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Attachment One 



STRATEGIC PLANNING, PRIORITY SETTING 

 AND RESPONSE TO CHANGING NEEDS: 



The State Agricultural Experiment Stations(SAESs) and the Cooperative State Research 

 Service (CSRS) have made functional use of national level strategic planning since 1984 as 

 a means of developing budget proposals and redirecting resources. TTie Experiment Station 

 Committee on Organization and Policy (ESCOP), which represents the SAESs at the 

 national level, along with its Federal partner, develop a major revision of their strategic 

 research plan every four years. In intervening years, the plan is revised and updated as 

 necessary to meet changing needs and to provide input to the USDA Joint Council on Food 

 and Agricultural Sciences. 



The plan is based on state and regional input from the SAESs as well as advice from a wide 

 array of users of the product of research in the system. This includes national organizations 

 representing all segments of agriculture £uid agribusiness and environmental and consumer 

 groups, among others. Input is also sought from the professional and scientific societies 

 representing agricultirral and related scientists at the national level. A series of annual 

 "customer conferences" is conducted to augment written input to the planning process. In 

 these conferences, elected representatives and executives of various national organizations 

 offer advice on needs zuid opportunities for research. In addition, input is developed fi-om 

 a national conference held every four years in Washington on agricultural research policy, 

 where decision makers provide broad strategic guidance. Developing the ESCOP-CSRS 

 plan involves active participation by all parts of the USDA Science and Education 

 community. Representatives of these agencies attend the drafting workshop and contribute 

 directly to the genesis of the document. Members of the faculty of CSRS are directly 

 involved in generating the document. The ESCOP Planning Coimnittee initiates action on 

 the four-year update about two years before its publication. It becomes very active in 

 developing the revision for a year in advance of its publication. 



The revision of the document actually occurs in a major workshop that involves both 

 administrators and senior scientists representing the broad array of scientific and 

 programmatic interests and responsibilities of the SAES-CSRS complex. About one- 

 hundred participants divide themselves into subconmiittees that address the six major 

 components of the plan. They consider the several hundred specific inputs from the users 

 of the research product and develop a set of broad initiatives which define the highest 

 priority needs for new information and technology. They also define for each initiative a 

 set of research objectives that are needed to achieve the prescribed goals. There is also an 

 assessment of the resources required to fully implement the recommendations for each 

 research objective. 



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