AGRICULTURAL 

RESEARCH

Two USDA Agencies 

Can Enhance 

Safeguards against 

Project Duplication 

and Strengthen 

Collaborative 

Planning

Report to the Chairwoman, Committee 

on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, 

U.S. Senate

April 2013

GAO-13-255

United States Government Accountability Office

GAO
United States Government Accountability Office

Highlights of GAO-13-255, a report to the 

Chairwoman, Committee on Agriculture, 

Nutrition and Forestry, U.S. Senate

April 2013

AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH 

Two USDA Agencies Can Enhance Safeguards 

against Project Duplication and Strengthen 

Collaborative Planning

Why GAO Did This Study

The USDA’s principal research 

agencies, ARS and NIFA, play a key

role in supporting agricultural science, 

and questions have been raised about 

the extent to which the two agencies 

may be performing duplicative 

research and whether the agencies 

collaborate in planning research. 

Research duplication is the inadvertent 

repetition of research that does not 

confirm or verify conclusions from prior

studies. Collaborative planning 

involves bringing together research 

agencies and stakeholders to discuss 

priorities and roles and responsibilities. 

In this context, GAO was asked to

assess how these agencies ensure the 

efficient use of their resources for 

research. This report examines (1) the 

topics ARS and NIFA focus on and the 

safeguards the agencies use to 

prevent duplication of research 

projects, along with any shortcomings 

in those safeguards, and 

(2) collaborative planning ARS and 

NIFA engaged in and how, if at all, 

such planning could be enhanced. 

GAO reviewed USDA safeguards 

against duplication within and between 

ARS and NIFA; reviewed 20 randomly 

selected projects; analyzed information 

on collaborative planning; and 

interviewed officials from USDA, 

universities, and industry.

What GAO Recommends

GAO recommends, among other 

things, that ARS issue guidance that 

project information be provided to 

CRIS on a quarterly basis and that 

ARS and NIFA enhance collaborative

planning. USDA generally agreed with 

GAO’s findings, and cited benefits for 

three of the four recommendations.

What GAO Found

The Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Agricultural Research Service (ARS) 

and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) generally focus on 

many of the same broad topics and rely on agency safeguards, as well as on the 

scientific community’s professional norms, to prevent inadvertent duplication of 

research projects within and between the agencies. Shortcomings with certain 

agency safeguards, however, may increase the potential risk of project

duplication within or between the two agencies. ARS and NIFA built in their own 

safeguards to help prevent project duplication, such as (1) panels of independent 

external scientists who review proposed projects and (2) agency requirements for

staff to ensure that proposed work is relevant, including checking the Current 

Research Information System (CRIS)—USDA’s primary system containing

project-level information on its ongoing and completed research projects—for 

potentially duplicative research projects in both agencies. The agencies also rely 

on professional norms to safeguard against duplication, such as the peer review 

process used by scientific journals to limit the publication of unnecessarily 

duplicative research. Indeed, agency officials and stakeholders could not provide 

recent examples of duplication within or between the two agencies, and GAO’s 

review of 20 randomly selected research projects did not identify duplicative 

projects. Nevertheless, GAO identified a few shortcomings that somewhat limit 

the utility of certain agency safeguards. First, information in CRIS about ARS 

projects was typically at least 6 months out-of-date when uploaded, which 

undermines CRIS’s utility as a safeguard. ARS officials said that the agency now 

expects staff to provide ARS project information on a quarterly basis, but ARS 

has not issued guidance about this expectation. Second, NIFA directs staff to 

conduct a CRIS duplication check for projects that accounted for about two-thirds 

of the funding it awarded for competitive grants; as a result, about one-third of its 

competitive grants are not subject to this safeguard against duplication. NIFA 

recently convened a task force to study, among other issues, whether the

directive to check CRIS should be extended to all competitive grants.

