National Leadership Forum Transcript

Hosted by Director Kathleen Clarke

**\
A Telecast Originating**

**from the**

**BLM National Training Center in Phoenix, Arizona**

**June 15, 2005**

This transcript is from the closed-captioning file produced during the
telecast.

It may contain errors and omissions in transcription.

Announcer: The Bureau of Land Management satellite network presents live
from the BLM National Training Center in Phoenix, Arizona: The National
Leadership Forum, an interactive meeting on BLM\'s future. And now your
moderator, Tony Garrett.

T. Garrett: Good morning and welcome to BLM\'s National Leadership
Forum. This is the first meeting of its kind for the Bureau. Today\'s
forum is a unique opportunity for all BLM leadership to be part of an
interactive meeting. State and Center leadership teams along with
Washington Office managers are participating today, and throughout this
forum we\'ll welcome your questions, comments and ideas. With us to lead
this discussion is BLM Director Kathleen Clarke. Good morning, Kathleen.

Dir. Clarke: Good morning, Tony. It\'s great to be here with all of you
this morning. I think this is one of the most important activities we
have undertaken at the BLM and we have some key objectives for today\'s
meeting. The first is to provide BLM leadership with a clear, consistent
message on BLM priorities. The second is to consider today\'s
inescapable realities and challenges. And the third is to initiate a
dialogue within the leadership teams to explore innovation and develop
strategies for the future. This is a unique opportunity for all of us to
help prepare BLM for the road ahead.

T. Garrett: Thank you, Kathleen. Also with us this morning is Larry
Benna, BLM\'s deputy Director. Greetings, Larry.

L. Benna: Good morning to all members of the state leadership teams with
us this morning. I think this is an excellent opportunity for us to
really face and identify the challenges we\'re going to be facing and
I\'m extremely excited we\'ll be in a position to really started to do
something about them right now. So thanks for having us, Tony.

T. Garrett: And joining us live from Washington D.C., Secretary of the
Interior Gale Norton and Assistant Director of the Interior for Land and
Minerals Management, Rebecca Watson. Good morning to both of you from
Phoenix.

Thanks.

T. Garrett: Following your presentations, the Secretary and Assistant
Secretary will be taking questions from the field. So we\'ll look
forward to hearing from you in a few minutes. Right now let\'s turn
first to Assistant Secretary Rebecca Watson.

Asst. Secty. Watson: Hello. Thank you for taking part in this important
forum. I understand it\'s been more than 10 years since top managers at
BLM have convened. As you know, a lot has changed since then, both
within and outside of the department. Two changes are particularly
significant, demographic growth in the west is springing urbanization
and new challenges to the lands managed by BLM and BLM\'s top management
is close to retirement. We need to be thinking critically about the
future. I\'d first like to express my sincere thanks for the
contributions you have already made over these past few years as we\'ve
worked to meet increasingly difficult challenges.

When we say BLM must strike the right balance in order to provide for
multiple uses, we don\'t always acknowledge that it is you who make this
happen on the ground by the actions you take every single day. Your
charge at BLM is difficult, to provide a fair hearing to all sides, to
balance myriad multiple uses, both in today\'s context and against a
future you can scarcely imagine in order to steward the public\'s
natural resources. This is tough, especially in times of increased
workloads, decreased staffs, and limited budgets. I was struck by
something I read in \"high country news\" this very morning about BLM\'s
management challenges in Moab managing some 2 million visitors on 1.8
million acres with two law enforcement officers. A local news editor
said, \"the national parks don\'t have this problem. People know you
don\'t go to a park and then tear it up. So how does the BLM get that
kind of respect for the land it manages?\" You truly have one of the
most difficult jobs in government today. My hat\'s off to you.

Today we\'re calling on you to think strategically to help develop new
ways to lead BLM into a future where public land demands will be even
more complex. This will take creativity, for sure, but let\'s face it,
it will take a lot of hard work as well. To start this off, I\'m very
happy to have the honor of introducing Interior Secretary Gale Norton.
She has a keen interest in the BLM as many of Interior\'s top priorities
are directly related to the work that you are doing. So please welcome
the Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton.

Secty. Norton: Thanks very much, Rebecca. It\'s great to be able to join
all of you this morning, and especially the fact that technology can
allow us to be together across so many miles of space. It really is a
challenge for Interior, of course, that we have so many offices and so
many places, and we don\'t very often have the opportunity to really sit
down and talk about those things that really matter. That\'s what
today\'s conference by satellite allows us to do. I want to begin by
acknowledging some of the great people that you have working for BLM.
You certainly have some outstanding people, and -- in leadership we have
Rebecca Watson, Kathleen Clarke. We also just gave awards for the
department to senior executives who have shown outstanding leadership
and Larry Benna just received one of those awards as well as Kay Lynn
Bennett, State Director for Idaho. So we\'ve got some people who have
been recognized this year as outstanding for the entire department. I
also know we\'ve recognized people in the past, and we have a lot that
is happening in BLM. We also recognize some of the challenges that you
face. We\'re in the process now of starting on the budget for fiscal
year 2007, as well as seeing Congress work on the 2006 budget and making
some adjustments through reprogramming and working to see how we can
economize within this fiscal year\'s budget. I know that for BLM the
budget is always a challenge. You have risen to the occasion with a lot
of creativity.

As I go out in the field and visit BLM sites, I see that you\'ve been
able to accomplish a tremendous amount with the resources that you have
available. I\'d like today to put a national perspective on some of the
issues that you know so well from the way that those work out in the
field. Let me, first of all, talk about cooperative conservation. You
all know that from the very first day I was here in this department I
began talking about the four Cs, communication, consultation and
cooperation in the service of conservation. I also know that every time
somebody stood up in front of an audience to describe the four Cs, they
could usually come up with about three of them, and then they\'d try to
remember what the other one was. Well, we\'ve eventually shortened that.
Today we usually talk about cooperative conservation. We were very, very
pleased that the President last fall issued an executive order on
cooperative conservation, and that really highlights what Bureau of Land
Management and other Interior bureaus have been doing on the ground all
over the country.

I\'ve been so pleased as I\'ve gone out and seen the way in which
you\'ve gotten ranchers and the mountain bikers and the horseback people
and oil and gas people to sit down together and talk about how we can
manage our lands in a way that tries to meet that multiple use kind of
approach that really tries to get everybody together to come up with a
good plan for our lands. Then I know we have the challenge of trying to
carry those things through. But, again, by listening to and involving
the people who live on and work on our lands, we can get the best
perspective. We are planning a White House Conference on cooperative
conservation that will be coming up at the end of August and there are
going to be a number of BLM projects that are going to be highlighted as
a part of this, and this is a way for us to continue getting the word
out. I also want to commend BLM on its leadership role in getting
counties involved in a formal way in the NEPA process. You were the
leaders for the entire federal government on getting that done. I sure
appreciate that.

Let me talk about recreation for a moment, because that is certainly one
of the big issues for BLM. We know that today 22 million people live
within an hour\'s drive of BLM lands. There\'s an example from my home
state of Colorado, in the Grand Junction area. In 1979 there were 61,000
visitors to the BLM lands. Today there are more than a million visitors
a year. That\'s the kind of tremendous increase in visitor-ship that
we\'re seeing on BLM lands as well as some Fish & Wildlife Service
lands. We don\'t see anywhere else in the department. You all are really
the ones that are seeing the tremendous increase in people wanting to
have active recreation. We know that that is a significant challenge for
your land management. And we want to continue working with you on the
best ideas for being able to manage that. I also want to talk about
energy. From the national perspective again we see a tremendously
growing demand for energy. The President has said we need to address
that, and in his national energy plan conservation is certainly one of
the key aspects of that. We also see renewables, which Rebecca Watson is
going to talk about in a minute. And we see traditional energy sources.
BLM certainly plays a role in pleating those needs for traditional
energy. Again, from the national perspective, we see that the lack of
affordable energy is having a big impact on our economy and our
international competitiveness. We are hearing, for example, I\'ve talked
with leaders in the chemical industry, that industry has lost 90,000
jobs overseas from chemical manufacturing facilities being moved to
places where natural gas may be a 10th the price it is here in the
United States and it\'s a significant factor in the loss of all of those
jobs.

We also see that China\'s economy is growing dramatically. They\'re
starting to enter into agreements with other countries that are the
producing countries like Venezuela and with some of the middle eastern
countries to provide them long-term supplies of natural gas. We are
seeing that the Chinese economy is using more and more energy, and so on
the oil front, we have competition in the world that we never had before
in purchasing oil, and that helps drive the cost up. There was a study
that was done by Goldman SACHS that predicted by about 2041 the Chinese
economy would surpass the size of the U.S. economy. With that kind of
national challenge facing us, the kinds of things you\'re doing on the
ground to try to balance energy production with recreation, with the
quality of life that we want to see, where forest and rangeland
management, all of those things have tremendous implications for
American citizens all across the country, not just in our usual BLM land
areas. So I want to thank you for all that you\'re doing and look
forward to answering some of your questions later. Now I\'d like to turn
things over to Rebecca Watson for a little more in-depth discussion of
some of those issues.

Asst. Secty. Watson: Thanks. I want to talk about a couple of other high
priority national issues that the Bureau of Land Management has been
working on, and one of the top priorities is the healthy forest
initiative. That is one of the top presidential priorities, and it\'s
been a real honor to work on that, and I\'ve been very proud of the work
that the Bureau of Land Management has done. We have led the way not
only in the department but I\'m proud to say also at the department of
agriculture, and what that\'s all about is restoring the health of our
public forests and rangelands, reducing density in the forests and
woodlands that the BLM manages. But it\'s also about protecting the
communities that depend on the public lands for recreation, for the
economy in these rural communities, and it\'s working as partners, as
the Secretary talked about, in the spirit of cooperative conservation.
Again, the Bureau of Land Management has, because of its partnership
relationships that it\'s built up over the years, has been a leader in
developing community fire plans with its surrounding communities. So I
think that we have done an excellent job in that arena, but it\'s
something that we have to keep working on as we use the new funding that
Congress has provided for this project.

There\'s always ever higher goals in planning and actually getting out
and doing the work, and one of the most important tools we were just
given is stewardship contracting. This is a tool that the Forest Service
had for three years on an experimental basis, then Congress gave the
Bureau this tool to use and we have been utilizing it the last couple
years and this year. I have approved 65 contracts using stewardship
contracting. Something everybody out in the field I think is going to be
happy about is we just signed a directive that will give the authority
to approve stewardship contracting down to the State Director level. So
no longer will they have to be approved by me up here in Washington but
you\'ll have that authority out in the field at the State Director
level. We think that will give greater flexibility, greater timeliness
and greater responsibility there at the state level and I know people
are looking forward to that in 2006.

The other area that\'s an important one is in the area of rangeland.
That really is one of the foundation programs of the Bureau of Land
Management and remains very important and fundamental to the Bureau and
to the communities that we serve, and as the west becomes more
urbanized, it\'s the open space land of BLM that is maintained by the
folks that are out there grazing, by our partners that keep private land
ranchers in open space that keep that quality of life that we value in
the west around. So we believe in the role of public lands grazing in
this administration, and we\'re trying to keep it there in a sustainable
fashion. So to that end, we undertook grazing rule reforms and I\'m
pleased to tell you that this week we\'ll be putting out the
environmental impact statement that will support the issuance of a rule
in about 30 days, and we hope and believe that that will bring some
stability to this program. We\'ve kept some important elements of the
early reforms in 1995, the RACs, which we think provide a useful forum
for well-rounded input from around the community, that standards &
guidelines that promote rangeland health, but then we\'ve added some
other features in there that we think bring some certainty to public
land ranchers and to the field managers. So we are looking forward to
the issuance of this rule.

Then I want to just turn briefly to renewable energy. I just got back
from Aberdeen, Scotland with our ombudsman, who many of you may know as
a senior BLM manager. Brenda has been serving as a renewable ombudsman,
has been doing an incredible job operating as an interface between the
renewable energy companies and Department of Interior on overcoming
hurdles to the development of renewable energy. Interior has an
incredible story on renewable energy. We have been developing and
achieving progress with geothermal permits and wind energy, we\'re about
to announce our wind energy programmatic EIS next week, and in a
renewable energy bill caucus meeting that will provide a great forum to
showcase what BLM is doing, and that\'s going to be very exciting, and
then we also had a solar energy policy that we issued in October and a
biomass policy we did together with Department of Energy and Department
of Agriculture. Secretary Norton rolled that out in 2003. So we have
been very active, and we\'ve told this story in Aberdeen, Scotland, to
the world renewable energy conference, and people are amazed an
impressed about what America is doing on its public lands with renewable
energy. They don\'t ever hear that story, but Brenda and I went out
there and made sure they did hear it, and I can\'t tell you about the
excitement that people have about what we\'re doing and the interest,
and they want to know more, and they\'re just astonished, really, about
what\'s happening on public lands in America. So I think you can be very
proud of what you\'re doing. It doesn\'t have a lot of funding to it,
but it\'s got a lot of creativity and a lot of energy and we\'re trying
to get some funding to it to support the geothermal program in
particular and get the permitting out because we think this is part of
the energy picture. It is a prong of it. It\'s part of the president\'s
national energy strategy, so we have been doing a lot of things, as you
can see by my brief description, to support that, and I\'d commend you
to go onto the Department\'s web site and look at our renewable energy
report and get a bigger picture of all the different things we\'ve done.
So it\'s exciting, and that gives you a little bit of a taste of what
you do out there really does matter and it has not just the national
flavor, but as the Secretary highlighted, it\'s an international flavor
as well. So thank you.

T. Garrett: Secretary Norton and Rebecca, we are genuinely grateful for
the time you have taken to be with us today. It really adds to the value
of our conference and really has set the tone for the things we hope to
accomplish. So thank you so much for your time. Are you available to
take some comments or take some questions?

Secty. Norton: Yes, we are.

Dir. Clarke: Great. Tony, do you want to lead that?

T. Garrett: At this point then we\'ll move to our first Q & A segment
and invite our viewers to join in the conversation. The push-to-talk and
video systems are ready and our operators and fax machines are standing
by. So if you have a question or comment for Secretary Norton or
Assistant Secretary Watson, please let us hear from you now.

Caller: This is Mike in Arizona.

T. Garrett: Yes, Mike, go ahead.

Caller: Secretary Norton, in light of our budget issues, BLM\'s
evaluating our core functions, organizational structure and business
practices looking for efficiencies. Are other Interior agencies doing
the same thing?

Secty. Norton: Yes, they certainly are. We have had a lot of discussion
with people about the core functions for our various bureaus. I know
that Park Service has been doing a lot of that, and they\'re finding
some things, for example, ways in which they can share resources between
different areas, and being able to look at the things that are really
the most important. We all tend to get enthused about different
projects, and so \-- get involved in different kinds of things as we go
along, and you do things for 10 or 15 years and realize you\'re doing
activities that may really not be essential to what your real mission
is. So we see that as one important way of making sure that we\'re
prioritizing our resources, and I think what\'s great about that core
function analysis is it is designed to involve people at the on the
ground level so that it\'s not just those of us in Washington looking at
things and saying, \"here\'s what we ought to do,\" but is really
getting people involved in doing their own analysis of what their
activities are and how they\'re spending their time.

T. Garrett: Thank you for that question, Mike. We\'ll stand by for
additional questions from our managers in the field. In the meantime, we
had a question that came up earlier in discussion with the managers out
in the field, and the question was: Employees used to spend more time in
the field interacting with user groups and partners. Now we spend more
time in the office. Current processes and litigation keep specialists in
the office more giving them less time on the ground. I guess the
question would be, is this something other agencies struggle with, and
is there anything that can be done about it?

Secty. Norton: Well, this certainly is something that we know a lot of
Department of Interior people are struggling with, and we have been, in
fact just this morning, I was talking with Lynn Scarlet about some work
we\'re trying to do with the council on environmental quality to see
when do we really needed to do NEPA analysis? I know we\'ve already
developed some categorical exclusions and we want to see that those are
being implemented and that those ideas are carried through. So you
really do have those categorical exclusions to take care of \-- I mean,
to take you out of having to do some of that paper work. We recognize
litigation is a huge problem for our departments across the board.
Somebody made a comment, and I can\'t remember which of the Interior
employees it was, but said that for Interior to get a notice that
somebody\'s going to file suit is as eventful as getting a letter
addressed to occupant. It just happens to us all the time. We want to do
what we can from a systematic basis to try to address those problems,
the things that cause most the litigation problems. The solicitor\'s
office has been working on trying to identify what some of those problem
areas are, see what we can do to try to address those. There are some
issues pending in the energy bill that may provide us an opportunity to
try deal with some of those things as well. We just really need to
across the board hear from you about where some of the problems are. It
really makes sense for people who have training and experience at land
management, to be using your expertise and your ability to see what
needs to get done in talking with people and coming to a plan of action
that has your input but not spending your time just doing all the paper
work.

T. Garrett: All right, thank you, Secretary Norton. Other questions from
the field?

Caller: This is Mike from Wyoming.

T. Garrett: Yes, Mike, go ahead.

Caller: I was just curious if the Secretary or Rebecca might be able to
give us an update on efforts to bring the internet back online, as I\'m
sure they\'re aware, that has had a great impact on our ability to
interact with the public but also to bring documents that we need public
input on and just curious as to the efforts to address that issue.

Secty. Norton: We certainly recognize that that is a big problem, and,
again, when you\'ve got people that are so dispersed, technology allows
us to bring people together and to be able to manage long-distance and
get the word out to a diverse public as we need to do. So we recognize
how important it is. I know there has been a lot of effort from the
departmental level trying to get everything taken care of and get you
all back online, and perhaps someone else has some more specific
updates, and so, Rebecca?

