1. NRSFIA Management Team Manhattan, Kansas December 10-11, 2018

2. FIA Strategic Plan * All lands vision * 11 Farm Bill mandates
Leveraging the power of the grid
* 11 Farm Bill mandates
Fully Annual (AK)
Urban
Carbon/Biomass
Reevaluate the Core
TPO
Cooperation/Support
Partnering (analysis and IM)
Remote Sensing
Land-use Change
NWOS
Better estimates for smaller areas
This is the focus of the next 10 year Charter

3. FIA Strategic Plan Farm Bill Funding Options A: Status Quo
B: Recovery and Add Interior AK
C: Enhance and Expand the Core
D: Speed and Unify the Cycle
E: Enhance and Expand Partnerships
F: Leveraged Partner Intensifications
Funding Options presented in Plan
Initially new Farm Bill funding will be focused on Options A & B, while making in roads on C and E
Advances across all options nationally but with regional differences in emphasis

4. National FIA Pushes Supportive of All; Responsible for Some
Urban FIA
Carbon Accounting
National Woodland Owners Survey
Timber Product Output
Land Use/Cover Change Monitoring
Digital Community Engagement
Small Area Estimation
Nationally progress on all; regional emphasis varies; Farm Bill option a,b,c,e, all pushes have a national lead or unit; first 2 took most of 2016 funding increase;
Making opportunistic advances in all by Unit, but nationally we can say progress in all
Urban Mark’s update; i-tree landscape more than urban/ fia more than rural; i-tree 100k users/FIA 100k users…maintain/build market share collectively; leveraging external partnerships; redesign db; power of one; Davey tree partnership.
Carbon is us; can empirical fia data improve replace models now; continuous improvement
NWOS plus industrial & timo/reits (SRS), urban (Austin and Baltimore), public option, all landowners survey (likely partner NASS);start 2018;reportig 2013; annualize, link to plots; intensify/customize/science modules; urban test; pretest corp;
TPO sampling theory but also social science support on the form and improving response.; data collection partners; utz too.
All lands approach (ICE image based change estimation,and Urban first logical expansions…all land, all veg, all carbon, all the time), combine with FIA estimate, temporal acceleration to update plot lag; into NIMS; change greenbook for one tool & single estimate.
Digital engagement, a rethink of science/FIA delivery, leveraging the ESRI partnership; delivery and cloud computing; transition meet and surpass old, line of custody back to fundamental FIADB data/authenticated source, learning new technologies (Python/fortran/oracle, Microsoft, Arc, etc) best skill sets and organizational mix
Small area estimation; better statistical precision at sub-state levels, alternatives to more plots; take advantage of ancillary data (remote sensed or ground)

5. Enhance Delivery of the Base Program
Partnerships
Got us here; critical to getting us there
New Technology
Gizmos, Gadgets, and Glitz
More Techniques Research
Faster, Better, Cheaper
Increased Analytical Capability
Making Hay.
Education
Training, Tools, and Touting

6. FIA Charter FIA mission on-going for 88 years.
National Strategic Plan provides path and focus
Still room for continuous improvement and innovation
Expedite
Enhance
Economize
Expand
Explore
A team was created to re-write and condense the existing 18 page FIA charter to a more concise thought towards the future, connecting back to the Farm Bill and the Strategic Plan. This same team is in the process of creating a Strategic document which will detail the “how”, this will be our internal document. Right now, the new Charter is in the Washington Office waiting for signature from National FIA Leadership. After the signed comes back, the Station Director will sign and final signature will be the new (since mid-November) Deputy Chief for R/D Alexander Friend. Alex Friend is somewhat familiar with FIA having been before the North Central/Northeast merger, a research scientist and Research Work Unit Project Leader for the old North Central Station. He has been Station Director of the Pacific Southwest Station for about 6 years. He has already planned to be more engaged with the Research Station Directors. We also have a new UnderSecretary for Natural Resources/Environment

7. FIA Budget Situation
We are flat
**Dollars in millions

8. Reporting Reducing Pub Costs Standard Templates <layout $$
Printing Costs
page and copy limits
Fewer Pubs
i.e. Plains States Report
Push to Digital
business analytics
ESRI story maps
minimize hard copies
Goal: less paper and use of more technology
A mandate came from the Department about reducing printing costs of publications and maps. Moving to more digital and the use of more standardized regional or national templates will significantly reduce those costs. This would also apply to publications that are not annual/5 year reports. The station’s pub shop has also set a limit with an option of InDesign which means if you wanted more than there is the ability to print on your own from the online version. I believe each state analysts has started to ask their states how many publications they would like. Sue Crocker may address this later in her presentation. Bottom line is that the days of having as many pubs as want is disappearing and there will be tough realistic discussions occurring between you and the state analyst.

9. Smart websites/tools/apps
Interpretive
Interactive
Topical
Spatial
Visual
Graphical
Contextual
Temporal
Dynamic
Examples of digital content and delivery (external and internal). Sue Crocker will speak more on this in her presentation and we’l
Opportunity to see more later.

10. HR Updates Hiring Challenges HR Portal OneUSDA 2210 Reorganization PD Standardization
Beginning in 2017, we had a hiring freeze which made it difficult for us to approval and to hire, the summer of 2017 the Department let up some restrictions by allowing hiring for certain positions such as fire. A hiring mechanism was created called the HR Portal but sadly no one received instruction on how to access the database to even enter positions into it there is still a semi-restriction based on the station budget versus FIA with a budget. Now, the portal will remain for some time.
In January 2018, the Secretary put forth his vision for a “OneUSDA” meaning all USDA employees were to act as one team to put the needs of customers first. As the Forest Service, we still have our mission, the FS shield but our s will transition to usda.gov rather than fs.fed.
As part of the OneUSDA consolidation, employees originally placed in the 2210 (IT Specialists) series were put on a positions list eligible for realignment under the Dept CIO. The focus was amongst other improve customer experiences, seek efficiencies. Originally, FIA had 27 employees on the list (one person decided to go to the CIO leaving 26); we were successful in justifying a new reclassification for those 26 positions. The justification used was to show that our 2210s were not conducting CIO work, but using technology in order to collect, store, compile, analyze and publish forestry knowledge, support science delivery. FIA’s mission is to provide information and knowledge of our Nations Forests to the NFS, state & private forest owners and the tax payers.   The CIO is not in the business of hiring knowledgably foresters to provide the service that R&D and FIA's DATAMGRs provide.  It was a quick turn around to ensure everything was processed by last Tuesday with effective date of 12/23. The process was lot of locating, reading position descriptions and getting them to the Classification folks, some were very easy while other position descriptions had to be re-written and reclassified.
PD Standardization will begin early 2019, the aim of this project to start standardizing while it won’t affect any existing positions descriptions, will make it easier for a new positions