USDA’s Chief Scientist facilitated high-level collaborative planning, particularly 

between ARS and NIFA, in recent years, but 20 USDA officials and stakeholders 

said that agency-level collaborative planning between ARS’s and NIFA’s national 

program leaders working in common topic areas could be more systematic to 

make the best use of limited agricultural research resources. Specifically, the 

Chief Scientist and her staff led several high-level planning efforts that brought 

together staff from the two agencies and generated key products, such as a plan 

that identified USDA’s seven goals for implementing its science priorities and the 

agencies responsible for implementing these goals. Nevertheless, national 

program leaders at the two agencies generally do not, and are not required to, 

systematically hold joint meetings for seeking stakeholder input and for setting 

research priorities. Some systematic collaborative planning, however, has been

jointly initiated by ARS and NIFA national program leaders, such as in the animal 

sciences area. By enhancing collaborative planning across national program 

areas, as the animal sciences area has, ARS and NIFA can take fuller advantage 

View GAO-13-255. For more information, of their collective knowledge and expertise to help set their research priorities.

contact Daniel Garcia-Diaz at (202) 512-3841 

or garciadiazd@gao.gov. 
Page i GAO-13-255 Agricultural Research

Letter 1 

Background 5

ARS and NIFA Use Agency and Scientific Safeguards to Prevent 

Duplication of Research Projects in Similar Topic Areas, but 

Some Shortcomings Exist 15

High-Level Collaborative Planning Has Increased, but Agency-Level 

Collaborative Planning between ARS and NIFA Has Not Been 

Systematic 32

Conclusions 38

Recommendations for Executive Action 39

Agency Comments and Our Evaluation 39

Appendix I Objectives, Scope, and Methodology 43

Appendix II Comments from the U.S. Department of Agriculture 47

Appendix III GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments 49

Table

Table 1: Percentage and Rank Order of ARS and NIFA Research 

Spending by Topic Area in Fiscal Year 2011 16

Figures

Figure 1: Examples of Publicly Funded Agricultural Research 6

Figure 2: Examples from REE’s Food Safety Goal in the REE 

Action Plan 8

Figure 3: Locations of ARS Facilities and Land-Grant Colleges and 

Universities 11

Figure 4: Elapsed Time of ARS Transmissions of Project 

Information to NIFA 26

Contents 
Page ii GAO-13-255 Agricultural Research

Abbreviations

ARS Agricultural Research Service

CRIS Current Research Information System

REE Research, Education, and Economics

NIFA National Institute of Food and Agriculture

USDA U.S. Department of Agriculture

This is a work of the U.S. government and is not subject to copyright protection in the 

United States. The published product may be reproduced and distributed in its entirety 

without further permission from GAO. However, because this work may contain 

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necessary if you wish to reproduce this material separately.
Page 1 GAO-13-255 Agricultural Research

United States Government Accountability Office

Washington, DC 20548

April 12, 2013

The Honorable Debbie Stabenow

Chairwoman

Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry

United States Senate

Dear Madam Chairwoman:

For over a century, U.S. agricultural research has been a major catalyst in 

creating a vigorous agricultural economy and a plentiful, low-cost supply 

of food and fiber. As the 21st century unfolds, agriculture and natural 

resources stand at the crossroads of some of the world’s most critical

problems, such as establishing sustainable food production, providing 

clean and abundant water, and ensuring food safety. According to a U.S. 

Department of Agriculture (USDA) report, by 2050, global agricultural 

demand is projected to increase by 70 to 100 percent because of 

population growth, energy demands, and higher incomes in developing 

countries.1 Further, meeting this demand from existing agricultural 

resources will require substantial increases in global and U.S. agricultural 

productivity—productivity based on long-term investments in public 

agricultural research. Advances resulting from basic and applied 

agricultural sciences, such as disease-resistant crop varieties and 

efficient irrigation practices, are fundamental to boosting agricultural 

yields, increasing farm-sector profitability, and improving nutrition and 

human health. In addition, USDA economists estimated in 2007 that each 

dollar spent on public agricultural research returned an estimated $10 in 

benefits to the economy, and university researchers have estimated even 

greater returns.

