29April96 Benchmark Notes Date: Mon, 29 Apr 1996 15:22:18 -0400 Message-Id: <199604291922.PAA18055@igsrsparc4.er.usgs.GOV> X-Sender: benchmrk@opsmail.er.usgs.gov Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: "USGS Employees" From: " benchmark, Reston, VA " (Benchmark) Subject: 29April96 Benchmark Notes X-Mailer: Theme Coordination - Update Some six months ago, I was pleased to be able to notify you of my selections of the new theme coordinators, Roz Helz - hazards, Jan Hren - environment, Lee Case - natural resources, and Greg Snyder - information management. Since that time they have talked with many of you throughout the country and are well along in coming up to speed in their new jobs. They've told me, however, that some of you may still have questions about their roles and responsibilities. For this reason, I'd like to provide you with some background on each of them, share information about some of their specific activities, and clarify what I see as their principal roles and responsibilities. But first, I'd like to begin by reiterating the basic purpose for utilizing the concept of themes and provide some basic definitions of each. These crosscutting themes are a way of integrating our diverse expertise and communicating the complexity of what we do to the outside world. They also help us to focus our expertise on broad and complex problems and solutions that directly affect public welfare. Further, they enable us to build strong, multidisciplinary teams that can form combinations with other public and private organizations, leveraging our resources to produce results that are greater than the sum of our individual efforts. They are a way of clustering programmatic activity and resources across division and other organizational boundaries. Their strength can be seen by the fact that the planned October 1 addition of the National Biological Service to our organization will not require a new theme; the biological resources of our Nation are a part of the Natural Resources, Environment, and Information Management themes that are already in place. In effect, these themes describe almost all that we do far better than do the names of our three program divisions or some of the line item titles in our budget. Finally, they define in the simplest of terms our relevance for the American public. How Are the Themes Defined? The four theme areas have been defined specifically as follows: Hazards Hazards are unpreventable natural events that, by their nature, may expose our Nation's population to the risk of death or injury and may damage or destroy private property, societal infrastructure, and agricultural or other developed land. USGS activities in the hazards theme area deal with describing, documenting, and understanding natural hazards and their risks. These activities include investigating basic processes and mechanisms, long-term monitoring and forecasting, short-term prediction, real-time monitoring and communication with civil authorities and others during a crisis. Other significant activities include post-crisis analysis with scenario formulation to develop strategies to mitigate the impact of future events and preparation of coordinated risk assessments for regions vulnerable to natural hazards. Environment. Our Nation's environment--the air, water, soil, and biota--is constantly changing as both natural processes and human activities affect it. Our work in the environment theme area includes studies of natural processes and of the results of human actions. The goal is to provide an understanding and the scientific information needed to recognize and mitigate adverse impacts and to sustain the environment. Activities include data collection, long-term assessments of status and trends, ecosystem analysis, predictive modeling, and process research on the occurrence, distribution, transport, and fate of contaminants. Natural Resources. The natural resources of our Nation are its land, biota, water, minerals, and energy. These renewable and nonrenewable resources are needed to sustain life and to maintain and enhance our economic strength. USGS activities in the natural resources theme area inventory the occurrence and assess the quantity and quality of natural resources. Activities also include monitoring changes in or to natural resources, understanding the processes that form and affect them, and forecasting changes that may be expected in the future. Information Management. Information management is both a strategy, driven by customer needs, and an infrastructure, shaped by rapidly evolving technology, for handling and distributing both information and analyses thereof. Information management crosses disciplinary and administrative boundaries. USGS information management activities shape and organize earth science and organizational information and deliver it to internal and external customers. The activities include development of standards and innovative products, data integration, and exchange and maintenance of electronic information. Fundamental USGS earth-science data and information systems are multipurpose in nature, national or global in extent, and of long-term benefit to society. Who Makes Up the Current Crop of Theme Coordinators? For those of you who may not know our theme coordinators - Roz Helz joined the USGS in 1968 in the Geologic Division to undertake laboratory-based work on problems in Hawaiian volcanology. In addition to her studies on Hawaiian volcanoes, she has worked on the Stillwater Ultramafic Complex in Montana, and on the basalts of the Columbia