Publications Sounding Board Newsgroup

To: "E  - All WRD Employees"<distribution>
cc: "Dorothy M Woods, Secretary (AO), Reston, VA" <dmwoods>
Subject: Publications Sounding Board Newsgroup
From: "Lewis Wade, ACH/Water Information, Reston, VA" <lwade>
Date: Thu, 20 Nov 1997 16:49:14 -0500


In Reply Refer To:				
Mail Stop 439

						November 19, 1997


				MEMORANDUM
	

To:		Water Resources Division Employees

From:		Lewis V. Wade (signed)
		Assistant Chief Hydrologist for Water Information

Subject:  	Publications Sounding Board Newsgroup

In response to customer concerns about the timeliness of our products, 
the Water Resources Division (WRD) has initiated several changes in the 
area of reports processing, the most significant being the Chief 
Hydrologist's delegation of report approval authority to the Regional 
Hydrologists.  These changes were made to streamline the reports approval 
process and to improve timeliness of our products. With these changes 
came a responsibility to each of us to ensure and maintain the quality of 
our products.  To that end, the Office of Water Information (OWI) was 
tasked with providing oversight and guidance to each office in the WRD 
that produces information products and with providing the WRD Senior 
Staff with an annual assessment of reports quality.  A Reports 
Stewardship Team (Team) has been chartered to help with these activities. 
Both the Team and I would like to have your suggestions, opinions, or 
concerns regarding reports-related activities to help us develop guidance 
for WRD information products.

An electronic "sounding board" newsgroup--usgs.wrd-pubs-issues--has been 
created to solicit your thoughts, questions, or concerns on the global 
issues associated with reports production in the WRD, including policy, 
standards and guidelines, use of nontraditional media to distribute 
information (such as compact discs and home pages accessed through the 
Internet), and so forth. The newsgroup will be regularly monitored by OWI 
staff.  Questions that are posted in the newsgroup will be responded to 
within 5 days, and the responses will be posted in the newsgroup.  Those 
issues that cannot be immediately responded to will be addressed by the 
Team at their next regularly scheduled meeting.  For instructions on how 
to access and use the new newsgroup in the WRD bulletin board Network 
News (NetNews), please see the following URL address:

	<http://wwwqvarsa.er.usgs.gov/netnews/netnews_help.html>.

For further assistance or help, please send email to netnews_help.

The Regional Reports Specialists are and should continue to be the 
principal contacts for expressing concerns and opinions that are specific 
to a report or product and for dealing with questions of technical 
content, editorial guidelines, cartographic standards, organization and 
layout, and policy.  The Regional Reports Specialists will categorize and 
tabulate your questions and provide a quarterly report to the Team that 
describes the scope and frequency of questions they have received.

The Reports Stewardship Team and I strongly encourage you to use these 
two avenues to ask questions and voice opinions or concerns.  Whether you 
choose to communicate directly with a Regional Reports Specialist or use 
the newsgroup, your ideas will receive prompt attention. A summary of 
your ideas and concerns from both the Regional Reports Specialists and 
the "sounding board" will be included in the annual report to the Senior 
Staff on reports quality.  Your participation in this open exchange of 
ideas will further strengthen our ability as an agency to meet our 
customers' needs for high-quality reports on time and to provide timely 
dissemination of information to the public.