Asst. Secty. Watson: I think I would like to add that the Bureau of Land
Management now has its main BLM web site up, as I understand, and I
think one of the things that I\'d like to see is to have the state
offices, as much as possible, migrate important documents to that BLM
web site in the meantime, because I think in this day and age, the 21st
century, the internet is the way we communicate. The issues that we\'re
addressing with the internet shutdown are very serious issues. You know
the environment that we live in, and we have to go about it very
carefully and cautiously to get back up to the internet with the
security features that we need to have, and that\'s simply what has to
be done. We\'re focused on it, Kathleen is focused on it and I\'m sure
she can add more detail to what I\'m saying, but what I would like to
encourage the BLM managers to do is to take a hard look what we can put
on the BLM\'s main web page and how you can push information out to your
public\'s at your state and field level offices, what kind of
communication and outreach can you do to your public\'s to help them be
aware where they can find information on the BLM main web page, what
other means of communication do you have in the meantime, and just
explain to them the difficulties that we have and kind of give them the
message, we share your pain, we understand that this is a great
inconvenience, because I tell you, I\'m hearing about it at my level,
I\'m getting e-mails from people that are shut in and house bound or are
otherwise dependent on the internet, and they don\'t understand why this
is happening, and I think we need to help explain why it\'s happening
and express that we understand it\'s an inconvenience and figure out
another way to deliver information to them as a stop gap as we\'re
working on a solution. So, Kathleen, perhaps you could update or Larry.

Dir. Clarke: Let me just add we have just signed off on a reconnection
plan for all of our web interests that are down. It is going to take
some time, but we have prioritized those so that we get the most
important and the most used sites back up first. I believe that most of
you are aware that our incident command center has a briefing twice a
week, and that\'s at 1:00 p.m. eastern time. We hope you would join us,
because that\'s also a good forum to answer questions. It gives you
information that you can, in turn, share with those constituents who are
concerned, confused and anxious to get back on line with you. Rebecca
and the Secretary both raised some good points about why we\'re doing
this, and I appreciated Rebecca\'s encouraging you, as would I, to
migrate information to the BLM web site for the time being to do
everything you can to meet immediate needs through that opportunity. It
has our full attention, I assure you, and we continue to make progress.

T. Garrett: Larry, you had some comments?

L. Benna: I just wanted to add that I think everyone is aware that we
have made a concerted effort to try and deal with this issue, and we
have brought up our BLM.gov web site and we recognize the shutdown of
the internet has caused a significant inconvenience to the public, and
we brought this web site up, we\'ve coordinated well, we have the
security aspects in place and we\'re using this web site to be able to
provide additional information to the public that they\'ve relied on
from other sources that we\'ve had before.

T. Garrett: Thank you, Mike, for that question. Other questions from our
managers in the field?

Caller: This is Lorraine from Arizona. Rebecca, you mentioned that you
attended the conference in Aberdeen. I\'m just curious, they were very
impressed with what we\'re doing. Are there any things you are impressed
with going on in other parts of the world that maybe we here at BLM
could use?

Asst. Secty. Watson: Well, I saw a lot of different activity over there.
It was, I think \-- I was just impressed by some of the activity in the
arena of wave and current energy, and that relates more to the work that
MMS is doing and I was intrigued by that. And then some of the other
activity I saw there, I thought of our Indian reservations, and that had
to do with the use of building and how you build sustainable structures
and how you build intelligent buildings, more or less, to take advantage
of energy conservation, energy efficiencies, and I saw a very
fascinating presentation by a man from South Africa on the kind of towns
that \-- what we call Shanti towns that grow up outside the big cities
in South Africa, and it was really quite fascinating. So there were some
analogies there. I think it\'s a different world than we have in America
because in Europe and other countries there is quite a large government
subsidization of renewable energy and they don\'t have any public lands.
So what we do over here is quite different. We have public lands. We
have these public resources which is quite a foreign concept to people,
and I think that\'s what they find of interest, this concept that we
have public resources that people can lease and develop. So people are
intrigued by that. And I think the technology is more advanced in the
wind arena overseas. In fact, much of our wind energy technology is
coming from Europe. So I think those are the things that Brenda and I
learned on our visit.

T. Garrett: All right. Thank you for that question, Lorraine. We\'ll
stand by now for other questions from our Field Managers or from the
Washington Office Managers. While we\'re doing that, we\'ll be talking
later in the satellite session about \-- we have a question, I
understand, from Main Interior. Go ahead, Main Interior.

Caller: Hi. Bob Anderson, Washington Office. Just last week my son came
home, he\'s a junior in high school, and he is on a panel about drilling
in ANWAR. He said, dad, I really need help with my question, and that is
will drilling in ANWAR make gas cheaper at the pump? And I had to think
for a while about that, and I did come up with an answer, madam
Secretary, perhaps you can affirm my answer that I gave my son.

Secty. Norton: You certainly have a son who is asking some tough
questions. One of the things we struggle with is it would be really nice
to be able to say when we take this action it will reduce gasoline
prices by 25 cents a gallon or something like that. But there are a
whole lot of factors, and because we have an international market for
oil, that means that what we do has to affect a world price before it
has too much of an impact overall. But what it does do is help insulate
us from oil price shocks. If we have our own energy supply that is a
more stable U.S. source of energy, the estimate is that ANWAR would be
providing about a million barrels a day, and that compares with our
overall national domestic energy production of about 5.7 million barrels
a day, and so it\'s roughly as much as 15 or 20% of our existing
domestic production. That gives you the ability to stand up to some of
the international suppliers a little better. It gives us the ability to
withstand some of the shocks that might come from disruptions in the
middle east or other problems with international sources, and so while
it may have some little effects on the price we pay at the pump, it\'s
going to be a long time in the future, but it does provide a lot in
terms of domestic energy security and ability to have some ability to
play in the marketplace for the long term. So we are \-- we\'re a
stronger player in the market and have a stronger say over what the
world prices are going to be if we have our own production.

T. Garrett: Thank you, Bob Anderson, in the Main Interior building for
that question. Other questions from our managers in the field or in
Washington.

Caller: Karl in Arizona.

Caller: Don from NTC.

T. Garrett: Karl, go ahead. We\'ll have Don stand by.

Caller: Thank you. Appreciate your comments with respect to recreation,
and it raises a question, given the significant increases in visitation
for recreation on public lands, do you have any suggestions for
competing more effectively for funding?

Secty. Norton: I think one of the things that we needed to have when we
talk to OMB and to Congress is concrete information \-- you need to have
all the statistics that help justify a request for an increase. You also
have to take it a couple of steps further. You need to be able to say,
if we have this much additional funding, then this result is going to
happen. We\'re going to be able to accommodate more recreation users.
We\'re going to be able to do X, something that is as quantifiable as
possible. Usually when we don\'t have that, if we have this resource --
if we have this funding, then that will happen, that\'s when we have the
hardest time making the arguments to OMB. It\'s also helpful to have the
anecdotes and the photos, frankly, well established. When you have
something that says, you know, we got an additional law enforcement
officer in this area and because of that we were able to solve this
problem, and we\'d like to be able to do something like that in another
area, that kind of information is helpful. Photos are so helpful. We had
tremendous success in the healthy forest initiative. I believe in part
because we were able to show people what a forest looked like where a
treatment had taken place compared to what a forest looked like that
burned when it was still overly dense. You know, that kind of ability to
demonstrate what the needs are is very helpful. So getting that up to
Larry and Kathleen is something helpful.

Asst. Secty. Watson: I would like to add something, too. I think another
thing that we need to think about as BLM field managers and State
Directors is working with our partners on this. I think one of the
things that I\'m struck by over and over again is people\'s image of the
Bureau of Land Management is stuck in the past. I think people have an
image, if they have one of the Bureau of Land Management at all, it\'s
one from the \'70s and \'80s, and the Bureau, as I said in my opening
remarks, is facing tremendous demographic change in the west. The new
west is at the BLM\'s doorstep, and you\'re managing recreation out
there that is exploding, and people are making new demands on the
bureau\'s lands every day, but I\'m not convinced that people on the
hill know and understand that, and I\'m sure people at OMB don\'t, and
so I think one of the things that you can do is really engage your
partners in educating the people on the hill about what they want out of
BLM lands. Many of the traditional commodities uses of our BLM lands
have quite articulate spokes people up there, and that story is told
well and told often, but do your recreational users tell their story? I
use this example a lot, I think about Susanville, California, where I
went and met with the county commissioners. They\'ve had great success
with a bike trail that they\'ve put through their lands that have
brought in tremendous tourism to their community, and they\'re very
anxious to see another rails to trails bike trail go in because they
think that will bring more folks in. The county commissioners are all
for that, and they see an economic benefit and a quality of life impact
to their community, and it\'s that type of information that Congress
people need to hear and understand that, yeah, we\'ve got a lot of
traditional uses out there that are still very important to this
community, but there\'s this recreational use that is a real important
thing and it\'s a quality of life as well, and I think if you engage
your partners in telling BLM\'s story, that\'s even more effective than
BLM telling its story as well. So I\'d encourage that.

Secty. Norton: And I would like to add something else, as well, and that
is the importance of the recreation fee legislation that has now been
passed. We now have permanent authority that allows us to charge fees
for recreation and to keep those fees on the ground. That is going to be
a tremendous tool for us in the long run, as long as we use it wisely
today. We want to see the recreation resource advisory councils get set
up so that we\'ve got some input. These are criteria in the legislation
for what kind of area is appropriate for fees. There is also the
requirement that we work with these resource \-- recreation resource
advisory councils on getting those fees implemented, but I think if we
choose wisely where we\'re going to be imposing fees and try to build
community support for doing that and lay out the case for why we need to
have that kind of funding, and then spend the funding on things that are
very visible to the recreation users, then I think all of those things
for the long term will give a funding source that is not dependent on
the congressional appropriations process.

T. Garrett: Thank you and thanks Arizona for that question. I heard New
Mexico check in. I\'ll ask New Mexico while we go first to Don at the
NTC.

Caller: Secretary Norton, over the next five years we\'re going to be
losing 25 to 50% of our employees and especially our leaders. Is there
anything being done at the departmental level to recognize this issue
and address this issue?

Secty. Norton: Yes, that is an issue that we recognize as a very
important one for BLM and for our other bureaus. We did a workforce
study at the departmental level that focused on that as well as some of
our other training needs and the ways in which we make sure our
workforce really fits the kind of job we need to do, and I think that it
means we need to have better training opportunities and training that is
targeted to bringing people up through the ranks. We need to be able to
recruit so that we\'ve got people that are coming in who have the skills
that we need to be leaders, and so it\'s something that we are focused
on, and we do recognize it as a problem for the long term. We\'re taking
some steps, but it\'s also going to require a lot of individual
mentoring and identifying the people with talent who are the ones who
can take things on for the long term. And we appreciate that part of
today\'s program is to help make sure that people throughout the
department are seeing some of the issues that are facing the departments
and the Bureau overall, so that people who are in the future leadership
ranks as will as the ones who are the current leaders are able to give
thought to those issues.

T. Garrett: Let\'s go now to New Mexico for a question. Go ahead.

Caller: Yes, if the energy bill passes, what do you think the impacts on
states like New Mexico and what do you think might be the possibility of
any new money coming to support any of the initiatives that come out of
the energy bill?

Secty. Norton: The energy bill doesn\'t really have much in the way of
funding attached to it. It authorizes some things without really
providing the funding for them and so there are some \-- and also there
are a lot of things that are in the energy bill, and especially a lot of
the things that affect BLM, that we\'re already doing. The good news is
that Interior did not sit back and just wait for the energy bill to be
passed before we started doing those things to meet the country\'s
energy needs. So a lot of the work that you\'ve been doing on an
administrative level in trying to improve the process and improve the
way we do things is already doing some of the things that are in the
energy bill directing us to do them, and so we do see that some of those
things are not going to have as much effect as they might have had if
they were passed three years ago when it was first proposed. We also
recognize that there are some things that will be affected. I think
renewables will have some tax credits type of funding so that there\'s
more of an incentive to do renewable energy, and we will also see
perhaps some things with ANWAR opening up that is going to have some
work for BLM involved in that, and we have been looking at some of the
funding issues that would attach to that. So, our main way in which we
look at the funding is through our appropriations process, and we\'re
certainly talking, as we\'re doing our planning, about what those needs
are going to be.

T. Garrett: Thanks again. We have time for one last question, I
understand. Anything else from the field, from our managers in the field
or Washington for the Secretary, Assistant Secretary? If not, then
we\'ll close this segment by expressing our thanks once again to
Secretary Gale Norton and Assistant Secretary Rebecca Watson. We very
much appreciate the time you\'ve taken to be with us today.

Secty. Norton: Thank you.

Asst. Secty. Watson: Thank you.

Dir. Clarke: Have a great day.

T. Garrett: In a few minutes we\'re going to be talking about the
specific assignments that you\'ll be working on after our satellite
session today, but first we want to turn once again to our Director and
invite you, Kathleen, to talk about your vision for the Bureau in the
years ahead.

\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\--

Dir. Clarke: Tony, I appreciate the time, and I want to express my
sincere appreciation to everyone who has been involved in planning for
this forum. You know, it\'s very easy for me to recommend that we do
something, and I\'m always astounded at the countless number of people
that get involved and the hours that it takes to really pull something
like this off. I want to thank this BLM leadership team also for their
assistance in helping to craft the framework for this activity today.
And I know full well that every one of you has a full plate of things
you could be doing today and I\'m grateful that you\'ve taken the time
to meet with us in this very important effort. I think it\'s essential
if we are going to be making wise decisions in Washington that we
connect with all of you and that we get your perspective. And as you
have all heard me say before, I don\'t think there\'s any other agency
out there that has greater potential to really affect the quality of
life for the American people as does BLM. I want to engage with you as
we start to understand how we continue to rise to that challenge and
meet that demand and continue to provide for quality of life for the
people in this nation.

The reality is that everyday you\'re being asked to do more with less.
The burdens that we have, the challenges we meet, the expectations that
are laid at our feet continue to grow, and so I think we have to start
with a very honest and realistic assessment of the challenges that
we\'re facing, and it is our hope to do that today in this forum. And
over the weeks to come as we continue to work through the activities
that are put into motion in this forum. Secretary Norton this morning
alluded to the four Cs, and I\'m one of those that often struggle to get
those four Cs right, but we have heard much about the imperative to
communicate, cooperate and consult. And I have been a strong believer
ever since that mantra was given to us that we needed to start applying
those principles first internal to the Department of the Interior and
the Bureau of Land Management. So what we\'re doing today is really
bringing the four Cs home and having a discussion with you about the
imperative of working together, not seeing Washington and the field as
two distinct groups but recognizing together we comprise the BLM and we
are leaders in this organization. I think we\'ve also heard the
President himself talk about the need to ensure that decisions that are
made in Washington are well informed by those who are closest to the
land and their communities.

I have to tell you that at the BLM, the people that are closest to the
land and communities, are you folks out in the field. I think your input
is just as critical to BLM and to BLM as a corporate entity as is the
input of your stakeholders that you deal with at the local level. We
need to ensure that decisions we\'re making in Washington are well
informed by you who are closest to the land, closest to the communities
and to the people who work on and live on and play on these lands. Our
State Directors and their leadership teams hold a critical place in this
agency. It is through all of you that our vision for the BLM is
articulated. The way you lead and the way you manage has a powerful
influence on the character and the spirit of our workforce. It is
through you that the department and the headquarters office and the
administration, OMB and the hill, that we all gain an understanding of
what is really happening on the ground, of what is working and what is
not working. We need that insight so that the policies and priorities
that are developed in Washington are really grounded in the reality that
we\'re all dealing with. You know, our executive staff and our Assistant
directors and group managers in Washington necessarily have a different
perspective, and it also is essential to the success of our
organization. These people work tirelessly, as do people in the field,
but they bring tremendous expertise and important focus to our work and
they really help to ensure that our goals and priorities are also
grounded in the realities that exist in Washington. And as you know,
those are often quite different from the realities than you\'re dealing
with in the field. It\'s important that we acknowledge and appreciate
the different perspectives and the different challenges that we face
wherever we\'re working in this great organization.

In this forum, though, I\'m going to ask you to take whatever hat you
are wearing off and to shift from your perspective, the perspective you
have about your job and your individual responsibilities and how you
accomplish your goals, and consider the big picture, looking from a
corporate perspective and looking down the road at the future of this
agency. We have three very important objectives for this forum. The
first is that we want to make sure that all of you in leadership and
management positions throughout the agency have a very clear and
consistent message on our current bureau-wide priorities. I\'m often
asked, well, which one of the priorities is really a priority? And so to
make sure there is no confusion, I want to review those with you. You
heard these from the Secretary and Rebecca in their opening comment.

First is to ensure healthy forests, healthy rangelands and sustainable
communities. These are not necessarily in order of importance. I think
they\'re all very important right now. Second is to help provide for
America\'s energy future through responsible development of energy
resources. Next is to meet the recreational needs of a growing west, and
changing western communities. And I think you all know better than I do
how rapidly the demand for recreation is ramping up and the fact that
there are new recreational activities being invented every year. You
have new challenges every year out there that you need to respond to,
opportunities and demands you need to work with. We need to continue to
promote cooperative conservation. We need to engage partners. We need to
engage our cooperators in state and local government to assist us in the
way we manage. And finally, and perhaps most important, we need to be
looking at the way we are doing our business to ensure that our
organization is viable, that we remain relevant, that we are effective,
that we\'re prepared for the challenges of the new century. And we need
to make sure that our people have the skills, the tools and the
resources that they need to be successful and that they recognize that
we do not expect them to give their entire life to the BLM. We\'ve got
to find ways to free them up to pursue their life\'s dreams and their
endeavors and attend to their own well being and that of their families.
And that\'s a challenge when there is always more work and always a
reason to stay at the office or spend more hours in the field.

