New Survey Manual Chapter on Assessments From: "Alice A Sabatini, Administrative Officer, Reston, VA" (Alice Sabatini) Message-Id: <9702101639.ZM14435@foasqvarsa.er.usgs.gov> Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 16:39:56 -0500 X-Mailer: Z-Mail (3.2.1 10oct95) To: "A - Division Chief and Staff", "AO - All Administrative Officers", "B - Branch Chiefs and Offices", "DC - All District Chiefs" Subject: New Survey Manual Chapter on Assessments Cc: "Kelly L Bradley, Chief, FORS, Reston, VA" Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Barb Ryan signed the new survey manual chapter on assessments on February 10, 1997 (Survey Manual Chapter 501.1 USGS Assessment System). The chapter has been sent to the printer and will be distributed hard copy through normal channels soon. For those of you that are anxious to see the final policy, a copy can be retrieved via the internet by accessing the Office of Program Support's home page at URL: http://www.usgs.gov:8888/usgs-manual/500/501-1.html WRD's assessment implementation team, the Program Officers and the Headquarters staff in Operations are hard at work developing procedures and supplemental policy guidance necessary for our implementation at the start of FY 1998. We anticipate that most of this policy will be issued by the end of April, 1998. We hope to be able to communicate the new combined division and bureau rate (to be applied to all funds) by the end of March to be effective at the start of FY 1998. Because of the short time frame, it is very possible that the policy will be implemented for FY 1998 with very little internal review. We know that this is not the most desirable of options and will attempt to issue draft guidance for review, but the turn around time will be very short. We suspect that time will require that we go forward with implementation of the draft policy during FY 1998, with an opportunity for change for FY 1999. Even with the best of circumstances, I am quite sure that there will be some things that we will want to change based on experience gained while implementing the policy during FY 1998. As you can imagine, we have much work yet to do and not a lot of time in which to do it. I have no doubt that your initial reading of the new chapter will bring to mind many questions. The answers to many of these questions are presently being developed by the implementation team. Please hold your questions until the end of April. We hope that they will all be answered in the division supplements to the Survey Manual.