The RUS Website

Harvey Bowles, Senior Engineer, Electric Staff Division, RUS

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Executive Summary

The World Wide Web is the gateway to the information highway. The use of a

personal computer that is connected to the World Wide Web enables one to easily

find and retrieve data, rules, regulations, periodicals and other publications. The

Rural Utilities Service maintains a website that serves its borrowers and others

interested in the rural infrastructure. The website is not static, but rather it is

dynamic, changing sometimes almost daily, to provide up-to-date information.

RUS Website

http://www.usda.gov/rus

During 1999, the RUS website was redesigned under direction of Sam Morgan, the

RUS web editor-in-chief. Also, the Electric Staff Division was assigned

responsibility for the Electric Program portion of the website. This allows us to

better respond to your needs and to post information to the webserver in a more

timely fashion. The Electric Program home page is found at:

http://www.usda.gov/rus/electric

To help you navigate around the Electric Program web pages, the home page

provides a description of the various pages.

Visit the Loans/Rates page which provides a "thumbnail sketch" of the Electric

Program's loan offerings and includes a table showing municipal rates for the

current quarter. This page is updated at the beginning of each quarter. Although

this information is printed in the Federal Register, it is available first on the RUS

website.

The Service page provides an overview of the Electric Program, its customer -

oriented program delivery, outlines the various divisions and their roles, provides

"box scores" of the Electric Program's current Fiscal Year loan program. The box

score is updated at the beginning of each month.
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Have you wanted to contact RUS, but did not know where to start? The Contacts

page starts off with the office of the Assistant Administrator. Each division –

Northern Regional Division, Southern Regional Division, Power Supply Division,

and the Electric Staff Division – has a listing of the staff within that division. You

may also select a particular state to see a listing of the staff responsible for that

state. These pages have names, titles, phone numbers, fax numbers, and e-mail

and snail mail addresses.

The Regulations page contains RUS regulations affecting electric borrowers as

well as proposed regulations that are open for public comment.

The Bulletins page contains RUS Electric Program bulletins in various formats –

Word, PDF, text, HTML.

Other RUS regulations, bulletins, and informational publications are available on

the main RUS Regulations, Bulletins, and General Information page.

Looking for engineering information? Check out the Engineering page. It

contains various items of interest to the rural electric engineering community,

including information on this seminar and the National Electrical Safety Code

(NESC) preprint.

A number of forms are available in Excel format on the Forms page thanks to two

of the Southern Region General Field Representatives – Cliff Burris and Howard

Barnes. Also available are various model documents used in your loan package.

There are also links to the Forms 7 and 12 data collection support and Frequently

Asked Questions pages.

Do you need a copy of the latest List of Materials? Check out the List of

Materials page. The List is available in Adobe Acrobat PDF format and is

updated after every meeting of the Technical Standards Committees. The file

includes bookmarks and links to help you find what you are looking for. We hope

to convert the List to a database format during the year 2000. This will provide

search and query capability and you should be able to link to it from other

software.

We have added a link on the Electric Program home page to the RUS Distance

Learning and Telemedicine Grant and Loan Program page.
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Have you ever thought about putting your talents to use for RUS or know someone

that would? Consider working for the Rural Utilities Service. Check the

Employment Opportunities page for Electric Program vacancy announcements.

As you leave the Electric Program web pages, the Exit/Links pages provide you

with links to a number of RUS electric borrowers (both distribution and G&T), as

well as electric industry and government resources, including state commissions,

Federal agencies, and other sites of interest.

A number of RUS publications (e.g., bulletins) are now on the main RUS

Regulations, Bulletins, and General Information page. Although some bulletins

are in Word or text formats, most are available in PDF format. We are now able to

include some of the older ones such as Bulletin 65-1, the substation bulletin. A

word of caution - this particular one is approximately 24 megabytes in size and we

broke it into four smaller files. You can expect a very long download time on this

and other large publications. We plan to move these files to the Electric Program

portion of the RUS website.

Do your kids know about RUS? Invite them to look at the RUS “kids page” -

http://www.usda.gov/rus/educate.htm and meet Rus the Surfin’ Squirrel. There are

safety tips, games, as well as other information about the RUS programs.