Our second objective is to really consider today\'s inescapable
realities. As you well know, our job is not going to get easier. It\'s
not getting simpler. Demands for access and services, along with the
impacts and the threats to the lands we manage, are increasing
dramatically. Another reality is that we face serious issues in many
aspects of our society. And all of these add cost and complexity to our
lives. And clearly in a post-9/11 world our country faces enormous
challenges related to national defense and homeland security which are
impacting all of us in the budget arena. We must accept the reality that
for the foreseeable future the President and the Congress will be faced
with tremendously difficult decisions about the federal budget and how
limited funding will be allocated. Likewise, the BLM leadership will
face difficult decisions about priorities and the allocation of limited
resources. The good news is that we can influence the future of the BLM.
I think you\'ve all heard me quote a futurist by the name of Peter
Drucker who said that if you want to predict the future, you must create
it. And we really need to get about the business of creating the future
that we want to have at the BLM.

Let me outline just a few fundamentals to get us started. One way we can
affect the future is to demonstrate that the funding that is allocated
to the BLM is getting results and providing solid returns and dividends
to the people that we serve. We also need to continue to enlist the
support of partners and volunteers. They help us leverage financial,
human and material resources, and they certainly expand our capacity to
work. We need to think creatively about the way we do our business and
changes that may make our funding dollars go further, and we need to
make sure that the things that we are doing are imperative, that we
really look long and hard at what we\'re doing and let go of those
things which are not part every our core mission. We need to work with
our partners to perhaps get their input and help them understand the
challenges that we\'re up against. They may be able to offer solutions
or take over some of the activities that we\'re now engaged in so that
those services are still out there but that we free our limited
resources up to do those things which are mandated by law and which are
uniquely governmental. That gets us to our third priority, which is
really to engage all of you.

You are the leaders of the BLM, and we need all of you to join us in a
dialogue to start to develop the strategies that will move us forward in
these incredibly challenging times. You know, Albert Einstein once said
something like this, this is not an exact quote, but he said that we
cannot solve the problems we have today with the same mindset we had
when we created them. I\'m not suggesting that we all created the
problems that we have and that we\'re faced with. Some of them have been
well beyond our control. But others of them are things, challenges,
we\'ve created for ourselves because we have approached our business
with a certain mindset. We have interpreted our regulations with a
certain mindset. And we\'ve created, in some cases, processes that go
well beyond the law and the rules and the regs but that now we find
ourselves burdened by. We need to get out of the boxes, or throw these
boxes away, and start thinking in new ways, and we need your brightest
ideas. We need your bold, clear vision for the future, and as I\'ve
suggested, I really believe that you folks closest to the ground will
cast light on this dialogue that is going to be essential to us making
decisions that are wise and prudent and that will keep BLM as a very
viable organization that represents the best in federal government. Your
contribution to this forum and to the course of action that\'s going to
follow is part of your legacy to this agency.

To some you who are planning to retire, I hope you won\'t think that
you\'re going to get a pass on this assignment, because, in fact, we
need you more than ever. Before you leave your post, we hope that you
will roll up your sleeves and be part of this exercise. And now as we
get this Leadership Forum under way, I again want to thank everybody for
participating in this broadcast. I think the hard work will come after
the broadcast and I want to thank you in advance for giving it your
sincere efforts and your best and most creative thinking. I want to wish
you well, thank you for all the good work you\'ve done. It is absolutely
a pleasure to serve as Director of an agency that stands so tall, like I
say, in the Department of the Interior, and I think across federal
government. So now I invite you to work with us as we start to prepare
for the future. Thank you for this time. Thanks, Tony.

T. Garrett: And thank you, Kathleen, for those comments. We\'ve heard
the Secretary, the Assistant Secretary, now the Director talk about some
of the changes and challenges facing the Bureau. So we want to invite
our deputy Director Larry Benna now to talk about those in some specific
detail and about how we can manage change and meet the challenges that
are throughout.

L. Benna: Thanks, Tony. I appreciate that. I think after hearing the
Secretary and our Assistant Secretary and our Director, I think we\'re
starting to hear some very common themes and challenges and
opportunities in the discussion. I must admit, though in some of my
discussions with employees and others I\'m still hearing some employees
wondering,, "why do we have to do something now?" "Why is it important
that we have to tackle this when we have so many other issues to resolve
and frankly our plates are already full?" "There\'s been some discussion
that the BLM has really never had enough money to do everything that we
needed or wanted to do, and what\'s different now?" I really think these
are all very good questions. What I would like to maybe do now is step
down a little bit from what the Secretary and Assistant Secretary Watson
and the Director said and sort of talk about some of the specific
drivers where we think we really need to take the bull by the horns and
do something now.

Let me start maybe with a few key factor or pressures that we\'re
starting to see that are really affecting the BLM. We heard the
Secretary and the Assistant Secretary mention population dynamics. The
population in the west \-- population dynamics in the west are really
changing dramatically and this is going to continue. Population growth
in the west is going to explode. A lot of people are moving out to the
west. As an example, the population of the 12 western states has
increased by nearly 30% over the past decade. That\'s more than twice
the national average. And this is where the BLM lands are and this is
where the people are going. Also the people are moving out to the west
for a better quality in their lives, and frankly just to have more fun.
People that work hard all day and even over the weekends, they want to
get out to the public lands and be able to recreate and take their
families out there and really enjoy what the public land has to offer.
I'll give you an example of this, the annual sales of off highway
vehicles in the west is more than double the national average. It\'s
increased by over 150% in the past five years. And guess where these
vehicles are going? They\'re going out to the public lands and your
offices manage these lands.

Another good example is the Kokopelli mountain bike trail in Utah and
parts of Colorado. In 1999 about 25,000 people used the trail and
that\'s a lot of people. Since then, in 2004, that number has tripled;
over 70,000 people took their bikes down that trail. Again, we\'re
seeing that these trends are expected to continue into the future and
perhaps even increase more. The population of the Western states is
expected to double in the next 30 or so years. So those of you that have
teenagers in your house, think about by the time your 16-year-old gets
to be 50, there\'s going to be twice as many people in the country as
there are now. We talked about this a little bit when we were going over
the speech, and for those of you that are doing the math and wondering
where you might be when your kids are 50, I think what we\'re really
thinking of talking about here is the legacy we\'re going to leave for
the country and for the public lands in the future.

So what does all this mean for you and your office? I think it means
that you\'re going to see more people, as well as local communities,
looking to the public lands to provide more and better services for
things like water, recreation, transportation, and just to keep or
improve the quality of life that they have. They want a better life for
themselves and they want a better life for their children. There\'s
going to be \-- these people that come out to the land are going to be
doing different kinds of recreation activities. I think as a result of
that what you\'ll specifically be dealing with is more and different
kinds of resource conflicts and these will have to be resolved and I
think we\'ll be looking to you to help us resolve it. So I think the key
word from all of this is the word \"more.\" I think another factor to
consider is the president\'s energy policy. The President laid out a
strategy that relies very heavily on the public lands to help meet the
nation\'s increasing energy need. What this means is that we\'re going
to see a lot more emphasis and a lot more activities in areas, including
coal bed natural gas development and other conventional energy sources.
We heard Rebecca Watson talk at length about renewable energy
development. This is including wind, solar, geothermal energy. And
we\'ll also see the public lands being relied on more and more as for
transportation corridors to be able to get these energy sources to
market through either pipelines or electric transmission lines.

Let me give you another example of what BLM has been facing and that
sort of brings this all into some perspective\... in 2002 BLM processed
just over 5,800 applications for permit to drill oil and gas wells. In
2004, we did better, we did more, we processed over 7,350 APDs and in
2005 we\'re expecting to process nearly a thousand more. Again, these
increases in workload are expected to continue. We\'re also looking at
advances or changes in technology, and this is going to drive opening up
new areas for exploration and development. A good example of this is in
Washington State, and that\'s managed by our Oregon State Office.
What\'s going on there is that the oil and gas industry is exploring
looking for natural gas about 10,000 feet below the salt rock. This
wasn\'t happening five years ago. They weren\'t in there. We also hear
about new directional drilling technology that\'s being used to look for
natural gas in Wyoming. I think you\'re going to see a lot more activity
in areas like Pinedale, Buffalo, Farmington, Bakersfield, the list can
go on. A lot of these activities are going \-- are going to be affecting
you and the public lands and your employees. So again, I touched on this
little bit, what does this really mean for you in your office?

It means that BLM lands in the field \-- in the field offices that you
manage are going to be providing more energy, providing more access and
we\'ll see more demands to develop both conventional and new forms of
energy in years to come. There is renewed interest right now in oil
shale in Colorado as an example. We\'ll also need to look at and make
sure we\'re providing the appropriate level of compliance, inspection
and enforcement to protect critical resources, to get the right revenues
from this resource development. I think it\'s important that we look
down the road and be sure that while we\'re processing our applications
and responding to industry that we\'re not setting up a lot of future
liabilities in these particular areas.

Next let me talk a little about the budget picture, and quite frankly,
the budget picture does not look very optimistic for the future. Budget
forecasts and just looking at trends have that happened in the past
shows that funding for natural resource programs, which is the main
source of our funding government-wide is declining. I think if you look
at where BLM has been and where we\'re going, it provides a good example
of what\'s going on. I think, as many of you are aware, our budget
request to Congress over the past several years has been pretty tight.
We haven\'t been able to ask for a whole lot of money. Again, this is
because of constrained funding targets from OMB, completing priorities
and a whole bunch of different factors. But if you look at what has
happened, Congress has been increasing our requests that we\'ve asked
money for, but again the tightness of the budget is limiting their
ability to help us out in the future.

If you look at 2001, Congress gave us 6% more than we asked for in the
budget. They lowered that down but gave us 1% more in 2003, and in 2005
we got 1% less than we asked for. Bottom line, budgets getting tighter
and tighter, competition is getting greater and greater. I think from
your perspective and from the BLM\'s perspective, we can expect that our
funding in the foreseeable future is either going to be flat or
declining. And this is going to result in a decrease in real buying
power of about 5% a year. This is what we want to start planning for as
we develop strategies for the future. We\'ve been absorbing between \--
somewhere between 1 1/2 and 2 1/2% of our budget in fixed cost increases
since about 2000. This is pay, rent, things like that. And I think we
may do better in the future in this but we will probably still be
absorbing some of these costs. Average grades are increasing. Contract
costs are going up, as well as the cost of supplies, materials and
services that we receive and ask for. I think what you\'re going to see
is that we may get some increases in the future, but most, if not all
these increases, are going to be focused on very specific and individual
projects, individual programs and on very specific well-defined
priorities. So, again, what does this mean for you and your office that
you manage?

I think we\'re going to clearly have to make some very difficult choices
in the future and also on how we use our funds. This means we\'re not
going to be able to do everything that we used to do. We\'re going to
have to very clearly determine what our priorities are and I think
Director Clarke was very explicit about what they are. Now we need to
carefully focus our funding resources and people on accomplishing these
priorities. We\'re going to have to really take a serious look at what
our discretionary work is and either just plane stop doing it or defer
doing it to the future when our situation might be a little better. I
really think it\'s time for leadership to step up to the plate on this.
I think we\'ll be looking for our Assistant Directors in Washington, in
consultation with our states to really come up with some things we\'re
just not going to be able to do anymore, now and in the future.

One of my thoughts is that I think during difficult times I\'ve seen
organizations have a tendency to fall back on what they do best to try
and handle it, and I think in BLM our ability to work with neighbors and
partners is clearly something that we do best. Secretary Norton was very
complimentary about that. So again, I think we\'ll have to be a lot more
effective and a lot more efficient in doing this through partnerships,
volunteers and cooperative opportunities. I think another factor that
we\'re seeing that is influencing us is the public demand for them to be
more involved in our decisions and public land management. Public
interest in looking at our processes, such as NEPA, planning and others,
is increasing significantly. People just don\'t want to be involved in
these processes. They actually want to be heard and they want us to pay
attention to what they\'re saying.

I asked for some information before we came here about what\'s been
going on with some of the plans and other activities we\'ve been going
through recently and I just found out, for example, that in Alaska they
received about 215,000 comments on a plan they did for the national
petroleum reserve. I also heard that Nevada got about 4,500 comments on
the High Rock Canyon Black Rock Desert Emigrant Desert Trails Plan. I
think we\'re going to see increasing public participation through
cooperative conservation and Cooperating Agency involvement, and I think
we\'re going to see more informal and innovative approaches to working
with the public and constituents. That is why we\'re looking to you, our
managers. As funding gets tighter, we\'re going to look to you and a lot
of others to be more innovative and more thoughtful than our approaches.
I don\'t think money may be the option for us.

I think we\'re going to see a lot of changes in the size and make-up of
our workforce and this is going to be driving a lot of the changes in
the way we operate in the future. Also, if you look, our workforce and
permanent workforce in BLM has been dropping. The latest budget projects
about 200 less FTEs. I think what\'s really critical here is many of the
state offices, many of the field offices are not filling a lot of
critical vacant positions and these are positions we direly need to get
our job done. By not doing this, we\'re actually putting a lot more
pressure on a lot fewer employees. A few statistics on this that I think
you\'ve heard about, but over the next three years, over 25% of the
employees, that\'s about a quarter of our workforce, are eligible to
retire. Perhaps even more significantly within the next five years,
nearly half of BLM\'s managers and supervisors are either eligible to
retire or actually will have walked out the door. And I think we are
definitely driving our employees we have left way too hard. Kathleen
alluded to this. We definitely need to take care of our employees. I
think the pace they\'re going at is going to be difficult for them to
continue in the future, and our employees are clearly the most critical
resource that we have.

So, again, what does this mean to you and your office? Well, I think
that again succession planning and managing the workforce is going to
become more and more critical. We\'ve got to get serious about this and
we have to do a good job. But also I think it offers a lot of
opportunities that we may never have again to address some real
significant issues we have. These are critical workforce and
organizational issues such as skill mixes and skill shortages and also
our ability to consolidate functions or programs to be more efficient
and effective. This could be a once in a lifetime opportunity for us to
really do something significant for \-- and leave a legacy for the
future and to do it in a very effective manner.

Another issue we're facing is our organizational barriers. BLM
organizations are extremely independent. I guess over the years we have
made some changes, but our basic organization has been about the same
since, I would say, about the 1960s. We also need to consider, though,
that a lot of things have changed since then, technologies have changed
and our publics have changed. The public that do business with us are
relying more and more on the internet and electronic business. We need
to be able to accommodate that. So again what does this mean for you in
your office? I think it means that we\'ve got to make some
organizational changes in order to bring BLM into the future. I think we
have the opportunity to look at new ideas such as Centers of Excellence
and our successes with Service First, and I think we can use these as
models that serve how we may change for the future. I think we need to
address a changing constituency and a changing public and a changing
business environment. We need to look at how we\'re organized and see if
we\'re organized in the most efficient manner to deliver our mission. We
all need to look at public service opportunities, economies of scale,
technology and electronic commerce, partnerships and cooperative
conservation and there are probably many other ideas and thoughts that
you have on this. Again, we need to look at all these factors to try and
pull it all together and try and design a most efficient and
contemporary BLM organization that we feel puts us in the best situation
to handle a lot of the new and contemporary issues and challenges that
we\'re facing now and we\'ll continue to face in the future.

I also want to spend a minute on accountability. The President is going
to maintain and even increase emphasis on his management agenda, and I
guess that really means that the red, yellow and green scorecard lights
are here to stay. I think all across government there is increasing
demand for accountability and better use of business information. Again,
I think you heard Secretary Norton mention this. Director Clarke and I
were recently at a budget meeting with the Secretary and we spent a good
portion of that meeting talking about accountability, costs of doing
business, ways to be more efficient. It\'s definitely a focus that\'s
going to continue in the future. I think we\'re going the see the
Congress, OMB and the department all looking more and more at a higher
level of accountability for performance as well as the cost of our doing
business and delivering this performance. So again, what does this mean
to you and to your office? We\'ll be under more and more pressure to
demonstrate high levels of accountability for what we produce and also
to show that we\'re doing it in cost effective manner. We\'ll also need
to increase our ability to track this performance. They want to see
numbers. They want to see the data. And I think we\'re going to have to
show that we can deliver on the administration\'s agenda and strategic
goals. We have to deliver.

Well, I don\'t know how you feel, but that was a lot of information, and
I think that some of that probably seems a bit daunting to you. But I
think it\'s absolutely critical that as we move into the future and
where we are now, that we all really have a clear understanding of what
we\'re facing and what\'s before us. I do sincerely feel if we act now,
we really have the time to shape our future and not have someone else do
it for us. I also think there are probably many opportunities for us to
take advantage of in the years to come, as we think of what may be
hurdles for us to overcome.

I think we have all talked quite a bit about what we\'re facing. Maybe
let\'s talk a little bit now about what we might do about all of this. I
think first I\'d like to thank Kathleen for having the vision to pull
all of this together, and I think she\'s very visionary in the idea that
there\'s no better way to face the challenges that we\'re looking at
here than to pull together the talent of the BLM, and that is you and
your employees to help us develop a strategy to move forward. I think we
all clearly believe that we really need the view from the ground up as
much as from the top down, and I think in a lot of ways we need that
more so. So, with your help and your input, and your ingenuity and
innovation, we\'re going to be focusing on our workforce, our
organization, priorities, processes and efficiencies and workloads.