USDA’s principal internal (intramural) and external (extramural) research 

agencies—the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and the National 

Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), respectively—have long played a 

critical role in supporting agricultural science, including in areas such as 

plant and animal sciences and human nutrition. These two agencies are 

housed within USDA’s Research, Education, and Economics (REE) 

 

1

U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, Public Agricultural 

Research Spending and Future U.S. Agricultural Productivity Growth: Scenarios for 2010-

2050, Economic Brief No. 17 (Washington, D.C.: July 2011).

 
 

Page 2 GAO-13-255 Agricultural Research

mission area,2 and the Under Secretary for REE serves as USDA’s Chief 

Scientist. ARS is USDA’s primary intramural research agency, typically 

working on more than 800 research projects within 18 national program 

areas in more than 90 ARS locations. Unlike ARS, NIFA does not do its 

own research but supports research through grants (to individuals, 

institutions, and organizations), education to improve scientific and 

agricultural literacy, and its extension network to solve public agricultural 

problems.3 By itself or with other partner organizations, NIFA offers 

competitive and noncompetitive grants to land-grant colleges and 

universities in all 50 states and to other universities as well.

The nation’s increasingly tight budget environment underscores the need 

for federal research agencies to set priorities carefully and make effective 

use of limited research funding. At both ARS and NIFA, national program 

leaders are responsible for setting the agencies’ research priorities; 

obtaining input from stakeholders in industry, academia, and elsewhere; 

and identifying gaps in agricultural research. As agency budgets continue 

to tighten, pressure increases on program leaders to ensure that dollars 

go to the highest-priority activities and that research projects are 

complementary, rather than unnecessarily duplicative.

Previously, we have reported that duplication occurs when two or more 

agencies or programs are engaged in the same activities or provide the 

same services to the same beneficiaries; we recognized, however, that 

duplication may be appropriate in some instances, depending on the 

nature or magnitude of the federal effort.4 With respect to scientific 

 

2

Two other agencies in REE are the Economic Research Service and the National

Agricultural Statistics Service.

3

Extension is a nationwide noncredit agricultural education network funded by federal, 

state, and local governments. Each state has a state office at its land-grant university and 

a network of local or regional offices staffed by experts, who provide research-based 

information to agricultural producers, small-business owners, youth, consumers, and 

others in rural areas and communities of all sizes. Extension works in six major areas: 4-H 

youth development, family and consumer sciences, agriculture, leadership development, 

community and economic development, and natural resources.

4

GAO, Opportunities to Reduce Potential Duplication in Government Programs, Save Tax 

Dollars, and Enhance Revenue, GAO-11-318SP (Washington, D.C.: March 2011); 

Opportunities to Reduce Duplication, Overlap and Fragmentation, Achieve Savings, and 

Enhance Revenue, GAO-12-342SP (Washington, D.C.: February 2012); and 2013 Annual 

Report: Actions Needed to Reduce Fragmentation, Overlap, and Duplication and Achieve 

Other Financial Benefits, GAO-13-279SP (Washington, D.C.: April 2013).
 

Page 3 GAO-13-255 Agricultural Research

research, the National Academies distinguish among duplication,

replication, and complementarity.5 Specifically, according to the 

academies, duplication represents the inadvertent repetition of research 

that does not serve to confirm or otherwise verify conclusions from 

previous studies. In contrast, replication represents the deliberate 

repetition of research efforts, intended to confirm or extend previously or 

simultaneously obtained, but still uncertain, findings. Complementarity 

represents overall strategies to confirm, overturn, or extend particular 

research findings.6 According to the academies, even though some 

duplicative research may be acceptable—for example, during periods of 

great crisis, such as the federal response to AIDS (acquired 

immunodeficiency syndrome), in which usually stringent research 

practices were eased somewhat in the pursuit of as many promising 

leads as possible—eliminating unnecessarily duplicative research is a 

means of saving public dollars and thus minimizing waste. In this report, 

we use the term duplication to mean research that is scientifically 

unnecessary to replicate or complement prior research results, or 

research inadvertently conducted or funded by ARS or NIFA that is very 

similar to other research.