Be sure to check out the rest of the RUS website for information about the other

RUS programs - Telecommunications Program (including the RUS Distance

Learning and Telemedicine Grant and Loan Program) and the Water and

Environmental.

The RUS Electric Program website is a work in progress. It is in a state of

constant revision. Check it often. If you have trouble finding what you want, send

an e-mail to:

electric@rus.usda.gov

Please include your name, e-mail address, telephone number, and company

affiliation in the body of your message so that we may be able to contact you for

additional information, if necessary

People from all over the world have visited the RUS web pages. For example,

during Thanksgiving week, we had hits from Canada, Japan, the United Kingdom,
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Poland, Australia, Puerto Rico, Guatemala, France, Saudi Arabia, Honduras,

Ireland, Germany, Israel, and Mexico.

Most of the hits appear to come from Vienna, Virginia, home of America On Line.

Did you know that websites you visit collect certain information about you and the

computer you are using?

When you surf the RUS web pages, you need to be aware of the following.

We automatically collect and store only the following information about your

visit:

• The Internet domain (for example, "xcompany.com" if you use a private

Internet access account, or "yourschool.edu" if you connect from a university's

domain) and IP address (an IP address is a number that is automatically

assigned to your computer whenever you are surfing the Web) from which you

access our website;

• The type of browser and operating system used to access our site;

• The date and time you access our site;

• The pages you visit; and

• If you linked to the U.S. Department of Agriculture website from another

website, the address of that website.

We use this information to help us make our site more useful to visitors - to learn

about the number of visitors to our site and the types of technology our visitors are

using. We do not track or record information about individuals and their visits.

The RUS website is your website and we want to provide the information you

need. Please provide us with your suggestions.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

HARVEY L. BOWLES

Mr. Bowles received his BS in Electrical Engineering from Virginia Tech in 1973. He

joined the Rural Electrification Administration in 1976 as an engineer in the Distribution

Branch of what is now the Electric Staff Division. From November 1991 to May 1997, he

served as Chairman of Technical Standards Committee "A" (Electric). In November

1995, he returned to the Distribution Branch as the Branch Chief. He was reassigned to

the position of Senior Electrical Engineer in September 1999 and his duties include those

of Chairman of Technical Standards Committee “A” (Electric) and Electric Program

webmaster.

Mr. Bowles has served on a number of industry committees, including the IEEE

Switchgear Committee, the IEEE Insulated Conductors Committee, and the Rural

Electric Power Committee. In addition he has served as the RUS liaison to various

subcommittees of the NRECA T&D Engineering Committee. He is also a registered

professional engineer in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
RUS ON-LINE

Your Source

for

Information

http://www.usda.gov/rus
The RUS Connection

RUS Homepage
Electric Program Web Pages

• Loans/Rates Page

• Service Page (including "box scores”)

• Contacts

• Regulations

• Bulletins

• Engineering

• Forms

Electric Program Web Pages

• List of Materials

• Exit/Links

• Distance Learning: Information on the RUS

Distance Learning and Telemedicine Grant

and Loan Program.

• Employment Opportunities
Contacts Pages

• Office of the Assistant Administrator

• Electric Staff Division

• Northern Regional Division

• Southern Regional Division

• Power Supply Division

• Personnel by state served
Regulations Page

• Regulations in HTML and PDF formats

• Proposed regulations
Bulletins Page

• Bulletins and Informational Publications in

various formats

Document Formats

• Adobe Acrobat PDF

• Text

• Word

• Excel

• HTML
Engineering Page

• Contains various items of interest to the

rural electric engineering community

– Items of Engineering Interest

– Seminar information

– NESC revision

Forms Page

• Standard forms in Excel format

• Model documents
List of Materials Page

• Download the current List of Materials in

PDF format

• Order form for List of Materials

• Information on the

acceptance process

Employment Opportunities

Page

• Lists currently open vacancy

announcements for the Electric Program
Exit/Links Page

• Distribution Borrowers

• Generation & Transmission Borrowers

• State Utility Commissions

• Links by State

• Electric Industry and

Government pages

of interest
http://www.usda.gov/rus/educate.htm

• Facts about RUS

• Fun games

• Safety tips
Please report broken links!