Now, here\'s, where we want to go with your help. As I talked about
earlier, we have to acknowledge that there is just never going to be
enough money to do all the important work that there is for BLM to do.
But we do have the ability and the opportunity to be sure that the funds
we do have are being directed to those activities that really accomplish
results on the ground. That\'s what BLM is all about. That\'s what our
mission\'s all about. So, I think in future budgets we\'re going to have
to make very tough choices to either eliminate or cut funding for
programs that are less central to our mission. They might have unclear
goals. They might provide us some information that we don\'t use, or
they might duplicate what someone else or a different agency does.
We\'re clearly at the point where we must stop doing certain things.
We\'ve tried this in the past several times. I think now is the time
we\'ve got to get serious about this. We can\'t say yes to everything on
our plate, and we can\'t continue to be everything to everyone. We\'ve
got to strive to cut process. We\'ve got to look at costly processes,
procedures, regulations, especially those that we do to ourselves, that
is, stuff that we come up with that might not be necessary to get the
job done on the ground. We need to review existing programs to determine
if we\'re being as efficient as possible. We have the data. Now we have
to make the tough decisions and use that data. We need to identify
inefficiencies in program operations and where we find them we have to
fix them.

We\'ve got to come up with best practices that you are doing in your
field offices, and many of you are doing some extremely creative and
effective things, and we\'ve got to take those ideas and those
capabilities and we\'ve got to use them across the Bureau. We\'ve got to
get that information to other offices so they can use it, take advantage
of your success. If there\'s duplication or oversight in programs,
we\'ve just got to eliminate it. And we need to build on our successes,
like Service First, to share resources and get best practices from other
agencies and other organizations. And, again, we need to combine all of
these opportunities to turn BLM into the most efficient organization it
can be. Competition is getting fierce. We need to get lean, we need to
get mean, and we need to bring forward the best capabilities we have.
Now that we have an idea of what\'s driving the change and what we need
to do about it, maybe we should talk a little bit about how do we do it?

I\'m leading a team with several ELT members at the direction of
Kathleen to develop a futuring plan for the BLM. This team is going to
take all the information and recommend changes to the Director through
the ELT this coming fall that we think will help position the BLM to
meet the challenges of the future. We\'re seriously looking for your
input and ideas to transform the organization, to look at our workforce
and to look at our processes. We\'ll give you some more specifics on how
you\'re going to provide this input later in the broadcast. I encourage
you to find ways to involve all the employees in your organizations in
offering solutions for a more effective organization. I hope I\'ve made
it clear as to why we must take action now to address the real
challenges that we\'re facing right now. I don\'t think we can afford to
wait. I think we\'ve heard from others that have said the same thing.
The legacy we leave will be marked by the progress that starts right
here and right now. I guess I would like to leave you with a favorite
quote of mine I heard from someone quite a while ago, and this actually
just tier off the one that Kathleen mentioned earlier\... what I would
like to say is this quote is \"if you always do what you always did,
you\'ll always get what you always got.\" I really think it\'s time we
need to do some things differently. Tony?

T. Garrett: Thanks very much, Larry, for that very thorough and candid
assessment of the outlook for the Bureau. Once again, our interactive
technology standing by so you can participate with us. Please feel free
to do so if you have a question for Kathleen or Larry or if you have a
comment on any of the issues and matters we\'ve discussed thus far.
We\'ll wait to hear from you.

Dir. Clarke: While we\'re waiting for people to gather their thoughts, I
want to comment. I hope as we go through this we can find a degree of
optimism as we look to the future. These are hard messages you\'ve
heard, and we\'ve got some tough challenges to wrestle down, but I hope
that you will look at this as an opportunity. Change is never easy, but
we can make it positive and we can produce outcomes here that we will be
proud of. So set aside your anxiety. Set aside your devotion to the
status quo and think big. Be audacious. There are no sacred cows. We
really want to create an organization that can move into the future, and
we need you to help us do that. I would never pretend that the folks
that solely work in Washington will have all the answers, and that\'s
why we are having this forum. We want all of you to be a part of the
road that we\'re going to map for the future. So I realize this is a lot
that has been opened to you this morning. It is sobering reality but I
think we\'re all up to the challenge. So please get involved here. Bring
your questions forward. Don\'t be bashful. I appreciate your candor, -
whatever you would like to talk about today. So I also want to let you
know you don\'t need to just ask questions to those of us here in the
studio. If you\'ve got questions you want to ask one another, if you\'re
aware that there was some success story in a different state and you
want to know about it, let\'s raise that question. So this is truly an
open forum. It\'s your forum. Please get involved with us.

T. Garrett: Thanks, Kathleen. One of the questions that came from
earlier discussions with the managers was this one, and I\'ll invite you
both to think about this, and it may be one we want to turn around and
pass onto the field for comment. \"In this time of declining budgets
what processes will be used to determine what work we aren\'t going to
do?\" I think what they\'re getting at is who decides and how do they
decide what we\'re not going to do anymore? And, Larry, you said we had
tried that in the past. I would be curious when we do invite the field
to comment, has anyone actually stopped doing anything? And if so, what
were the results of that? What were the repercussions of that?

L. Benna: I think that\'s an excellent point, Tony, and the first thing
I do want to start out with is we are clearly looking for, as a result
of this forum, to get ideas from people. I think it\'s really important
for people to look at processes, regulations, rules, and if you\'re
questioning why we\'re doing something, I think we should put that on
the table and raise it up the flagpole basically to say \"we need to
take a look at this.\" To give you an example, recently we\'ve had some
discussions with the department where they\'re actually looking to us to
come forward with these kinds of innovations. They\'re asking us, how
can we make things better? How can we make employees on the ground more
efficient? How can we deliver our mission more effectively? We\'re being
asked to come forward with these kinds of ideas. So I think the time is
definitely right to do this, and I don\'t think anything really is off
limits here. We\'re looking for this to come forward, we\'ll take an
objective look at it and then we\'ll go from there.

Dir. Clarke: Maybe I can add something to that. I certainly feel that I
have a responsibility as the Director of the BLM to provide some
solutions, but as I contemplate what those challenges we face are all
about and what the implications are for the BLM, I absolutely need your
input and your ideas. We have not yet defined a process to decide what
we\'re not going to do. I\'m not sure that one size will fit all. It may
be that something that folks in New Mexico could choose not to do would
absolutely not work in another state. But before we start to lay that
framework out there, we owe it to ourselves to have a dialogue, and I
absolutely feel that I need your input and your wisdom, the fact that
you are closer to the ground, to the communities we serve and you\'re
absolutely closer to the land that we manage than I am. So I\'m looking
for your wisdom. I\'m looking for your suggestions. I\'m looking for you
to tell us where you think there\'s an opportunity. There\'s things
we\'re kicking around. And, you know, they may come up during the course
of this discussion, but basically to answer your question specifically,
we do not have a defined process to decide what will be done and what
will not. We\'re willing to create that process in context \-- in
concert with all of you, and ultimately those decisions will be made in
Washington or at the state levels, but we want your input. We don\'t
want to be running blind.

T. Garrett: We\'re going to pause for a moment and give you in the field
and in Washington opportunity to check in with us with your questions or
comments.

Caller: This is Lynn from the fire center. Is there any update on the
FBMS implementation?

Dir. Clarke: I\'m going to invite Larry to give you that update.

L. Benna: I can do that. I did mention to the ELT, I believe it was last
Monday, that there are some significant difficulties that have been
encountered with FBMS. The contractor has fallen behind in some of the
testing processes, and as a result of that, where we are now is that it
doesn\'t look like it\'s feasible to bring FBMS up this coming October.
The bureaus and the department that were scheduled to come up, would
have been BLM, the Office of Surface Mining and Minerals Management
Service. So where we are now is the department is having some very
serious discussions with Bearing Point, who is the contractor, for them
to come back and develop some sort of a plan and a recovery plan about
how we can get this project back on track. I would imagine those
discussions and decisions will continue probably for the rest of this
month, maybe longer, and that after all that information is evaluated, a
decision will be made about where we go from here. But as of now things
are somewhat on hold as far as deploying this system until we get an
idea on how we can get it back on track and fix some of the problems
that have been encountered.

T. Garrett: Thanks for that question, Lynn, at NIFC.

Caller: Kathy in Oregon.

T. Garrett: Go ahead, Oregon.

Caller: Due to the budget drivers, many, if not all the states, have
been engaged in different strategic planning efforts. How will we
integrate these efforts to develop a collective future for the BLM?

Dir. Clarke: Let me just start with that. I think, as Larry indicated,
we have pulled together a futuring team for the BLM, which is comprised
of some of the Assistant directors that work in Washington as well as
some of the State Directors. They are going to be taking a look at
what's being done in the individual states. As Larry indicated, the work
that results this forum, the initiative that you\'re undertaking with us
today, will give us a broad perspective of what the common themes are
that come forward from all the states and we will be taking a look
across the board at your ideas, your suggestions, best practices,
actions that have already taken place in those states, and assimilating
a plan that will be a corporate plan about how to proceed in the bureau,
how to move ahead within the context of today\'s challenges and changes
and our budget restraints. So that is exactly what this process is all
about and ultimately we do need to be integrated and we will be.

T. Garrett: All right, thanks for the question, Oregon. Anything else at
this time? All right. We\'ll stand by and pause for a moment for other
contact from the various downlink sites in the field and in Washington.
Go right ahead with your questions.

Caller: This is Barbara in \--

Caller: In....Idaho.

T. Garrett: Barbara stand by, let\'s go with Idaho first. Go ahead,
Idaho.

Caller: I was really encouraged to hear, all of us were here, with
Larry\'s message and especially about the workforce and budget and all
of the predictions going with that. Relative to accountability, the
question I have is \-- or the comment I guess I would share is I think
it\'s important that along with those new tracking tools and all the
accountability that we have in place with that that there be some
mechanism to ensure that they\'re interpreted appropriately with people
just looking at the numbers without any sort of explanation to go with
them.

L. Benna: I think that\'s an excellent point, and I can give you several
ideas about what\'s going on. I do want to mention or support you in
your comment. That is absolutely critical, and I am personally a firm
believer in not just taking the numbers at face value and just making
critical decisions that may really affect our ability to perform. A
couple examples, I know in BLM over the last several years we have been
engaged in using our management information data to try and make
changes, be more efficient, and we\'ve had limited success with that,
would be a way to put that. Recently we\'ve brought the Field Committee
in to try to help us deal with this. We\'re now looking more along the
lines of the performance side. We\'ve had similar discussions with the
departments budget office very recently in the context of the 2007
budget and we\'re trying to be very clear to them as we show them the
numbers as examples of what we\'re doing to manage BLM, that you can\'t
make these kind of decisions just looking at a sheet of numbers without
asking the right questions about what the numbers mean, looking at the
differences among costs and other factors across offices. So we\'re
trying very hard to get that message across. You\'re right, it\'s
absolutely critical we do get that message across.

Dir. Clarke: I just want to make a comment at this time that I think
we\'re very lucky to have Larry Benna having been willing to step up to
be deputy. I think he\'s got a set of skills that is a perfect
complement for the set of challenges that we\'re facing. He and I have,
in fact, had discussions about the very question you raised and about
the whole arena of accountability and performance measurement. It\'s a
challenging one. One of my concerns is we have to be careful not
spending so much time measuring performance that there\'s no time for
performance. So I\'m grateful for Larry's experience. He has great
credibility on the hill, at OMB and in the department, and I am
appreciative of his willingness to lead this effort, really, as he works
with all of the executive leadership team and we work with the critical
managers and district managers across the BLM to really, like I say, get
our arms around these tough issues and move forward. But your comments
and concerns are certainly well stated, and we are paying attention to
those and want to make sure you get due credit for the good work you do.

T. Garrett: And thanks, Idaho for that question. We have Barbara
standing by, I believe, from the Denver Center, Barbara?

Caller: Yes, this is Barbara. I have a question about one of Mr.
Benna\'s comments, and that is, you spoke about looking at the mission
and the workload of progress and cutting funding to programs that were
less central to the mission. Has the leadership identified those core
functions? And then, you\'re looking for improved processes for those
that are peripheral to those core missions.

L. Benna: Good question, Barbara. I think Kathleen was quite clear about
what she sees as the priorities for BLM, and given the tightness of the
budget, I really think we are in the position where we\'re really going
to have to look at either entire programs or perhaps parts of programs
that don\'t directly support those priorities or our mission. Some
examples could be, and I\'m not suggesting these are the right ones
necessarily, again, that\'s sort of the purpose to some degree of this
forum, is we do an awful lot of inventory and collecting data, and I
think we\'re at the point now where we have to be very clear and make
sure that the data we\'re collecting is going to be used to make the
kind of decisions we have to make and it\'s going to support the kind of
priorities that we\'re dealing with. I think we need to look at some of
our programs and see if there\'s some duplication in those programs and
see whether one program is maybe doing the same thing that another one
is and can we combine those? So those are the types of things I think
we\'re looking at. But again the bottom line is the budget\'s getting
quite tight and we\'re under more and more pressure to just focus solely
on priorities and to put money on the table to be able to do more in
those priorities. I think the Director as well as others have made a
clear case that our funding situation is not very healthy going into
this and also that we have been extremely effective in the past about
delivering on priorities, doing exemplary performance, and also being a
leader in one of the visions of the Secretary, and that is implementing
the four Cs. So we\'re trying to balance all that together and trying to
come up with something that allows us to make as much progress as we can
and focus on our highest priorities. But again we\'re looking for input
from all levels of the BLM in order to be able to do that.

Dir. Clarke: Tony, I would like to just add a comment here. You know, we
are asking you to do in reviewing opportunities for improvement and for
greater efficiency at BLM is nothing that corporate America hasn\'t been
doing for decades. The fact is we\'re unique in government in that we
don\'t have competition like Ford motor competing with GM. There is
nobody else out there running the BLM. We have a lot of people who would
like to take on that job, and that sometimes is helpful and sometimes
not so helpful. But it is ours. And so in the absence of a competition,
it\'s difficult for us sometimes to force ourselves into the mode of
going through efficiency reviews and changes in our agency because
they\'re not comfortable. They\'re not easy.\
\
Caller: Ramon from Alaska.

Dir. Clarke: I think in the absence of a disciplined effort to move
forward we may miss the greatest opportunities and the greatest future
for this agency. So we look forward to working with you and again hope
you will look at this as an opportunity to improve on our business and
to really rise to the challenges of a new century, quite frankly.

T. Garrett: Thank you, Barbara at the Denver Center. I think we have
Alaska on the line. Go ahead, Alaska.

Caller: This is Ramon from Alaska. We\'ve gone through the Bureau
national effort to do land use planning, and how is the futuring going
to affect our abilities to implement those plans?

Dir. Clarke: And I\'ll just give you an example and that is that we are
taking a look at the processes we use for doing land use plans. As you
all know, they are taking longer than we ever would have imagined and
they\'re costing a great deal. We have over 160 different plans we need
to keep current and to be able to process work based on those plans, and
we\'re finding it difficult. As was indicated earlier, there\'s more and
more people that want a place at the table and to be part of the action,
and there\'s constantly more litigation, and our land use plans are
generally at the foundation of those sorts of opportunities for
partnership and then the challenges that result from decisions. So we
are looking for and would welcome your thoughts about improving land use
plans. It certainly is an activity we\'re not going to eliminate, but I
think it is an area that is ripe for some reform. So we would invite
your suggestions and thoughts on what we could do to make that whole
process and that activity, which is so fundamental to everything we do
at BLM, but to make it more efficient and more compatible with our
current budget realities. .

Caller: Washington Office.

T. Garrett: Yes, go ahead.

Caller: This is L street Washington office and I have a question with
the implementation of smart card, how will we begin addressing cost
cutting or cost-saving initiatives using alternative work environments?

T. Garrett: Larry?

L. Benna: That\'s an interesting question. I\'m not sure I fully quite
understand all of it. Again, I think we\'re looking at trying to
accommodate employees as best we can as far as alternate work schedules,
telecommuting and those kinds of things. As we get into smart cards, I
think we will be looking at the two pieces of that, I think, the part of
it that allows you to get into the building. I don\'t think that is the
issue. I think what may be somewhat challenging for us is the computer
side of it, allowing access to computers. I think there\'s probably a
way to get around that which will allow employees to be at different
workplaces. And I think as we move forward with smart cards we\'re
trying to make this process more, which is one of our overall goals.
We\'re looking at smart cards, one card, to allow employees to get into
virtually all the BLM buildings. I think that\'s the vision for the
future. We\'re also looking at a smart card to enable employees to get
access to their computers, and again right now there are a lot of
different passwords. So I guess I\'m not really quite sure I see this as
an impediment for us. I think I see this more as an opportunity.

T. Garrett: L street, does that answer your question?

Caller: Yes. I kind of am aware of what smart card does. I guess my
question would really be, are we going to start maybe using smart card
as more of a way to do some cost cutting, cost-saving initiatives within
the BLM?

L. Benna: Frankly, if there are opportunities there, we\'re willing to
look at them. If we can reduce space, if we can save dollars, if we can
make the work environment more productive for the employees, we\'re
definitely willing to look at that. So, again, we have folks under the
Assistant Director for Business and Fiscal Resources that are managing
the smart card process and I\'m hoping that they\'re listening in and
that they\'re going to take those comments and take them to heart, see
if there is something we can do.

T. Garrett: It sounds like our caller at L street has some ideas of her
own on how that could happen. We\'ll again reinforce the purpose of the
forum, the purpose is to invite that kind of comment from the managers
in the field and Washington.

L. Benna: We\'re looking for either out of the box thoughts or get rid
of the box altogether. Again, any ideas and innovative thoughts you
have, we\'re willing to look at them and consider.

Caller: Bill in Arizona.

Caller: Mike in Wyoming.

T. Garrett: Mike in Wyoming, stand by. Let\'s go to Bill first.

Caller: In the opening remarks I heard several references that employees
are some of our most valuable resources. This is not unique that we\'ve
gone through these kinds of times before where we\'re really asking a
lot of our employees. I would like to see a forum or some format that
shares how people are creatively meeting the needs of the employees. It
would really be helpful if we had ideas and techniques or processes that
we could help our employees get through these times.