In this context, you raised questions about duplication in agricultural 

research and asked how ARS and NIFA ensure the efficient use of their 

resources for research. This report examines (1) the topics ARS and 

NIFA focus on and the safeguards they use to prevent duplication of 

research projects, along with any shortcomings in those safeguards, and 

(2) collaborative planning ARS and NIFA engaged in and how, if at all, 

such planning could be enhanced.

For both objectives, we collected and reviewed relevant law and agency 

guidance, as well as reports from USDA’s Inspector General; the National 

Agricultural Research, Extension, Education, and Economics Advisory 

 

5

Institute of Medicine, Research and Service Programs in the PHS: Challenges in 

Organization (Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 1991). The National 

Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine, 

and the National Research Council are collectively known as the National Academies.

6

USDA officials stated that complementary research also refers to multiple research 

approaches to a specific problem that, to develop new knowledge, concurrently address 

different aspects of that problem.
 

Page 4 GAO-13-255 Agricultural Research

Board (REE advisory board);7 and others. We also interviewed and 

gathered relevant documents from headquarters and field officials in 

USDA, including the Office of the Under Secretary for REE, the Office of 

the Chief Scientist, ARS, NIFA, and the Economic Research Service. In 

addition, we interviewed 16 stakeholders from the REE advisory board; 

industry organizations; and academic organizations, including land-grant 

colleges and universities. We selected industry and academic 

stakeholders primarily on the basis of input from officials with USDA and 

the National Academy of Sciences’ Board on Agriculture and Natural 

Resources. In addition, to examine the topics ARS and NIFA focus on 

and the safeguards used by the agencies to prevent duplication within 

and between ARS and NIFA, we collected and analyzed agency data on 

funding, spending, and planning for fiscal years 2002 through 2011 

related to the topics on which ARS and NIFA focus their work, and we 

analyzed the scientific literature discussing professional norms, as well as 

documentation of safeguards used at each agency to identify and prevent 

duplicative research. We assessed the reliability of spending, funding, 

and planning data provided from NIFA’s Current Research Information 

System (CRIS)—USDA’s primary database of completed and ongoing 

projects, which includes both financial and project information—by 

interviewing knowledgeable officials about the data, possible limitations of 

the data, and internal controls for the system containing the data. We 

found these data to be sufficiently reliable for our purposes, but our ability 

to quantify and compare the agencies’ spending on specific topics was 

limited because, unlike ARS, NIFA could not isolate its research spending 

and thus could only provide data that also included some education and 

some extension spending. In addition, to identify shortcomings, if any, in 

the agencies’ safeguards against duplication of research projects within 

and between ARS and NIFA, we interviewed agency officials and 

reviewed relevant guidance. We also followed agency guidance and 

reviewed for possible duplication 20 randomly selected ARS and NIFA

projects started in 2011 in the animal sciences and human nutrition areas. 

To ensure the reliability of this review, we worked with knowledgeable 

USDA officials to develop the formulas from which we derived the random 

sample for review and followed ARS and NIFA guidance on searching 

CRIS for potentially duplicative research projects. Two analysts reviewed 

all selected projects for possible duplication and followed up with the 

 

7

The REE advisory board advises the Secretary of Agriculture and land-grant colleges 

and universities on top priorities for food and agricultural research, education, extension, 

and economics. 
 

Page 5 GAO-13-255 Agricultural Research

agencies on instances of apparent duplication.8 To examine the 

collaborative planning ARS and NIFA engaged in, we analyzed agency 

plans and agendas and other documents related to stakeholders’ input 

into research priorities.9 We also examined whether the agencies’ 

collaborative efforts reflected key practices we identified in October 2005 

that can help enhance and sustain collaboration among federal 

agencies.10

We conducted this performance audit from January 2012 through April 

2013 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing 

standards. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to 

obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for 

our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe 

that the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our findings 

and conclusions based on our audit objectives.

