Making the Technical Service Provider Process Work

Remarks by Bruce I. Knight, Chief Natural Resources Conservation Service,
at the NRCS Technical Service Provider Coordinator Conference, Washington, DC,
June 18, 2003

Good morning. It is a pleasure for me to be here with you today as we discuss the final preparations for the Technical Service Provider process.

It has been more than a year now since the 2002 farm bill became law, and NRCS has been working hard that entire time to create a workable system for engaging non-Federal Technical Service providers in the business of making conservation work for America’s farmers and ranchers. The Technical Service Provider process will allow us to do more for farmers and ranchers and the natural resources of our nation than we have ever been able to do before.

The next task, and one we will be discussing here at length, is how to function as the intermediary between providers and producers to make the system work smoothly for everyone.
We now have in place an efficient and effective way of allowing qualified experts from private sector, non-profit sector, and State and local government sources to provide cost-effective conservation assistance to landowners.

The Technical Service Provider process should actually strengthen the partnership between NRCS and the States, partners, professional associations, Tribes, and others who will be providing the service.

At the same time, capitalizing on non-Federal experts to provide conservation assistance will allow USDA to concentrate on those aspects of conservation assistance that are inherently governmental. USDA employees will have plenty to do helping landowners, working with technical service providers, and making sure the resources get where they need to be.

The emphasis, of course, is to make it possible for State agencies and other partners to provide additional services, not to replace existing state-funded activities with Federal dollars.

And we owe the existence of the Technical Service Provider process to the efforts of those of you in this room and many others who helped put the process together.

I especially want to thank the State and Regional coordinators and others in the field offices for all you have done to recruit potential Technical Service Providers, assist them in getting IDs and passwords, help them through the application process, point them to sources of training when their credentials fell a bit short, and all the other things you have done to help get the Technical Service Provider process going. We couldn’t have done it without you.

I would also like to thank Rick Swenson and the Technical Service Provider Steering committee -- both from NRCS and FSA – for providing a workable framework for our efforts through their nine pillars of the technical service provider process -- most of which are included in the process as it now stands.

I will talk about the nine pillars in some detail in a few minutes -- they are an important part of the Technical Service Provider process as we are now implementing it. But first, I want to finish thanking the people who did so much to get us where we are today.

Melissa Hammond and the Technical Service Provider team have worked so hard over the last year and a half. You have done an amazing job of getting this system in place -- a job that at times has taken dogged termination to pull off and at other times taken unwarranted optimism.

Thanks also to Wendall Oaks and all the IT folks who put together the innovative and cutting edge TechReg system. I am amazed every time I sign on.

The TechReg site is a wonderful example of e-government at its best. Through it, we have a great tool that service providers can use to apply for certification, NRCS can use in the certification process, and producers can use to locate providers. It is a very impressive system, and you developed it in record time.

I would also like to thank the Economics Team for all they have done to develop the not-to-exceed rates. Developing these rates has been quite a process, and they are one of the final pieces completing the puzzle we have been working on.

We will need to remain flexible to make adjustments needed for the success of Technical Service Providers as a dynamic, market-driven system.

Finally, I would like to thank the hundreds of employees in all parts of NRCS who have played a part in one or more of the many aspects of developing the Technical Service Provider process.


Technical Service Providers and the Farm Bill

I would like to talk for a couple of minutes about the Technical Service Provider process as it relates to the new farm bill. The technical service provider process is one of the key provisions of the 2002 farm bill.

The farm bill created a tremendous workload for NRCS, and the temptation would be to hire hundreds or even thousands of additional employees to get the job done. The Technical Service Provider process gives us another way – a healthier way – a way that is consistent with keeping government small and keeping functions that are available commercially from becoming part of the Federal government.


Through Technical Service Providers, we can give landowners the help they need to reach their conservation goals -- at a market-determined price and without increasing the size of the Federal government.

It is true that the farm bill authorizes USDA to provide technical assistance through technical service providers. But the most important feature of the new law is that it sets up the mechanism for paying for this assistance.

In addition, the magnitude of the farm bill requires that we rely heavily on such providers. Accomplishing the technical and administrative workload of the farm bill will take hard work by USDA employees, our traditional partners, and many others. More than that, getting the job done will require lots of outside help. That is why we are using the Technical Service Provider process to build an industry of certified professionals to help us get the job done.

The goal of the technical service provider process is to use private sector, non-profit, and public agency resources to help get the job done.

Technical service providers will be important because they will expand our capabilities well beyond what we can do ourselves. They will not replace NRCS employees.

The listening sessions NRCS conducted across the country last spring, combined with many meetings with stakeholder groups, helped us find out what producers and providers want from a technical service provider process. Comments from producers and potential service providers really helped produce a workable rule for the Technical Service Provider process.

Now, we not only have a rule, but we also have memorandums of understanding in place to allow members of many professional organizations to be Technical Service providers.