Dir. Clarke: That\'s an excellent suggestion. I think in the second part
of our forum you\'re also going to be hearing a great deal from Marilyn
Johnson about human resources and about the imperative that we really
take care of our employees. So\' look forward to hearing more about your
ideas and how we can incorporate those into our redesign of the BLM.

T. Garrett: Mike, we\'ll deal with that more in our presentation right
after the break. So stay with us and you may have some more questions at
that time. Let\'s go to Wyoming.

Caller: Okay. A couple thoughts, I guess, that I had. The first one on
the futuring team. The individuals that I heard on the team are the
senior leadership within BLM, If there\'s an opportunity to involve
younger people within the organization that will be a part of that
future and its implementation as part of that team. So that is a
thought. Secondly, what opportunities do we have to try and explore some
of the avenues that private industry is using to look at their
reorganizations and can we learn from them. Certainly I think that
Kathleen mentioned earlier that industry is going through these
exercises as well. Are there ways we can learn from their efforts?

L. Benna: First on the futuring team. I guess as one of the old guys
sort of leading that team, I wouldn\'t dream of moving forward without
some young people to help me along. That\'s for sure. But to
specifically answer your question, we\'ve got leaders from the BLM on
that team, and as we get ideas from you and start to develop a plan, we
will have a significant amount of staff to help us move forward. We\'re
going to need specific analyses about what the savings may be for
certain initiatives. For example, some initiatives might involve
start-up costs or other types of offsetting costs that we need to look
at. We\'re going to need to ask ourselves if we can still deliver our
high level of public service and those kind of things? So we will be
bringing in quite a few more people to help us in this regard. We have a
position in Washington that was just recently filled in the AD-800. This
position is designed to come back from the field and stay in Washington
and work on some very high-profile activities. This would be one of
them. We will be looking at this position to help us. I think that will
be most helpful.

Dir. Clarke: Can I just add something here? I don\'t think any of us are
interested in change for change\'s sake, and so we want to make sure we
take time to do a good cost-benefit analysis of changes that are
proposed and make sure that it makes sense and that we\'re just moving
the pieces on the chessboard. So we certainly are going to be wanting to
look for the next set of leaders that are going to be taking over at the
BLM for their boldest ideas and their vision that can also help us. We
also have people at the BLM that have experience in corporate America
and who have joined us from industry, and I think the reason why we\'re
holding this forum is we want to tap into that wealth of experience and
knowledge, expertise and ideas. So this is a creative forum. It\'s one
that we want to engage anyone with good ideas in helping us create these
strategies for the future.

T. Garrett: Thanks for the question, Wyoming. We\'ll pause now for other
questions from the field or from Washington.

Caller: It\'s Robin from Oregon.

Caller: This is Terry in Eastern .

T. Garrett: Yes, Terry in Eastern , stand by and let\'s go to Robin
first.

Caller: Listening to Larry speak about more, we\'re going to have more
demand, more need for recreation, grazing, oil, gas and thinking about
what Kathleen was saying about corporate America and how they are
pursuing various efforts, I\'m thinking that if we could develop some
marketing strategies that would direct where that more happens, where
and how and when, might put us in a good situation in keeping our eye on
quality and efficiency.

L. Benna: I think that\'s an excellent suggestion. I think there are
clearly some activities where we definitely have an opportunity to
direct where they are done. I think recreation may be a good example.
And I think we have the opportunity to invite people to come to areas
where we\'re most able to accommodate and manage that kind of use. On
the other side of the coin, I think we need to be realistic that there
are some activities. oil and gas is a good example, where the activity
is going to occur where the resource is, where the oil and gas is
located and so I think we need to be realistic and look at our
capabilities to be able to address those kind of pressures, where they
occur.

Dir. Clarke: I\'m going to add just one thing here, and that is that I
think we need to do a much better job at communicating with our publics,
and when I was talking to Chip Calamaio here at the center this morning,
he talked about the capability this center has to do kind of targeted
messages and meetings such as this. We could actually once a month hold
a meeting with our OHV community, help educate them, direct them, tell
them where not to go. We could hold meetings with the oil and gas
community and get them to better understand best management practices.
We could hold meetings with our grazing community. I think the
technology is out there for us to get a lot smarter, a lot more focused
about the way we do our business and connect with our publics. They all
have great technology capability and expect government to start
delivering services in that mode. We spend a lot of time right now on
written publications. People in a lot of cases, if they\'re going out in
an off-road vehicle they don\'t want to drag a bunch of maps and
pamphlets. They want to download information on their PDA or their
global positioning system, they want to know, or they want to get on the
web and have access, or like I say, they want directed mailings, but not
mailings in terms of letters and postage but mailing to their e-mail
systems about current issues that might be relevant to their interests.
It\'s a whole new realm. It could be expensive to go down that road but
we can design systems that serve us and that work within our current
budget limitations that I think will take us into the future in a more
positive progressive way and perhaps start to minimize some of this
conflict. I think what we\'re really getting at here is we need to make
some fundamental shifts in the way we do our business at the BLM. I
think we need to perhaps think as we go through this exercise even
bigger than the BLM. If there are opportunities for us to trade work
with the Forest Service, or if it makes sense for someone else to be
doing what we\'re doing, let\'s think about those. The field is wide
open. We would like all of you to bring your good ideas forward and I\'m
grateful we\'re hearing some good discussion already this morning. I can
tell your minds are turning and you\'re popping out some really good
ideas that I think we need to work together to develop.

T. Garrett: We want to let our viewers know that throughout today\'s
broadcast we have ample time set aside in different periods of the
broadcast for questions and comments from the field, and that\'s very
important to us, and we won\'t forget you. We do want to make time for a
presentation on the schedule. We want to go to that one last question in
this Q & A segment from Terry at Eastern . Go ahead, Terry.

Caller: I was wondering if there\'s any serious consideration about
merging BLM \-- or BLM with the Forest Service, and if not, at least
inviting the Forest Service to be at the table when you\'re doing the
futuring exercise that\'s coming up.

L. Benna: I guess the first part of your question, as far as actually
merging the BLM and the Forest Service, from my perspective, I really
don\'t think we are quite there yet. I think I would like to say,
though, that we are, with a lot of support from the department, OMB and
others, we are really looking at blurring the lines between BLM and the
Forest Service as far as what kind of service we deliver, our processes,
our management styles and opportunities and the way we do business. Some
of that is involved in Service First. As an example, we\'re looking to
our Washington Office. As we develop new policies we will work directly
with the Forest Service up front so that we are in sync as much as we
can be. I think a lot of this has gone on to the credit of the field
offices. A lot has actually gone on at the ground level. I think we\'re
now trying to take this to the next step. In the foreseeable future, I
really haven\'t heard much about an actual merger.

Dir. Clarke: I don\'t think there\'s any plans for a merger but I think
there\'s great expectations that we cooperate more closely, but as you
suggested early on, Larry, that if we\'re duplicating efforts, we\'re
doing the same business twice, we\'re gathering the same data, and I
think that goes beyond just the Forest Service. We need to see if the
Natural Resources Conservation Service is doing work that we don\'t need
to do. We need to look and see if USGS is doing things that we\'re also
doing. So I think we do need to look beyond BLM as we\'re getting
creative here and see if there are other agencies, federal or state,
that could assume some responsibility that they may have an interest in
already.

T. Garrett: All right. Thanks for that question, Terry at Eastern . And
again we\'ll have more time for your questions and comments a little bit
later in the program. We had a chance earlier to visit with the Chairman
of the House Appropriations Committee, Congressman Jerry Lewis, serving
California\'s 41st district. He gave us his perspective on public lands
issues, especially in California, interagency partnerships as we\'ve
been discussing and the many challenges facing resource professionals.
Let\'s take a look.

Congressman Jerry Lewis : Hello BLMers. It's a great pleasure for me to
be with you at your National Leadership Forum and I'd especially like to
thank Kathleen Clarke for this invitation.

Those people who care about our wilderness communities, the desert, the
mountains, ah clearly it's important that we have an opportunity to
communicate with each other. Not just today but in the months and the
years ahead.

Some of you may know that for the lifetime I've had in public affairs,
some 30 years plus, much of the San Bernardino NF and indeed almost all
the San Bernardino County Desert has been in my district. So, to say the
least, I've been involved with people who are responsible professionally
for preserving our Wilderness Areas making sure that the desert is cared
for, taking care of the many, many challenges that we face not just
today but in the years before us. I'd like you to know particularly that
the State Director Mike Poole has been very helpful in our efforts to
communicate with one another. Who could replace Jan Bedrozian? Jan has
been a friend as well as a helpmate for all the time I've been involved
in public affairs and I hope you'd give her my special thanks by way of
your expression of appreciation.

The San Bernardino County Desert especially has met many a challenge
already. But to say the least the years ahead are going to be most
difficult. Finding the numbers of dollars that we need to not just pay
for the personnel but do the other things that are necessary to make
certain that we preserve effectively pristine areas of the desert at the
same time make certain that the desert can be used by those who would
appreciate it. And for whom after all we have the work in the desert in
the first place...the citizens who make up our country.

Vast numbers of people have taken a greater and greater interest in
visiting those desert communities especially those areas that are
wilderness form.

I must say further that many a challenge regarding your responsibility
for helping us preserve our forests, the great difficulty that we have
faced in recent years with the bark beetle. The reality that millions of
trees in the forest are dead already, the challenges to help the Forest
Service re-create that desert for generations to come. It's a part of
you BLMers responsibility as well. Working together agency by agency is
very important and indeed it struck me over the years that too often we
tend to ignore, especially those of us who are laymen, to ignore the
critical nature of the forestry people, ah, those people who run the
Park Service, the BLMers, having an opportunity to work with each other
hand in hand and coordinate these efforts together, all of this is
critical to our success.

In recent years we've seen demonstrations of just how effective working
together can be. When we faced these huge fires just a year ago as a
result of not the bark beetle but lightning strikes and human abuse of
the forest, people actually setting fires, have told us of the
tremendous challenges as well as the threat that we face. While we're
cutting down millions of trees currently a lightning strike in the wrong
place at the wrong time right now could be devastating to the entire
mountainside.

Between now and the immediacy of that sort of challenge I want you to
know that it's very important that you continue to communicate with
offices like mine. There's a whole array of members of Congress,
Democrats and Republican alike, who want to help you with this. There's
a broad base of support, for the sort of funding that will assure us the
opportunity to win the challenges that are a part of our future. So as
you meet together, ah, during these sessions at your national
conference, I certainly hope that you know that there are members of
Congress, Democrat and Republican alike, who wish you well but also are
willing to go to the wall to help you with not just your budgets but
also the very difficult choices that you have to make.

Thank you for allowing me to spend a few moments with you and I look
forward with our ongoing very positive relationship. Thank you.

T. Garrett: All right, Congress of course, a critical stakeholder as we
talk about BLM\'s future and future funding outlook and we certainly
appreciate the Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee,
Congressman Lewis, taking the time to share those remarks with us. At
this point we\'re going to take a one-hour break. Our electronic meeting
will resume at 3:00 p.m. eastern daylight, 1:00 p.m. daylight time. When
we come back we\'re going to look in detail at workforce issues and
we\'ll be providing your leadership teams with the expectations for your
working assignments at the conclusion of this satellite session. So
there\'s lots more coming up. We\'ll see you soon.

\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\--BREAK\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\--

T. Garrett: Welcome back to the second segment of our electronic
meeting, BLM\'s national leadership for up. Joining us now to talk about
our workforce issues in the coming years is BLM\'s human capital
management project Director, Marilyn Johnson. Welcome, Marilyn.

M. Johnson: Thanks, Tony. I\'m pleased to have this opportunity to talk
about our organization, our workforce and our future. Here\'s why this
topic is so important for all attending this forum. As managers, your
most important responsibilities are leading, motivating, developing and
protecting your employees. I\'ll talk about things that influence these
responsibilities. Now I want to focus on three specific areas: human
capital management, how the BLM and its people are preparing for the
future and some of the forces and factors that are affecting our people
in different ways. Let\'s begin at a look at our past efforts in
workforce planning. These things are not new to BLM. Managers have
always done some level of workload assessment and position management.
As far back as 1998 the ELT recognized the need for systematic workforce
planning. In 2000 the ELT put together a task force and approved the
workforce planning process with four main criteria. The process would
use the cost management system, it would tie in closer with budgeting,
it would focus on the field while aligning with national strategies, and
would provide more information to managers to help them make more
informed decisions.

Why does the Bureau need workforce planning? We all want skilled
workers, ready and able to perform the many tasks that support our
mission. The everyday tasks of our workforce are getting more and more
complex. So it\'s more important than ever that we have well trained
workers. With the current budget picture, we can\'t hire specialists for
every task. We can\'t provide all the products and services demanded by
the public. Work priorities are constantly changing. That causes skill
and knowledge requirements to shift. Demands on our employees\' time are
ever-growing with no end in sight. We have a lot of experienced
specialists who will need to be replaced. The potential loss of skill
and knowledge through retirement is increasing every year. Let\'s look
at retirement eligibility and the difference between fiscal year 1998
versus today. The risk is monumental. Within the next five years, nearly
half of BLM\'s managers and supervisors will be eligible to retire or
will have left. Within this group, over 80% of our key leaders in grades
15 and above may be gone. We want some control over our future.
Therefore, we need to plan.

What did BLM\'s leadership expect to gain from workforce planning? They
had a number of specific and concrete results in mind. Workforce
planning would go hand in hand with the budget process. It would
forecast skill and knowledge needs whether or not they were provided by
permanent employees. The process would tell us who is doing what work
and where it\'s being done. Workforce planning would define training
needs. It would tell us where critical knowledge will be lost. It would
help assign skills where they\'re needed the most. And it would help us
have better data for recruiting diversity into our organization. Now,
here\'s a critical point. Workforce planning is not an event, it\'s a
process, and this process must continually be reviewed to evaluate the
workforce and its capabilities. Workforce planning has succeeded in
creating a dialogue between staff and managers. We\'ve had positive
results. The critical issues have been put on the table. Old assumptions
and approaches have been challenged and the strategic vision of our
organization has been reevaluated. And we\'ve had the benefit of using
current data with our workforce plan.

We do a better job of targeting our money to the skills we need to
acquire. As a result managers are better to equipped to align their
organizational needs with the reality of their budgets. You should know
how OMB measures every agency\'s progress in workforce planning and
we\'re very proud that our efforts have moved BLM from yellow to green
on the OMB human capital scorecard. Let\'s turn now to the present
national workforce planning system. These guidelines in the present
system establish organizational wide assumptions. The assumptions have
changed because the budget outlook has changed so we need new and more
precise assumptions and guidelines. We need a new risk assessment for
the loss of corporate knowledge.

T. Garrett: Thank you, Marilyn. You\'ve talked about changes in the
budget and the workforce environment. What about changes in employees\'
attitudes about their jobs? Is that something managers need to be
mindful of and deal with?

M. Johnson: Yes. The BLM\'s success is based upon the capabilities,
motivation and professionalism of our employees. Keeping these people
motivated, enthusiastic and productive requires that managers understand
the new generation of workers. The new generation of workers holds
non-traditional attitudes about space, freedom, flexible work schedules,
rewards and work-life balance. BLM managers must accept that
motivational factors vary from generation to generation. To better equip
ourselves to recruit and retain a strong diverse workforce, we must
understand and respect generational differences. I\'ll give you some
examples of these changing motivational factors. Job flexibility is more
important to today\'s workers than job security. New workers expect to
be involved in the decision-making process and having more exposure to
the decision makers. They want flexible work schedules to balance their
work and their personal lives. New workers respond to a creative work
environment. They want awards, incentives and feedback. Recent OMB and
OPM changes have given us some tools to attract the new generation of
worker and retain our present workforce. Let\'s look at some of those
personnel changes.

Cost of living increases have made the federal government a more
competitive employer. Happily, over the last several years we have seen
pay increases in close parity with military and reasonable within
inflation. There has been improvement in the SES pay system with more
incentives for good management. All employees now claim a work time
offset for official travel. So they\'re not expected to sacrifice their
personal time. This change, although small, values employees and
recognizes the need to balance family and work. The continuation of the
alternative work schedule program is a feature in enjoyed by over 91% of
our BLM employees. This flexibility has been proven to increase their
productivity. Most offices have adopted a policy that allows
telecommuting in appropriate circumstances for limited periods of time.
Telecommuting has been a family-friendly tool, particularly in helping
employees deal with family sickness and tragedy. Hopefully we\'ll see a
national policy this summer that will expand this program. Just recently
OPM reauthorized the relocation, retention and recruitment incentives.
These incentives are a positive management tool in recruiting and
retaining our workers.

T. Garrett: You\'ve talked about programs that benefit employees
generally speaking. What are we doing for managers? What are we doing
and seeing in terms tools that help managers do their job in terms of
managing our human capital.

M. Johnson: Well, let me address that. Let\'s look at some of these new
tools. In the past the time to hire employees was considered too
lengthy. So now the BLM has a hiring process model that is not to exceed
45 days. This period starts on the closing date of the application and
ends when a job offer is made, reducing the time needed to hire helps
keep interested employees as candidates and reduces the loss skills in
the workplace. Also important to the bureau is the hiring model for SES
positions.

The hiring process for SES positions has been set at 30 days. This means
shorter vacancies for key positions. You\'re aware of our use of the
automated application system. It\'s called Quickhire. The BLM has moved
aggressively toward the use of this automated job announcement tool. We
first employed this tool in the seasonal hiring of fire personnel. This
process known as \"FIRES\" has been very successful. In 2003, the
\"FIRES\" had over 13,000 applicants. That translates to more than 1700
applicants per vacancy. We now use Quickhire for BLMJobs to speed up the
hiring process for all jobs, not just fire. Managers surveyed like the
quality of the applicants and generally were satisfied with the
operation of the system. NTC has been hosting the BLM\'s automated IDP
or individual development system. It is very important to have this plan
accessible to managers in order to have career development discussions
with their employees. More than 3400 employees currently have an IDP on
the system. This is the positive outcome we\'re looking for, helping
employees with their career goals and improving the proficiency of every
employee. The IDP helps foster manager to employee dialogue and mutual
goal setting.