The United States’ publicly funded agricultural research system is a 

critical component in finding answers to urgent global problems, including 

establishing sustainable food production, providing clean and abundant 

water, and strengthening food safety (see fig. 1). This public system is 

based on a federal-state partnership in which USDA and the states, 

through their land-grant colleges and universities, play multiple roles in 

agricultural research, extension, and education. According to a 2011 

USDA report, studies have shown that private research productivity 

depends on government and university investments in science and 

technology.11 The federal, state, and private sectors provided 27 percent, 

12 percent, and 61 percent, respectively, of total U.S. agricultural 

research funding in 2007, according to the most recent USDA estimate.

 

8

This review did not assess the extent of duplication across all NIFA and ARS projects.

9

In this report, we use the word collaborate broadly, to include what others refer to as 

coordinate, network, or integrate. We use the term collaborative planning to describe the 

act of bringing research agencies and stakeholders together to discuss priorities, roles, 

and responsibilities.

10GAO, Results-Oriented Government: Practices That Can Help Enhance and Sustain 

Collaboration among Federal Agencies, GAO-06-15 (Washington, D.C.: Oct. 21, 2005).

11U.S. Department of Agriculture, Public Agricultural Research Spending. 

Background 
 

Page 6 GAO-13-255 Agricultural Research

Figure 1: Examples of Publicly Funded Agricultural Research

The federal portion of this public research system, with roots dating back 

to the 19th century, is overseen by USDA’s REE mission area. The REE 

mission area comprises the following four agencies:

• ARS, USDA’s key intramural research agency;

• NIFA, USDA’s key extramural research agency;12

 

12Programs that were administered by the Cooperative State Research, Education, and 

Extension Service were transferred to NIFA by October 1, 2009.
 

Page 7 GAO-13-255 Agricultural Research

• the Economic Research Service, USDA’s key intramural economics 

and social science research agency; and

• the National Agricultural Statistics Service, focused on agricultural 

statistics.13

The Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008 (2008 Farm Bill) 

reorganized this mission area to include an umbrella coordinating unit 

within the Office of the Under Secretary for REE. The 2008 Farm Bill also 

designated the Under Secretary for the REE mission area as USDA’s 

Chief Scientist, and USDA also refers to this umbrella unit as the Office of 

the Chief Scientist. Accordingly, the Chief Scientist is to ensure, among 

other responsibilities, that USDA’s research, education, and extension 

activities are coordinated and integrated across agencies and disciplines. 

In addition, six division chiefs—commonly referred to by USDA as senior 

advisors—are to assist the Chief Scientist in identifying and addressing 

emerging needs and priorities in research, education, and extension.

Mandated by the 2008 Farm Bill, the Under Secretary of REE (i.e., 

USDA’s Chief Scientist) developed a Roadmap for USDA Science in 

2010 to set USDA’s research, education, and extension agenda. This 

document identified five USDA priorities: bioenergy, climate change, food 

safety, international food security, and child nutrition. The Roadmap

stated that solutions to many of modern society’s most intractable 

problems demand change that USDA would bring about by, for example, 

(1) better coordinating its science planning among and between REE 

science agencies and with other federal science agencies; (2) listening to 

the needs of stakeholders; and (3) institutionalizing outcome-driven 

scientific program planning and implementation. The 2008 Farm Bill 

specified that the Roadmap was not to be subject to review by any federal 

employee other than the Secretary of Agriculture or his designee.

In early 2012, the Chief Scientist followed up on issuance of the 

Roadmap with a document titled Research, Education, and Economics 

Action Plan (REE Action Plan). The REE Action Plan identifies seven 

goals that support top priorities for USDA science: (1) local and global 

food supply and security, (2) climate and energy needs, (3) sustainable 

 

13The Forest Service also conducts research on a wide spectrum of topics in natural 

resources. See GAO, Forest Service Research and Development: Improvements in 

Delivery of Research Results Can Help Ensure That Benefits of Research Are Realized,

GAO-11-12 (Washington, D.C.: Oct. 29, 2010).
 