Plateau, Washington. Much of her career has been in Reston, but Roz also spent a year in Menlo Park in the early 1980s, a year as a visiting scientist at the University of Manchester, England, and a cumulative total of a year's time at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, in a series of shorter visits. She holds degrees from Stanford (B.Sc., 1965) and Penn State (M.Sc., 1968; Ph.D., 1978). Janet Hren has 17 years of experience with the USGS, starting in 1979 as a hydrologist with WRD's Ohio District office. There she served as project chief of a variety of surface- and ground-water quality studies, including statistical analyses of large water-quality data bases. In 1988 she transferred to Menlo Park where she was the Hazardous Wastes studies coordinator for WRD's Western Region, providing technical coordination for the Toxic Substances Hydrology program, the DOI National Irrigation Water Quality Program, and the Department of Defense Environmental Contamination program. She holds both B.Sc.(Kent State University) and M.Sc. degrees (University of Akron, Ohio) in biology. Lee Case joined the USGS in 1973 as a hydrologist in WRD's Louisiana District office. In 1978 he became chief of the Rapid City, SD, Subdistrict office and was project chief of the South Dakota parts of both the Northern Great Plains and the High Plains Regional Aquifer System Analysis projects. He transferred to Albuquerque, NM, in 1981 as chief of the Hydrologic Investigations Section. For the past 8 years, Lee has served as District Chief for Utah. He holds a B.S. in geological sciences from the University of Texas at Austin, and an M.S. in geology from Oklahoma State University. Prior to joining USGS in 1991, Greg Snyder worked for 8 years in photogrammetric mapping and systems development for the Coast and Geodetic Survey, NOAA. Since joining USGS, Greg has worked in NMD, first as USGS liaison to EPA's National Geographic Information Systems Program, during which time he was the project coordinator for the joint FGDC/EPA Manual of Federal Geographic Data Products, and later as project manager for a national user evaluation of NMD cartographic products. Greg holds a B.A. in physical geography from the University of Oregon and an M.S. in mapping science from Ohio State University's Department of Geodetic Science and Surveying. What Do Our Theme Coordinators Do? The principal roles and responsibilities of the theme coordinators fall in four areas. (1) Strategic Planning: The theme coordinators will work with division program managers in the implementation of the Bureau strategic plan. (2) Program Planning and Development: The theme coordinators will help identify opportunities for improved collaboration between existing programs and for addressing important issues more efficiently. New programs may have to be developed in order to address emerging issues; this can occur through development of new budget initiatives and/or through redirecting or refocusing of as much as 5 percent of existing program resources (see my February 1995 Benchmark Note at URL http://www.usgs.gov:8888/bm_notes/21feb95.html for a fuller discussion). (3) Coordination: The theme coordinators will identify opportunities for, and impediments to, increased interdivisional coordination and collaboration. (4) Communication: The theme coordinators represent the USGS on various committees at both Bureau and Department levels, as well as at various technical and public meetings. They have already accomplished a great deal. Some of their recent activities include working with groups of bureau scientists to develop the six FY 1997 programmatic budget initiatives, and setting up initiative implementation teams. This past December, the coordinators represented the USGS and contributed to the development of the NBS research science plan. As I mentioned in last month's Benchmark note, they organized and convened (in February), the first-ever bureau-wide meeting of program managers. At this meeting, future program directions, opportunities for inter- and intra-division collaboration, and some proposed FY 1998 program initiatives were discussed. Our coordinators have represented the bureau on numerous (perhaps they'd say too numerous, if you were to ask them) committees ranging from those that were technically specific to those that were called by Presidential Order. They have coordinated program briefings for Department and Congressional staffers. They have met and visited with many of you (including all three Regional offices, the Oregon District Office, the Cascades Volcano Observatory, and the EROS Data Center). To facilitate communication, the Office of Program Planning and Coordination has established a World Wide Web home page (http://www.usgs.gov/themes) that contains information on theme coordinator activities and updates. The theme coordinators have also established a regular schedule of meetings with me and other members of the Office of the Director to enable them to provide direct feedback. To be most effective in their jobs they need to be kept constantly informed of significant project-related accomplishments (yours). Please feel free to contact them directly with your comments, updates, concerns or questions. They may be reached as follows: Hazards: Rosalind Helz (703) 648-6749 rhelz@usgs.gov Environment: Jan Hren (703) 648-4480 jhren@usgs.gov Natural Resources: Lee Case (703) 648-4489 hlcase@usgs.gov Information Management: Greg Snyder (703) 648-4133 gsnyder@usgs.gov or, you may write to them at: USGS National Center, MS 107 Reston VA 22092. Gordie