Agricultural Conservation: USDA Should Improve Its Methods for Estimating Technical Assistance Costs

United States. Government Accountability Office.

United States. Government Accountability Office.

关键词: Government accountability -- United States.;    agriculture and food;    agricultural conservation;    letter report;   

RP-ID  :  GAO-05-58
RP-ID  :  244891

美国|英语

来源: UNT Digital Library

【 摘 要 】

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), working with state and local partners, provides landowners with technical assistance for multiple programs to plan and implement conservation measures that protect soil, water, and wildlife. For years, the Congress has been seeking detailed cost information on this assistance as it examined USDA budget requests. In part, because NRCS's financial system was not designed for estimating future budgets, in 1998 NRCS began developing additional cost data and a computer model for estimating future technical assistance costs. GAO was asked to (1) review NRCS's technical assistance cost estimates and (2) identify causes of any differences between the estimates and actual costs ultimately reported by NRCS."