T. Garrett: All right. A little bit later in the program we\'re going to
be talking about the specific assignments to the leadership teams, but
what issues are you asking those leadership teams who will be dealing
with workforce planning to address in those deliberations?

M. Johnson: Again, I would like to invite our BLM managers to think
about your most important responsibilities, leading, motivating,
developing and protecting your staff, our employees. They are our most
important resource. One of the best things that we can do for our
employees is letting them know they are part of our progressive
organization and that their efforts are truly making a difference. The
current workforce planning approach has two primary drivers, first the
assumptions and guidelines, and secondly the budget. The assumptions and
guidelines in their present form are very, very general and leave room
for lots of interpretation. They were created by the field committee in
2003 when the budget outlook was way more hospitable. I\'m asking the
leadership teams assigned to review workforce planning to develop new
assumptions and guidelines that are clear and measurable. These
guidelines should have concrete goals with measurable objectives that
reflect the present austere budget outlook. To assist you in this task,
you have been provided the current assumptions and guidelines that were
approved by the field committee in 2003 as a basis for your discussion.

Second, I\'m asking you to define strategies that will lead to a more
flexible workforce. These strategies should guide managers toward a
workforce that has a better blend of permanent and supplemental workers.
In conclusion, the demands on the bureau and the current budget
realities will change the way we are about to do business. We will have
greater use of volunteers, contractors, federal and state partners, term
employees and temporary workers. We will take control of our destiny. We
will engage our employees in buying into BLM\'s future. We\'ve started a
workforce planning process built on what the leadership saw as
fundamental and have continued to refine the approach, but it could be
better and way more valuable. With that, I thank you for your help, and
I\'m looking forward to your recommendations and suggestions.

T. Garrett: Thanks, Marilyn for those comments. At this point, again,
using our interactive systems, please feel free to join in our
discussion about the human resource implications of what BLM will be
facing in the next few years or the other many issues that we\'ve
touched on thus far in the broadcast. We\'ll pause now and wait to hear
from the field or from the Washington managers who are standing by. Go
right ahead.

Caller: Tony, this is Ken in Idaho.

T. Garrett: Yes, go ahead, Idaho.

Caller: Marilyn, the workforce planning process that you\'ve described
seems like an excellent process to help us identify what our table of
organization should look like, but it doesn\'t seem to consider the
tools we need to get there, and it seems like we\'re moving a little too
slow in aggressively managing our workforce to get where we need to be
budget-wise by 2007 or \'08.

M. Johnson: Well, that\'s why I\'m asking for you to assist me in making
the assumptions and guidelines stronger. When we developed the
assumptions and guidelines in the year 2003, we thought we had all the
time in the world, all the money in the world and in fact, our workforce
plan said, not only do we need what we have, we need more, and so if you
read the guidelines, they\'re very, very general. Now that things have
changed, I need help from you to nail the assumptions and guidelines
down because that is the basis for building the entire workforce plan,
and if they\'re too general, then the workforce plan itself will be too
general.

Caller: So a follow-on question, you see that the tools will then become
part of the plan?

M. Johnson: Yes, sir.

T. Garrett: All right, Idaho. Larry, did you have comments on this?

L. Benna: Yeah, one of the things I wanted to add, Marilyn, is that in
order for us to get some of the tools, we have to have a workforce plan
that lays out clearly what our situation is. If that plan doesn\'t say
that we need to change things or we need to reorganize, we\'re not going
to get approval for the kind of tools we need to be able to adjust to
the workforce appropriately. So we have to do the plan first.

T. Garrett: Thank you. Idaho, does that answer your question?

Caller: Yes, thank you.

T. Garrett: Thanks for checking in with us. Other comments or questions
from the field? Anything on workforce issues, budget issues we\'ve
covered, workload issues, what are we going to stop doing issues?

Caller: This is Eric from Idaho, again.

T. Garrett: Yes, Eric, go ahead.

Caller: Our leadership team, in fact, has just completed a workforce
plan outlining our targets for our permanent and term employees through
fiscal year \'08. We feel like through the natural attrition process
that we\'ll be able to meet our reduction targets, if you will, in
number of positions through fiscal year \'06, but in the out years of
fiscal year \'07 and \'08 we feel like we\'re going to have a much more
difficult time meeting those reduction targets. My question is oriented
around the voluntary early retirement authority and the voluntary
separation incentive payment tools, and the question is, how often are
you going to evaluate the need by the field for those authorities to
help implement their workforce planning goals and are you going to
consider that on a state-by-state basis or as a bureau unto itself?

M. Johnson: Let me answer that for you. I\'ve had several conversations
with the department, and when we started our workforce planning process
they made it clear to us that the only way we would get early out
buy-out authority is if our workforce plan reflected the need for it,
and as I said earlier, our first workforce plan \-- or our present
workforce plan says that we need more help. They are not going to give
us early out buy-out authority if we\'re saying we need more help
because they\'re not going to let us gut ourselves, basically. If
you\'re doing a most efficient organization, they would possibly
consider it, or if you\'re doing competitive sourcing studies, they\'ll
consider it, but Larry mentioned earlier that we were doing a futuring
exercise, and the ELT is interested in doing this on a corporate basis
rather than us all taking off on our own directions. So I would invite
you to hang on, help me get some good assumptions and guidelines based
on what Larry said our budget picture is going to be, and I would like
to see us take a corporate approach to handling the workforce plan, and
if as a result of revising our workforce plan we need early-out buy-out,
then we\'ll do that.

T. Garrett: Kathleen, comments on that question?

Dir. Clarke: Yes, I just want to add one thought. I said earlier we
don\'t have any natural competitors, but we are competing for budgets.
We\'re competing for resources. So part of the activity we\'re going
through parallels competitive sourcing and the most efficient
organization development. We are trying to do this at a corporate level
so that we can come up with a plan that identifies exactly what our
capacity is relative to budget and what our workforce requirements are
going to be so that that those two match up. That will all play into the
exercise that we\'re talking about, which is to fundamentally identify
what we need to keep doing and what things we need to do differently or
cease doing.

T. Garrett: Eric in Idaho, thank you for that question. Other questions
or comments?

Caller: This is Jerry in Wyoming.

T. Garrett: Go ahead, Wyoming.

Caller: Hi. Do you ever any plans to delegate recruitment and retention
bonuses to the states?

M. Johnson: I guess I\'ll have to defer that question to my illustrious
leader here. The previous leadership felt it necessary to review each
and every request for relocation bonuses because we were very concerned
that the states use it prudently. So, we\'ve had a change in deputies
here, and perhaps Larry would want to consider doing something
different, and so I\'d invite you to address that question, Larry, if
you want to consider that.

L. Benna: You know, I have a general philosophy about giving authority
to the managers that have the job to do wherever they may be in the
organization, not having absolutely everything rise to the top.
Obviously we have to evaluate that fairly carefully. I think this would
be something that we would \-- at least I would consider. I think
there\'s some issues about making sure if we did this that there are
reasonable guidelines about how this was applied across the states and
offices. We need to careful about making sure that we could afford it.
So that would be my general thought. I would like to ask some of the
other State Directors that are on the line here if they\'d like to give
their viewpoint on this from where they sit, give us a little guidance
on how to make a decision on this. Anybody care to give me some advice
here?

Caller: This is Wyoming again. We believe, or some of us believe,
competition for outstanding employees is going to be fierce in the
future and that retention bonuses might be something that would be
helpful to the BLM.

T. Garrett: Kathleen?

Dir. Clarke: Well, as we\'ve indicated, we\'re looking for all kinds of
good ideas, and we\'ll be happy to take that one and consider it in the
mix of suggestions that we\'re looking forward to reviewing with the
leadership team and throughout this forum exercise.

L. Benna: One other comment, my thought process is that we\'ve made a
pretty good case that we\'re entering into a new era of challenges and
new changes. I personally like to be open-minded and flexible about a
lot of things we consider. I think we do need to look at things
differently than perhaps we have in the past. So I\'m willing to look at
a lot of things that you guys want to bring up for us to consider, quite
frankly.

T. Garrett: Thanks again, Wyoming.

Caller: This is Margo in Arizona.

T. Garrett: Yes, Arizona, go ahead.

Caller: Yes, Marilyn mentioned tying the workforce planning back to the
budget, and one of the common themes in looking at the future seems to
be the declining budget. There\'s also emphasis on using performance
analysis by subactivities on the use of program \-- or priority P.E.s on
budget allocations. My question is how can more emphasis be placed on
establishing priority P.E.s for administrative activities, specifically
the X codes?

Larry Benna: Let me take a shot at this. I appreciate your comments on
the priority P.E.s. Again, this is something that we\'ve gone around
with quite a bit over the past several years, and again I think we\'ve
had some success. We\'ve raised quite a few concerns. We\'re re-looking
at the concept of priority P.E.s to see whether that\'s really doing
what we want it to accomplish as far as ensuring accountability and
efficiencies and things like that. The second piece of your question is
how do we account for things in the administrative arena? One of the
things we have here, one of the actual work groups that we\'ll be
talking about later on, is called intangibles. And quite a bit of the
focus on that is gathering information about partnerships and some of
the things that we do that we don\'t now necessarily account for in our
system. So I think that might be a good place to include some of that in
there. I do think when we do that we need to be a little bit careful
about \-- and think carefully about making sure that whatever we propose
we still are able to present a very compelling story about what it costs
us to do and deliver the real key pieces of business that we do. Those
are, again, for example, oil and gas issues, habitat improvements,
things like that. We want to make sure that we can give to the decision
makers the true cost of doing that business. We recognize that we need
to come up with a way to capture some of the other things that we do
that do take a lot of our resources.

T. Garrett: Thank you, Larry, and thanks for that question, Arizona.
Other comments? Yes, go ahead.

Caller: Oregon

T. Garrett: Okay. We\'re going to ask Oregon to go ahead with the
question and have the other caller stand by until that\'s finished. Go
ahead, Oregon.

Caller: Okay. Let\'s try again. Do you expect any change in the pace or
direction of competitive sourcing in the near future while we do this
workforce planning and new organization implementation?

L. Benna: I guess I will jump into that one again. I think if you look
at where we are right now, we\'ve actually already done that. We have
intentionally slowed down the pace of our competitive sourcing studies.
I think this year we\'re only doing \-- I don\'t have the exact numbers,
but I think we\'re doing one study for the science shop in Wyoming, and
we\'ve done that intentionally. The reason was to let us take a little
more of a business-like or corporate look at how we do these studies. We
wanted to make sure we\'re doing them for business reasons. We are
carefully evaluating which programs we were going to look at. I think
most importantly that we would really try and protect and make sure we
could maintain those programs that are directly related to our mission.
We will be doing competitive sourcing studies in the future. There is no
doubt about that. It\'s part of the president\'s management agenda. The
focus on that will continue. But again, I think we\'re going to look
very carefully about what we w put on the table to study to make sure it
doesn\'t cause us harm when, in fact, what we\'re trying to do is
actually look at the value of what we\'re delivering and do some good.
So we\'re going to take a closer look at that.

Dir. Clarke: I think also one of the activities inherent in the
competitive sourcing is to come up with most efficient organizations,
and I know Elaine and folks out in Oregon had a very challenging and
very difficult, but successful process. Why don\'t you take about one
minute and tell us a little bit about that and the cost savings that
resulted from that effort.

Caller: Okay, Kathleen, I\'ll give it a shot. Yes, it was a challenging,
very stressful and time consuming exercise, but the E76 process does
force us to carefully evaluate and examine every assumption we have made
about the way we work. Also, it forces us to come up with an
organizational structure that is at least 20% more savings than we are
currently experiencing or we will not be successful in the competition.
Therefore, it does create an opportunity to be very, very creative. We
had estimated savings of \-- I can\'t say exactly, but over a million
dollars. We are now assessing that we may be saving significantly more
than that per year. We will know for sure \-- this is our first year in
implementing our new organization, and we may be seeing up to \$700,000
more savings, but I will reserve that until we get to the end of the
year and the exercises done.

Dir. Clarke: Are you getting good services?

Caller: Yes, we are. The adjustment, I have to give all kudos to the
employees who were involved in this, because the adjustment came from
them and how they do their work and how they\'re organized to do their
work and the leadership change that occurred there and with an excellent
manager managing this work crew and workforce and the employees
themselves and the offices who had to adjust are really making it work
excellently. We\'re getting excellent results.

Dir. Clarke: Something akin to what we\'re doing now, really. We are
putting ourselves through an \-- ourselves through an informal A76
process. We\'re not jumping into the competitive sourcing arena per se,
but the very activity that we are contemplating and initiating with all
of you today is about becoming more competitive in the big global
picture. It\'s about us creating that most efficient organization,
assuring that we continue to provide good services, but that we think
differently about our work and we start doing our work differently.
Thanks, Elaine, for sharing. That was just the example I think we
needed.

L. Benna: Kathleen, that\'s an excellent point. When we talk late or
about one of the specific work groups, one of the things we\'ll be
specifically asking you to do is to look at how we can make BLM a most
efficient organization, but also to actually try and come up with what
are the actual criteria? What are the measures of success of making BLM
a most efficient organization?

T. Garrett: All right. We had another caller standing by. If you\'re
still there, go ahead with your question.

Caller: Yes, this is Charles from Eastern States. With the recent
emphasis on diversifying the workforce and looking at a national
demographic that\'s becoming more diverse and multi-cultural and
multi-lingual, how do we reconcile that national policy with the
declining resources and staffing we\'ll be working with over the next
few years?

M. Johnson: The way we\'ve reconciled it is that, as I said earlier,
almost half of our employees are at or near retirement age. So there\'s
going to be that bubble that\'s going to burst, and those people will be
moving on, and at our last ELT, we discussed specific strategies for
reaching out to diverse publics and bringing young people of different
backgrounds and origins into the Bureau. So we are hedging our bets that
as the bubble bursts we will have strategies in place to bring in young
people who will be able to take their place and will reflect more
diversity in the bureau. So we had that very specific discussion. The
ELT bought off on those strategies. And I\'ve been personally charged
with making those strategies work.

Dir. Clarke: I think it\'s just interesting to point out that we\'re
talking about the tremendous challenges facing the BLM, but stop and
contemplate the incredible opportunities that we\'re also talking about,
opportunities for people to move up in this organization at an amazing
pace, for new ideas, for new thinking, for innovation and creativity. So
it\'s an exciting time to be at the BLM. I hope you\'re getting that
from this meeting. It\'s not just about the difficulties. It\'s about
the incredible opportunity to help create an organization that will be
productive and relevant for the next century.

M. Johnson: And, Kathleen, if I can add to that, the SCEP orientation
for this year is going on, as we speak, upstairs. I think you would be
very happy if you saw that group. They\'re very representative of a
diverse culture, and they\'ve been very interactive and they\'re very
enthusiastic. So I was very pleased as I spoke with the new SCEP
students, and I might add Larry had the same opportunity to address that
group, and I think you made the same observation. Is that true, Larry?

L. Benna: I did. I also made the observation that it was one of the
first groups I have addressed in a while that didn\'t look as gray as I
did overall. It was kind of refreshing.

T. Garrett: Thank you, Charles, at Eastern States for that question. We
had several questions faxed in. This is from Mike in Oregon. It says our
multiple use mandates has led to internal and external expectations that
BLM provide something to everyone all the time. Is it possible to start
saying no to some of the demands of our citizens and focus on a smaller
set of priorities without changing our mission? Larry, can you comment
on than?

L. Benna: I think the short answer to that is absolutely. We need to do
that. I think the longer answer to that is this may be one of the most
difficult things that we do. Again, saying no to the public and
admitting perhaps to our constituents and perhaps to the Congress that
there are certain things that we just can\'t do or can\'t deliver is
much to the credit of the BLM employees. This is not, and hasn\'t been
the culture of the BLM. We have been a can-do organization. We have gone
out of our way to just do as much as we can to advance our mission. But,
again, I think we are clearly at the point where we just can\'t do that.
We are spreading ourselves too thin. The budget again is getting less
and less in some key areas and I think that the key here is we just have
to focus. We just can\'t do this anymore, and we\'re just going to have
to get really serious about saying no, and this will be difficult. I
know we will be willing to support you on this, but again I think we
have to be realists here. There will be some instances where there are
just some things we will just have to get done and I think we\'ll have
to work through those. Again, this is something you are right on. We
just have to do this now.

Dir. Clarke: I think an additional thing we need to think about as
leaders in the BLM is managing expectations. I think we need to manage
them internally. We need to manage them externally. And my
recommendation to all of you would be that you under-promise and then
over-deliver if you have that capability.

T. Garrett: All right. Thank you. We\'re ready for other calls from the
field or from Washington managers. Please go ahead at this time.

Caller: Sandy in Montana.

Caller: This is Joe in Utah.

T. Garrett: Utah go ahead and I\'ll ask the second caller to stand by.
Go ahead, Utah.

Caller: Our question is regarding the cost recovery and what kind of
strategies are in place to build that into workforce planning as well as
to see what kind of direction we need to go in the future to augment
some of those lagging program areas.