Thanks to your recruiting efforts, we also have just over 700 certified Technical Service Providers in the data base, with hundreds more waiting for certification. And we have the data needed to determine the not-to-exceed rates. All the parts are in place for an effective Technical Service Provider system.


The Nine Pillars

We started out a year ago trying to build a system based on the nine pillars developed by the Steering Committee. Let’s look at how we stand with regard to the nine pillars:

First, we have a system in which providers meet NRCS Standards. We recognized from the beginning that, in order for the Technical Service Provider process to work, farmers and ranchers needed to know that their providers were just as qualified as the NRCS employees most of them have been working with.

At the same time, we need to recognize that there are many ways to become an expert, and that many potential providers from our partner organizations and from the provider community as a whole have come to be experts by different routes.

We must be flexible enough to recognize expertise where it exists, and not force all providers through a narrow, cookie-cutter approach to certification.

Second, we are using existing systems for payments, quality assurance, and other aspects of the Technical Service Provider process to the maximum extent possible.

Third, States have the flexibility to control the mix of public and private sector technical assistance they use. Where we have appropriate partnerships in place, we can rely more on cooperative agreements. Where more of our providers are from the private sector, we can rely more on contracts. This flexibility is good for everyone.

Our challenge is to grow a private sector provider industry. With the proven record of the people in this room, I know we will meet this challenge.

Fourth, we have developed a flexible approach that allows us to use Federal contracting as appropriate. This outcome was a bit of a surprise, because many people, including the Steering Committee and me, among others, had assumed that Federal contracting would be a cumbersome solution to obtaining services from Technical Service Providers.

Over the past year, we have come to see that we have the expertise within NRCS to use Federal contracting in ways that are both flexible and efficient.

Fifth, we thought originally that we would have the States use existing certification processes to develop lists of approved vendors. As things turned out, the Technical Service Provider rule specifies a national certification process. Despite being overruled on this, we are making this work, and the certification process seems to be working quite well.

Sixth, we are in the process of developing a measurement and accountability system that will measure and monitor the use as well as the performance of providers and create little or no increase in NRCS field staff data entry time.

We do not have the measurement system fully in place yet, but we are well on the way. The Progress Reporting System allows providers to enter their own progress data on-line, which keeps the progress reporting from adding to NRCS staff time.

Seventh, we will use existing systems to resolve disputes. Eighth, we decided to make great investment up front in a) training NRCS staff on all available mechanisms, b) creating a strong base of Technical Service Providers, and c) developing technology and technological tools.

We could regard this week’s session as one of the first major training sessions leading up to implementation of the Technical Service Provider process. We are getting ready to conduct training nationwide to make sure NRCS employees can make the Technical Service Provider process work.

Certainly we have a strong base of Technical Service Providers -- and it is getting stronger every day as more providers apply for and receive certification.

And we have made major steps in developing the technology that will be needed to make this system work, in terms of certification, progress reporting, and availability of technical information.

Finally, we are maintaining the traditional roles of the NRCS and FSA delivery systems.

The Steering Committee did a great job of putting a framework around our efforts to develop the Technical Service Provider process, and that framework has served us well all along.

We have a lot to do in the next couple of days – getting all of you ready to go back to your States and regions to continue your leadership roles down the home stretch of developing this process and for the long haul of making it work over the months and years to come.

I am confident that by the time we are done here this week you will be well equipped to meet the upcoming challenges, including:

• Continuing to provide leadership in our customer service effort to help providers and producers set up their USDA accounts.

• Continuing your recruiting efforts, so that we have a large pool of partners and individual providers available to help get conservation done on the ground. It is important that we have strong partnerships operating under good cooperative agreements, and that we have a good supply of private sector providers as well.

• Continuing to help potential providers through the application process. This includes doing everything we can to move providers quickly from the pending column to the certified column.

• Helping your states set and post their not-to-exceed rates as quickly as possible, so we can begin using Technical Service Providers by the middle of next month.

• Encouraging producers to use technical service providers. These providers are a good resource for producers and they will help the producers complete their contracts in a timely manner.

• Helping your offices get contracts out, so the work can begin.

• Spending all your earmarked Technical Service Provider funds and asking for more.

• And, finally, assisting providers with the progress reporting process. We are creating a whole new industry of Technical Service Providers -- a multi million dollar industry – and we will be held accountable for how well this industry serves farmers, ranchers, and all taxpayers. We simply have to have good records.

That is quite a list of responsibilities for you to take on when you get back to your States and regions. I know you will be able to fulfill these responsibilities – but only if we get on with today’s business.

After all, your ability to put this Technical Service Provider process together right is the only thing standing between your fellow employees and a steady stream of 12-hour days and 7-day work weeks to implement the 2002 farm bill.

That is what it would take to make the farm bill investment without Technical Service Providers.

We are all depending on you.