning an Earth Day exhibit that shows how agricultural research helps the environment.

Odland, who initiated the idea for the book cover and developed the content, directs some of ARS's outreach activities. "On behalf of ARS, each year I exhibit at several major student/teacher conferences--from K through 12 plus at the college level--and I'm always looking for unique ideas to communicate the importance of ARS's agricultural research," she explained. "Helping kids realize that ARS research is exciting and cool--not dry and academic--is also part of my goal."

Hence the cows.

It seems like everybody wants to take a picture of the “UDDERLY AWESOME” book covers that ARS’s Monica Williams (left) is displaying to a student attendee at the recent FFA conference in Louisville, Ky. --Photo by Dianne Odland

Krieg is the one who made the cows come alive. "The concepts started coming together with the priceless expressions of the gossiping cows on the book cover," she recounted. "But there was also a lot of detailed, technical computer work to translate those ideas into a design on paper."

At the end of October Odland and ARS outreach assistant Monica Williams traveled to Louisville, Ky., to attend the annual conference of FFA (formerly called the Future Farmers of America), for the first distribution of ARS's new book cover. They affirmed that the book covers were a big hit there.

"Lots of conference handouts end up in the trash before the event is over," Williams advised. "But we knew we had a winner when the teachers started asking for bulk copies to accommodate each student in their classes, and the students wanted extra copies for their friends."

"FFA advisors even asked for copies to use as prizes in the dairy judging contest."

Odland emphasized that promoting ag literacy is an important component of outreach. "Many kids, and even some adults, think that food comes from the grocery store as the point of origin," she observed. "They have no clue of the production, processing, marketing, and distribution steps, in both the food and fiber system--let alone the research involved."

"So, through products such as this book cover and our Sci4Kids web site at http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/kids we hope to increase awareness and help kids realize that our ag research is wired right into their everyday lives."

--Heidi Bowers