L. Benna: I think cost recovery is something we at BLM are starting to
look at more seriously and it\'s also something we\'re being pressured
quite a bit from OMB to look at. OMB has been reviewing quite a few of
our programs through a formal review process they have, and a lot of
their recommendations have said, get more money from the people that
your are actually providing services to. I think we have taken some
steps already in two specific areas. One is in the lands and realty
program where we\'ve increased some fees and changed the fee structure,
I believe, somewhat to increase our cost recovery to do some of the
applications. Another one we have in play right now is in the minerals
programs. Our budget for 2006 reflects a significant increase in money
for cost recovery in these areas. We have had some discussions about
some other areas that might offer these opportunities, and as we go
through these discussions, we\'re trying to evaluate very carefully the
fact that while it may seem prudent for us to gather these funds, we
also have to consider how much some of these applicants and industry is
already paying for some of the services we provide. So we\'re trying to
create that balance, but we are looking at cost recovery.

T. Garrett: Thanks for the question, Utah. And we had a second caller
trying to reach us. Please go ahead.

Caller: Sandy in Montana.

T. Garrett: Yes, Sandy.

Caller: As we transition our organization, what is your vision for
improving or modernizing the image of the BLM with legislators, our
constituencies and the general public?

Dir. Clarke: The leadership team of the BLM has had that very issue on
its plate for a long time, as long as I\'ve been there. We initially had
some fairly aggressive activities that were designed, which have been
difficult to continue to fund. I think on a more informal basis we have
aggressively sought to help folks understand what BLM is about. We are
working with the hill. And let me report that Congress in general, the
western congressional offices that we work with, sing the praises of the
BLM on a very regular basis, and they have nothing but kudos to offer
the BLM field folks for your creativity, your flexibility and probably
most importantly your willingness to engage their constituents in
working through challenges and issues. One of our challenges in terms of
marketing ourselves is the fact that a message that may resonate with
people who love our national landscape conservation system may not
resonate with another group of people. So it is a challenge for us to
package a marketing message that resonates with everyone. So that was
why I was talking earlier about our interest in starting to package our
messages better, using the electronic capabilities of this center, using
directed e-mails so that we can really enhance our image and tell the
story to particular groups that they want to hear and need to
understand. Then tell, in a broad context, about multiple use which will
always be the hallmark of our mission and this agency.

T. Garrett: Sandy, thanks for that question. Does that answer the
question that you have \-- other comments on this issue of message,
marketing and managing expectations. Sometimes the challenge is managing
perception also.

Caller: Yes, thank you.

T. Garrett: Other comments from the field, from Washington?

Caller: Arizona, got a question for Director Clarke.

Dir. Clarke: You talked earlier about shrinking budgets and loss of
staff. Given these factors, how do you view the future of the NLCS and,
further, what is BLM doing to ensure that the new national monuments
don\'t go to the national Park Service?

Dir. Clarke: We are very protective of these national monuments, and I
hope you\'ll recall that there was some discussion and debate after
Secretary Norton took her job about whether there would be a different
approach taken. BLM and the department embraced the national landscape
conservation system and we have been proud to be supporters of that
system. I think NLCS, like every other program out there, will be
subject to scrutiny. What I really hope we do is not look so vividly at
our programs as unique and apart from others. I think we\'ve got to
start looking more holistically about all of the programs, about the
landscape we manage, and we\'ve got to see the opportunities for
interaction and connectivity as we manage these processes. The landscape
itself doesn\'t differentiate between who the land owner is. It\'s not
interested in where the boundaries of the jurisdictions are. We need to
get a little less concerned about jurisdictional boundaries in the BLM,
a little less concerned about whether there is NLCS or this is managed
by the state or has oil and gas. We need to start looking at things
together. That isn\'t in any way to suggest that NLCS will be dealt with
any differently than the other programs, but I think we have to see the
big \"we\" instead of identifying \"what about my area and my
challenge?\" We\'re going to need people at NLCS to step up to the plate
like everyone else to help us find solutions to put on the table. Where
can we do more together and get to all of our objectives and continue to
manage these incredible landscapes as well as the activities that are
permitted on them.

T. Garrett: Thanks for that question, Arizona. We had another caller
trying to reach us. Go ahead now.

Caller: Yeah, Lee from National Centers.

T. Garrett: Yes, Lee.

Caller: Marilyn, you mentioned that we have about 25% of our workforce
will be eligible for retirement in the next three years. Obviously
we\'ve talked a lot about replacing the workforce. What we haven\'t
talked about is capturing the institutional knowledge that will be
leaving with these employees. I know we have an initiative going on to
look at that and address it and it\'s been going on for some time. I\'m
interested in knowing what priority we\'re going to put on that effort,
how we\'re going to accomplish that and what resources we\'re going to
be willing to invest in making sure that we have the capability of that.
In addition, I\'d like to hear your thoughts about how we\'re going to
effectively tap into this new resource that we\'ll have, and that will
be the retired community that is taking that knowledge with them but can
come back as volunteers and do a very effective and professional job in
meeting our requirements that we may not be able to staff with permanent
full-time people.

T. Garrett: Lee, let me ask you to give us a very brief description of
that program you\'re talking about that captures the institutional
knowledge before these people leave the Bureau.

Caller: I\'ll let Norm talk to you about what he is doing on
institutional knowledge, but before \--

T. Garrett: We just want you to give us a thumbnail sketch so others
know what you are question pertains to.

M. Johnson: I believe, Lee, you were asking me what I\'m doing about it,
and I\'ll tell you what we\'ve done so far. We sat down last week and we
have developed a strategy for designing an inventory of occupations that
will be leaving in the very near future, and I\'ve charged Gary Dreier,
Norm and Linda with developing that inventory. Even though that\'s a
very small effort right now, clearly you must have heard us because Norm
is very sensitive that you should be involved in that effort since you
have the bulk of the scientists are with you. So those people will be
getting with you in the very near future to talk about their strategy
for developing that inventory. Linda and Norm and Gary are charged with
developing an initial inventory of knowledges that we\'ll be losing in
the next three to five years. And your second question, I\'m sorry, can
you repeat that so I can deal with that?

Caller: Yes, the second question addressed the opportunity that we have
in tapping into this new resource of retirees in terms of using those
skills that the retirees have to meet some of our priority management
work we may not be able afford to do with PFTs. Are we developing a
strategy to work with public lands foundation and other retirees to
bring them back as volunteers to help us out?

M. Johnson: We have an excellent relationship with the Public Lands
Foundation, and, of course, they\'re stronger in some states than
others, and we have asked the retirees to come back. Kathleen, you\'ve
asked some of the retirees to come back and share their opinions on the
organization. So I think we would continue in that vein, but I\'ll let
Kathleen go more with that.

Dir. Clarke: I think there\'s probably opportunity for us to do more in
that arena and to put together a formal strategy of outreach. I was
astounded when I was in Oregon, maybe about a year ago, to meet a
gentleman who just retired and he was still working full time in the
same job he left. But he says the good part now is that because I\'m a
volunteer, I\'m leaving the paper work to someone else and doing the
field work that I love. Those people that retire do have an ethic of
service and they want to stay engaged and involved. So I couldn\'t agree
more. I think we need to have a very focused strategy and get those
people to continue to help us do the work that we need help with.

Caller: Don in the National Training Center.

T. Garrett: Yes, Don, go ahead.

Caller: I would like to just put out the invitation to everyone thinking
about retiring that we could use their help as subject matter experts
here at the training center when they retire. So I put out the call for
all of you to get in touch with us.

T. Garrett: Lee, were those answers helpful to you?

Caller: Yes.

T. Garrett: You wanted to talk a moment to talk about that legacy
project for the viewers who may not be familiar with what you\'re doing?

Caller: Be happy to do that. About four years ago we initiated an
initiative called the legacy program which is intended to invite
retirees and senior employees to return to locations that early on in
their career they had perform land management treatments and to work
with the current staffs to share with the staffs what their intent was,
what they hoped the outcomes would be and then together evaluate what
the outcomes actually were with the objective of by taking a
retrospective view learning a little bit about what did and did not work
in the past and using to that frame future management objectives. We\'ve
done numerous legacy visits in various states and the feedback I\'m
getting has been extremely positive that our current managers and
specialists are learning a lot about what has influenced the managing of
our landscapes in the future. I would encourage all of you that are
interested in having retirees or other senior BLM employees to come back
to your location to contact the National Science And Technology Center,
myself,(Lee Barkow) and we will work with you to orchestrate a legacy
visit to your location.

T. Garrett: Thank you, Lee. Thanks for your work on that. Thanks for
your question. Other questions from the field?

Caller: This is Jesse in New Mexico.

T. Garrett: Yes, Jesse, go right ahead.

Caller: Larry, I wanted to pass on to you, Linda knows how to take care
of gray hair. Also, I did have a question, though, in regards to
something that Marilyn was talking about with the generation that we
refer to as the GEN-Ys. They\'re comfortable in moving between
organizations, whether it\'s Federal sector agencies or whether it\'s
private and Federal sector, et cetera. I think Marilyn began to touch on
this a bit, but one of the questions I have, is are we giving some
thought to how we need to change as an organization to deal with the
generation that\'s going to be a lot more comfortable moving from job to
job and organization to organization as opposed to spending 30 years
with one agency?

M. Johnson: I have to be perfectly honest and say we\'ve just started
the conversations. I have a gen-X\'er in my organization and she\'s
proud to say so. She is constantly challenging me, as a baby boomer, on
some of my ethics and some of my thoughts about job mobility and job
flexibility. So to say I have this grandiose plan I can offer you all in
terms of handling the new worker, I don\'t. We have engaged in those
conversations, and I would say probably the futuring team that Larry is
heading up will consider those generational motivators as we talk about
the change in the organization. Larry, any thoughts on that?

L. Benna: Again, I think this is probably a golden opportunity for us to
tap into the gen X and gen-y\'s we have in the BLM, and say, how can we
accommodate this new generation? I would feel a lot more comfortable
hearing that from someone who is there rather than just myself or others
who are baby-boomers coming up with that strategy. So I think we should
really gather those people together and get their opinions on how we\'re
working.

Dir. Clarke: I think it should be one of our goals to be an employer of
choice and we are an organization that will have many, many
opportunities, and I think these new people coming up, these young
people, want to be in an organization that\'s progressive and willing to
think outside the box, willing to do new things, and gives them an
opportunity to contribute. So I think we\'re going to be well poised to
inspire those folks to come join us and to help us pave the way forward.

L. Benna: One other thing I might add, Marilyn mentioned I spoke to the
SCEP students this morning, and I think one message that comes across
very well to new and young employees is just how exciting it is to work
for the BLM and the diversity of really critical important and
interesting issues we have to deal with. Most people you talk to in BLM
that have been around for a while say they\'ve rarely had a boring day
in BLM. I mean its a constant challenge. There are opportunities for
travel, to see new things, to do new things, and I really think that\'s
something that BLM is somewhat unique in. I also think we offer a lot of
innovation and give employees the opportunities to be creative and to
come up with solutions and to help solve things. I think we\'re fairly
unique in that regard. I think that\'s a good message to give.

M. Johnson: But as a culture I think we need to become more sensitive to
the fact that our new workers, even though they may enjoy all the
innovation that they have here at the BLM, they\'re always seeking a new
kind of fun, so I guess \-- my suggestion to all of us baby-boomers out
there, to include myself, is to just become sensitive that even though
they may be enjoying our fun for the day, it\'s just their thing. They
my want to go enjoy their fun somewhere else, and our challenge is to be
poised to replace those people and capture their knowledge as they move
onto other organizations and other entities and not hold it against them
that they decided they didn\'t want to make BLM their employer of choice
for the next 30 years, as we have.

T. Garrett: Jesse in New Mexico, thanks for that question. At this point
we want to move on now to a discussion about the team assignments that
your groups will be working on during the next few days. Kathleen, why
is this important and what will be done with the results that we\'ll be
looking at?

Dir. Clarke: Tony, it\'s important because we are the leadership of this
organization. There\'s only one field manager in Farmington. There\'s
only one State Director in Idaho. There\'s only one assistant Director
for minerals resources in Washington. Whatever position we hold in the
BLM, when we occupy that position, we are solely given the privileges,
the responsibilities and the powers related to that position. If we
don\'t step up to the plate and take a look at this, who else is going
to? It is incumbent upon us to look at the challenges and the priorities
that we\'re facing. We also need to look at the structure of this
organization. I think we\'ve got to take a hard look at the workforce
and clearly at our financial realities. We need to consider how we can
best bring all of our resources together to continue to advance our
mission in a time of great change and great uncertainty. I\'m really
counting on the folks that are working on these teams to come up with
some options and to help us cast a bright light on the future. So, Tony,
that\'s why it\'s important.

T. Garrett: All right. And we do have some specific goals for these
assignments that our leadership teams will be working on. Larry, would
you talk about those?

L. Benna: Sure. And again, I think in listening to the different
speakers and interactions it\'s pretty clear there\'s a pretty
consistent message about what we\'re facing in the future, what our
challenges are, and what our opportunities are. I think what we\'re
really looking for from each of these teams is to develop some
innovative, creative and effective strategies that will help us deal
with these challenges. Specifically how we\'ll do this, again, this is
what you guys will be working on after this satellite broadcast. This is
where I guess for you a lot of work is going to begin. We want to take
your ideas and your strategies that you\'ll put together for us. We want
you to develop these into a consolidated team report and submit those to
Washington Office 800 by June 30th. After that we will take this to the
Executive Leadership Team, and there\'s a meeting scheduled for this
fall. The ELT will look at your reports, your suggestions, your proposed
strategies, and then these will go to the Director for her to make a
decision. Somewhere along the way, I want you to realize that we\'ll
probably be putting together other folks and other employees and staff
to help us to evaluate some of the pros and cons, some of the costs of
these so that we have a good idea of what these things really mean. The
next step after that is we\'ll engage leadership in the department and
elsewhere as needed to help us implement the strategy. Again, we\'re
looking and we\'re asking you for some cutting-edge, innovative ideas,
and in order for us to implement these I don\'t think there\'s any doubt
we\'re going to need a lot of support and champions to help us move this
forward. So I think that\'s our overall goal about where we\'re going to
take this, Tony.

T. Garrett: The planners of this forum with a lot of input from the
field identified four team topic areas for management teams to focus on.
Each topic area has been assigned to a team. Your forum agenda and guide
and the facilitators guide were sent to your site before this session.
Those will help you through these working sessions that are coming up.
They contain a lot of useful information. Now let\'s go over those team
assignments. The first topic area is processes and requirements. This
topic area will be addressed by the Alaska, California and Idaho state
leadership teams, as well as the Washington Office and Denver Center
teams. Larry, talk about that topic.

L. Benna: Teams that are working in this area, we would like you to
focus on processes that we can either streamline, change or totally
eliminate, and the overall objective here is to be able to have
employees focus their efforts strictly on our core mission. Again,
we\'re not going to be able to do everything and one of the things we
need to do up front is get the processes that aren\'t helping out of the
way. We want you to help us eliminate rules and process and regulations
that we put in place by ourselves, and specifically those ones that just
aren\'t any value to what we need to really get done. We\'re looking for
solid ideas to get processes and bureaucracy out of the way for you and
your employees do their job better and get more things done on the
ground and focus on those things that directly relate to our mission.
One thing I thought of is if you question why we do something, then
maybe we really shouldn\'t be doing it. Let\'s put it on the table and
see if we can make some progress.

T. Garrett: The second focus area is called measuring the intangible.
This is an assignment for the Nevada and Wyoming state leadership teams
as well as the Washington Office and the NIFC management team, measuring
the intangibles.

Larry Benna: The intangibles. Again, I think these are things that BLM
employees do that are valuable to the organization but they\'re not
easily measured in the traditional way we measure things. They\'re not
considered in either acres of land, it\'s not measured in recreation
visits. They\'re not measured in applications for permits to drill or
animal unit months, horses adopted or any of the other units or items
that we account for in our management information system. I think for
BLM, given that our strength is working with our neighbors and partners
and bringing people along, a lot of times it\'s not what we do, but
it\'s how we do it that makes us successful. I think these are the
things we\'re really trying to get a handle on to tell an effective
story. I think we should also think about the time and energy we devote
to relationships with our customers, again making partnerships work, and
the people that just walk in the front door every day. How do we measure
that and how do we tell a story that, again, is a critical piece of what
we do? We also need to think about how do we account for the work that
we do that\'s not measured either in our outputs or through the
department's strategic plan? There\'s a big focus on that plan, but
again it\'s not all-inclusive and we need to be able to tell an
effective story. Again, this is work that\'s important and right now it
was raised in several of the comments during the question and answer
periods that we\'re either not tracking it or perhaps we\'re not getting
our message or story across to the people that are making decisions
about BLM in the future. I think this is where we\'re getting at when we
talk about intangibles or things we\'re not measuring or tracking now.

T. Garrett: Our third topic area is the organization, the Arizona and
the Montana state leadership teams will be working on strategies for
this topic, along with New Mexico and Utah leadership teams and the
Washington Office and Denver centers also will be looking at that topic.
Guidance for the teams looking at organization.

L. Benna: Sure. I think the key here is the most efficient organization
mentioned by Kathleen. What we really want here is what does the most
efficient organization look like for BLM? This is an organization where
we\'re looking to improve teamwork, collaboration, one that will
eliminate duplication, provide career paths for employees and make the
best use of our existing and projected resources. Another thing we want
you to consider is, what are the specific criteria we should use to
establish a most efficient organization. Elaine from Oregon gave a few
examples in how she established her organization through the competitive
sourcing process. We want to take another step up and ask what are the
criteria we should use to establish a most efficient organization across
the BLM.

T. Garrett: Then our fourth topic area is the workforce, and that will
be an assignment for the NIFC and National Training Center management
teams along with Colorado, Eastern and Oregon leadership teams.
Washington Office teams will also be looking at this topic assignment,
the workforce.

L. Benna: Again, I think Marilyn spoke very well about this and laid it
out pretty well. What we\'re looking for here are updated strategies to
use when we put together a workforce plan, and I think as Marilyn
mentioned, we\'re looking for that workforce plan to better reflect the
realities that we\'re facing now, including reduced budgets. Also, the
changing demographics of the country and our workforce, as well as the
future skill needs that we may need. We also would like you to think
about and consider strategies for building a more flexible workforce and
to help us recruit for the future employees in the BLM.

T. Garrett: All right. So those are the four topic areas and
assignments. I\'m sure there are some questions at this point. So we\'re
going to lash up all our interactive technology one last time so you can
talk to us about your assignments or anything else that we\'ve covered
thus far in the satellite session.

Caller: This is Doug in Colorado.

T. Garrett: Yes, Doug, go ahead.

Caller: Thanks. A number of the subject areas, the workgroup areas, and
the strategies that you develop are interdependent and some are actually
sequential. If we have an organizational change or we decide to dispense
with one or more processes would that change the skill needs and
possibly what our workforce looks like. Are we expecting that there will
be an analysis of the input from the various groups between now and
September that would take into account that sequential nature of
interdependence?

Dir. Clarke: Absolutely. I believe it\'s going to be imperative we do a
lot of analysis and as was stated early on, we want to take a core
corporate look at our efforts. We are an effectively decentralized
organization but for some things we need to be on the same page and
making the same steps for purposes of working with our constituents in
Congress and the department. It was mentioned that we are going to have
the ELT present a product and a proposal. That\'s not until November,
but I can assure you that between now and November the ELT will be hands
on with this as will other subgroups that are going to be working to
analyze the work you do. I have every expectation we will have several
iterations back to the states and with working groups in the states. So
this will be an intense effort. I realize it will compete with other
demands, but I think this is a very important one and one that, as I
said, if we don\'t do it, who is going to? And I think there are people
who would step up to do it for us, but I don\'t think they will do it
with the vision, the sensitivity or a real comprehension of what
elements are critical and how we deal with our constituents and our
customers and maintain the services that are so critical to the quality
of life in this nation.

T. Garrett: Thank you, Doug, for that question. Other questions or
comments from the field? You may have questions about your assignments
or about the process for how you approach those, so we\'ll just stand by
\--

Dir. Clarke: I\'ll step in here. There\'s going to be lots of activities
going on. One from the fire organization that may really affect other
things is a new tool called fire planning analysis, which is going to
result in some different organizational approaches to fire management
and fire suppression. I also think getting back to my concerns about
stove piped substructures within the BLM that as we really move forward
in the business of land management across federal government the
emphasis is not so much right now on fire suppression and fire
management as it is on restoration and land health. Fire becomes a tool
that we use to accomplish other objectives. Those are the kinds of
changes that we need to contemplate and, in fact, we\'re going to be
working not just across boundaries of agencies in DOI, but with
Department of Defense and with Department of Agriculture in this whole
business of fire planning analysis. You know, we ought to incorporate
the direction that\'s taking into our thinking about possible new
directions for the organization of BLM. Larry, can you tell us a little
more about what\'s coming down the pike there?

Caller: Kathleen, this is Tim, and what you\'ve explained on the fire
planning analysis is right in line with efforts to work across agency
lines and blur the surveyors mark. The basic unit for managing is the
fire planning unit and it totally disregards administrative lines and
wholly adopts landscapes that are contiguous. The budget scenario will
be run at that level, at that FP level, and we can look at staffing at
that level, and it presents a tremendous opportunity for cost savings
when we think about consolidation. If we\'re all managing within an FPU,
whether it\'s rangeland, fire, wildlife, aviation, we\'re probably going
to step back and see redundant positions. Say in fire we end up with
having six existing fire management officers amongst four to five
resource agencies an perhaps DOD, if you will, parts of Nevada, New
Mexico and others, we may be able to deal with having one to three fire
management officers. So that\'s the kind of efficiency that FPA is going
to drive and it\'s timely for the direction we\'re heading.

Dir. Clarke: I think that\'s right on, Tim. As I say, as you start to
look at a geographic area, irrespective of boundaries, we will probably
find that we have overlap on many other management elements as well and
resource elements. So I think the group that\'s looking at organization
as well as the rest of us in general really need to focus because that
one is already out the chute and down the road. We are going to be
moving in that direction. We ought to build perhaps on the model that is
presented in this fire analysis, fire planning analysis, and make sure
that we don\'t create something that\'s inconsistent with it or that
would cause us more disjointed challenges than we have.

T. Garrett: All right. Other questions from the field about the
assignments or the focus areas or any of the other issues we\'ve covered
during this satellite session?

Caller: This is Margo in Arizona.

T. Garrett: Yes, Margo. Go ahead.

Caller: Question on process. On the team report template on number 8 it
talks about additional developing strategies in the areas assigned. My
question is, how can we have input into another state\'s task?

T. Garrett: Larry, can you answer that?

L. Benna: Well, again, I think what we\'re really looking at here is for
you to take two viewpoints. One, from a national perspective or a
corporate level, in other words, looking down at the whole organization
and come up with some thoughts and ideas there. And I think the second
piece is from where you sit in the organization. I think we\'re really
looking for you to be able to tell us what is getting in the way of you
specifically being able to do your job, and I\'m actually envisioning
that I think we\'ll see a fair amount of commonality here across
different states and different field offices that are doing the same
things and are running into the same roadblocks.

Dir. Clarke: Larry, let\'s have a discussion here, because I think I
heard your question as you may have some compelling comments you\'d like
to make on something that you haven\'t been assigned to focus on. I want
all of those comments to come forward. So I think you\'ve got a task at
hand with your state that we hope you will focus on and take very
seriously, but I welcome all your other input relative to anything that
we\'ve discussed or issues we haven\'t brought forward today. You know,
share them with us. I think it\'s fine to share them with a state that
may be working on something that you want to comment on. But if you
would like to forward your comments and ideas, let me just ask that your
state package those ideas so that they\'re easier for us to sort
through. So whoever is going to be compiling your report, if you do a
category that\'s additional comments, categorize them as to what
they\'re related to and what they might impact, whether it\'s H.R.
activities, whether we\'re talking organization, whether we\'re talking
about some of these ambiguous areas where we\'re trying to measure
performance or whether it\'s something else entirely. But I don\'t in
any way want to limit your feedback to this process. We need you to
inform our thinking to, to enlighten us and to give us the best ideas,
so that when we do make a decision we will have done so with the very
best of insights and input from all of you.

T. Garrett: Is that helpful, Margo?

Caller: Yes, thanks.

T. Garrett: Other questions or comments from the field?

Caller: This is Tom from the Denver Center.

T. Garrett: Yes, Tom, go ahead, please.

Caller: I noticed in each of the four groups that\'s one or two or more
states were assigned. Is there a particular who is leading it and from
whom we can expect to receive times and methods of communicating?

T. Garrett: I\'m not sure we have \-- do we have an answer to that here
at this point. Layer I specifically don\'t. I know there is an
individual \--

T. Garrett: There is a contact who can answer that question. We\'ll give
you the phone number and you can contact the program coordinator
directly if we don\'t get an answer for you.

Dir. Clarke: Tony? Can I suggest that that is probably a very common
question and that rather than just inviting them to call that we
probably ought to assemble an answer to that and get it out to everyone
so they know who the leads are and they know how to interact with these
process. I assume those leads will be meeting in the next day or two in
the case of the states but for those that are maybe not aligned with the
State Director\'s office, they need to know how they\'re going to play
into this effort and when the meetings are held and so I think we need
to maybe provide a little more guidance on this.

T. Garrett: Perhaps we could see if it\'s possible that the forum
coordinator be available in the next few minutes, either by a
push-to-talk system or some other device, so that we can put the
question to him and have an answer.

L. Benna: Might also ask if any of the individuals that were on the team
that put together the forum, if they have an answer for that if they
could chime in.

Caller: This is Elaine in Arizona.

T. Garrett: Yes, Elaine.

Caller: The overall person that we had designated for process questions
is Doug Adams at the training center. We did not delegate or assign
leads to every topic area. The thought there was that these folks, each
topical area, each group, would operate fairly independently and they
could, if they wanted to, call each other because we know who is on each
assigned focus area. But the intent was to kind of let those groups
function independently to just come up with their own thinking, their
own perspective so we get a whole bunch of different perspectives that
come in.\
\
Dir. Clarke: Were you also envisioning they would self-appoint a leader
or someone to kind of lead those groups? And were you anticipating any
connectivity between the several states that may be addressing the same
issue?

Caller: This is Elaine again. We were not, at least from our perspective
as a planning team, we did not envision any kind of formal contact. We
were kind of leaving that up to folks if they wanted to do that, but the
thought again was to kind of have this independent, so we really
weren\'t influenced or didn\'t do some kind of consensus discussion
right away, but let that \-- that flow.

T. Garrett: I\'m told there\'s additional information that may clarify
that in the facilitator\'s guide. Tom, does that help? Do we need to
clarify the answer further?

Caller: I\'ll get with Larry offline maybe and do it that way.

Dir. Clarke: And if we get the sense that there\'s enough concern about
the need for more direction on this, we will certainly pull that
thinking together and get some guidance to you. In the meantime, be
creative, be innovative and think outside the box since we didn\'t give
you a box.

T. Garrett: Just handed a fax we may want to address quickly. This is a
question that was faxed in from the field: 20% of budget is I.T.,
information technology. Is it truly on the table for reduction
consideration?

L. Benna: I think everything is on the table. With respect to I.T., I
think as we go through \-- we\'ve gone through budget deliberations in
the future. We\'re looking at administrative overhead and processes and
we\'re considering all of those issues. The one thing with I.T. we need
to be a little bit careful. This is why we have an information
technology investment board which actually goes through, and with
representatives from across the Bureau, makes some of the evaluations of
I.T. projects and investments. They try to come up with a critical
balance between what do we not do now so we can get things done on the
ground versus what do we need to do now to make sure we\'re keeping on
technological improvements and changes in I.T. for the future. That\'s a
careful balance and it\'s difficult to do. If we look at our systems,
for example, the automated fluid and mineral system, where would we be
had we not invested in that in the past now? So that\'s a very difficult
decision but one we are weighing very carefully, and, yes, everything is
on the table.

T. Garrett: Thanks for that question. Other questions or comments from
the field or from the Washington location?

Caller: This is Roy in Colorado.

T. Garrett: Yes, Roy, go ahead.

Caller: We were just curious, there\'s going to be a lot of interest in
what comes out of this forum by our employees, and we\'re just curious
if there\'s been any thought as to how to communicate that, those
findings, to our employees? Is that something that\'s going to come out
of Washington or are we expected from the respective state offices to do
that?

L. Benna: Good question, Roy. We\'ve actually thought about this, and
the plan is that I believe within a month, and maybe somebody on the
planning team can correct me, but we\'re planning on having a broadcast
in a month would that actually provide the feedback from this forum and
actually maybe more importantly where we are in actually accomplishing
things and addressing some of the issues from here.

T. Garrett: I think that\'s tentatively scheduled for September.

Dir. Clarke: But that will happen prior to us making final decisions and
moving forward. And I think in terms of the questions you may get about
this forum today, I think you need to be candid and honest about its
brainstorming, we\'re looking creatively at how to be to be efficient,
how to be aggressive \-- progressive and how to adjust to the demands
we\'re facing.

T. Garrett: Other questions or comments? There was a question that came
earlier from the discussions with the managers in the field had that to
do with process, and I\'ll read this question. Some of the budgetary
processes, and it says notably BPS, encourage inter-office competition
rather than pooling resources collaboratively. This carries over into
other processes in the office as well. Competitive processes like BPS
encourage RIFs between teams at a time when BLM offices cannot afford
not to work together. Any thoughts on that question?

L. Benna: Well, again, I think we look at the budget planning system as
an opportunity for the states and the field offices to actually tell us
what they think they need to do with the money they\'re going to get.
We\'ve thought a bit about this, and we\'re changing somewhat the
process so we\'re not quite as specific about what we\'re going to be
telling the states to do. We\'re going to give them a bit more latitude.
I don\'t think it\'s meant to really provide a competition among the
states. You know, I think we look at these somewhat individually when
they come to Washington, and that may be what you\'re alluding to when
you talk about competition. One of the things we\'re trying to do and
we\'ve had the Field Committee come in and talk to the Washington Office
about this, is to try to have more interaction among the assistant
directors in Washington that make the budget or recommend the budget
decisions. So, in other words, when the Assistant Director for planning
and renewable resources looks at a list of projects from the states,
that he works very closely with the Assistant Director for Minerals and
Resource Protection and other A.D.s as appropriate to make sure we have
everything well integrated and we\'re not just funding a piece of
something in one area and not allowing enough capability to do the whole
thing. Did that answer your question?

T. Garrett: All right. We\'ll assume that that was the perfect answer
the caller was looking for. I was asked to clarify that we do want the
teams to give in their reports their independent thoughts, although we
want to encourage a free flow of information and ideas and thoughts
bureau-wide. What the teams are asked to do is give us independent
thoughts and not feel that they have a bunch of bases they have to touch
before those thoughts are put in their report or their draft report.

L. Benna: One thing that might be of value is, as you prepare and submit
your suggestions and strategies, if there are some interrelationships,
it might be helpful to just make a note so we start looking at this. It
might be a good reminder that there might be an interrelationship
between, say, one of the groups and something related to workforce or
something like that. So that would be helpful.

T. Garrett: All right. We\'re nearing the end of the time allotted for
our broadcast today, so we want to take a few minutes now to thank our
panelists and offer those on the panel an opportunity for any final
comments. Marilyn, would you like to begin?

M. Johnson: Well, I appreciate the time to talk to my friends and
associates about workforce planning, and I\'m definitely looking forward
to getting your help on some new assumptions and guidelines. So have a
great day.

T. Garrett: Hairy any final comments for the viewers?

L. Benna: I want to again thank all of you out there for your
participation here. I want to thank you prospectively for all the good
ideas and strategies and advice and consultation we\'ll get on moving
the BLM to the future. I realize this is a lot of work, but again as I
think we\'ve all talked and tried to lay out for you, this is something
that is important and we really need to do now. I think I was a bit
direct in some my comments about some of the issues and challenges that
we are facing, and I actually did that intentionally. I think we\'re at
a point where we need to fully understand what we\'re facing. I would
also like to say, though, I\'m very optimistic that we have a lot of
opportunities here. I think as Kathleen has mentioned on several
occasions throughout the broadcast, this is not a doom and gloom
situation. I think we have an opportunity to reshape the BLM, to make it
a better organization than it already is, and it\'s a great organization
right now. So, again, I think we\'re on a path that\'s really going to
get us where we need to go. I was very enthused by your questions. I
think I definitely got the impression that you guys heard what we had to
say. You engaged right away. You\'re already thinking about this. And
that is very encouraging to me. Again, as we go through this, I hope in
your strategies and suggestions that we will take into consideration
that whatever we do in the future we need to position the BLM to deliver
the mission and I think equally important we need to make sure we have
the right information and the right science to enable you the managers
that are going to make these decisions to make the right ones. So thank
you and look forward to where we go from here.

T. Garrett: And Kathleen, final thoughts you would like to leave
everyone with as they begin to work on these focus area assignments?

Dir. Clarke: Yes, I would like to assure you that as we go through this
difficult challenge the Washington Office and my office are not exempt
from this. In fact, the Executive Leadership Team have cut in half the
number of times we\'re meeting this year in order to save money. We
wanted to make sure that we weren\'t taking any more of the BLM budget
than we needed. In fact, initial planning for this meeting suggested
that we wanted to have a meeting where we could all get together in one
city and in one location to have this discussion. And as we ran the
numbers on that, the cost would have been over \$350,000, dollars that
are near and dear and desperately needed in many programs within the
Bureau. So we opted to get out of the box and do something different. So
we\'re having this meeting electronically today, and I feel like it\'s
been a great interactive experience. I agree with Larry, I think we\'ve
had some good questions. I feel like we\'ve been fully engaged and I
want to thank you for taking the time out of your busy lives to be here.
I also hope you will pass on thanks to many others who are busy carrying
out the work of the BLM in other places.

The BLM and its workforce have earned a reputation as a creative,
dedicated and high performance organization, and we owe our success as
an agency to individual enterprise as well as the team spirit of our
enormously dedicated and highly talented workforce. As I\'ve suggested,
it\'s an honor to be a part of this group. You know, in a speech I gave
a couple of years ago, I stated that the BLM\'s best days lie ahead.
Whether that statement proves to be true or false depends on us. It
depends on our stepping up to the plate and assuming our responsibility
as leaders of the BLM. We will have to draw on our collective wisdom and
our creative spirit and we\'ll have to make tough decisions. You know, I
remember a story that Mark Ray has told that maybe some of you have
heard. Mark Ray is the Current Undersecretary For Natural Resources In
The Environment working at the Department of Agriculture. He talks about
that upon his confirmation he had a quiet prayer that he said, and that
was that he would serve in times of excessive moisture and excessive
budgets. Well, he hasn\'t been that lucky, nor have we. The fact is, we
are serving in very tough times, times of great consequence and
incredible challenge. But let\'s remind ourselves that tough times
inspire great changes and develop great leaders. I look forward to
working with all of you in redesigning our agency, to meet the needs of
a changing west in a changing world, and I do believe that BLM\'s best
days lie ahead, and together we will make it so. Thank you again for
your participation. This has been a great event. Tony?

T. Garrett: Thank you, Kathleen. Larry and Marilyn, and thanks to
everyone in the field who participated today. Remember to consult your
participant and facilitator guides for details on completing your team
report and submitting it to Washington Office 800 by June 30th. If your
group has any questions about your assignment, please contact our forum
coordinator, Doug Adams, here at the National Training Center. Then
finally we would like to especially think Secretary Gale Norton and
assistant Secretary Rebecca Watson for taking time to be with us along
with expressing our appreciation to Congressman Jerry Lewis of
California for his remarks to us. Now as we close things out here in
Phoenix, we would like to leave you with this\...