Page 8 GAO-13-255 Agricultural Research

use of natural resources, (4) nutrition and childhood obesity, (5) food 

safety, (6) education and science literacy, and (7) rural prosperity and 

rural-urban interdependence. Each of these seven goals has strategies 

and planned actions designating the specific USDA agencies that are to 

be responsible for implementing the actions (see fig. 2 for an excerpt). In 

addition, the first three goals are divided into multiple subgoals, each of

which also has planned actions, or actionable items, designating the 

specific USDA agencies that are to be responsible.

Figure 2: Examples from REE’s Food Safety Goal in the REE Action Plan

Within REE, research conducted or funded by ARS and NIFA, 

respectively, may be basic or applied. According to USDA’s website, 

basic research discovers the underlying processes and systems that 

make a plant, animal, ecosystem, food system, community, or 

marketplace work. For example, basic research might seek to discover 

the genetic map14 of a plant or animal or to show how economic and 

human resources affect economic growth in rural areas. In contrast, 

applied research expands on basic research findings to uncover practical 

ways in which new knowledge can be advanced to benefit individuals and 

society. For example, in an applied research project, researchers might 

 

14A genetic map is a representation of the arrangement of genes. 
 

Page 9 GAO-13-255 Agricultural Research

use a genetic map constructed through basic research to develop 

methods to combat plant and animal diseases. NIFA-funded research 

may also be integrated, in that it involves education and extension 

activities, as well as research.

Both ARS and NIFA solicit stakeholder input. Agency stakeholders 

consist of individuals and institutions that conduct or use agricultural 

research, education, and extension services provided by or for the 

agencies. These stakeholders include representatives of commodity 

groups, industry, interagency federal working groups, scientific societies, 

and university partners. Stakeholders also include members of the REE 

advisory board, which comprises 25 members, each representing a 

specific stakeholder category, such as a national nutritional science 

society or national farm organizations. ARS itself is considered a NIFA 

stakeholder because ARS scientists are eligible to compete for certain 

NIFA grants. In turn, NIFA is a stakeholder of ARS.

USDA differs from other federal science agencies in that the majority of 

its annual research appropriation supports research done in-house, or 

intramurally; in contrast, most federal science agencies primarily fund 

research done elsewhere, or extramurally. As USDA’s principal intramural 

research agency, ARS had over 2,200 research scientists in fiscal year 

2012, who carried out about 800 research projects at more than 

90 facilities nationwide and in a few foreign countries. To manage its 

18 national research programs, ARS has developed a 5-year research 

cycle, consisting of four activities: stakeholder input, planning, 

implementation, and assessment. About 25 ARS national program 

leaders define and articulate the scope and objectives of each of these 

national programs with input from their various stakeholders; ARS 

scientists and managers;15 and others, including Congress. A key means 

of acquiring stakeholder input is through a meeting with stakeholders 

conducted at the start of each 5-year cycle. During this meeting, ARS 

gathers stakeholder input and defines which research problems it will 

address in the next 5 years to help meet high-priority needs within the 

agricultural community. Each national program uses this stakeholder 

input to help develop a research plan.

 

15ARS manages its research programs through area offices located across the United 

States and through its Office of National Programs, which oversees each of the agency’s 

18 national research programs.
 

Page 10 GAO-13-255 Agricultural Research

NIFA is USDA’s primary extramural research agency, and, unlike staff of 

ARS, who conduct their own research, NIFA staff do not conduct 

research. Rather, NIFA’s 350 staff members, including about 70 national 

program leaders, help fund research at the state and local level, primarily 

through grants, and provide program leadership to state and local officials 

in research, education, and extension. Recipients of NIFA funds include 

59 state agricultural experiment stations (i.e., the research arm of landgrant colleges and universities), 63 schools of forestry, 18 historically 

black land-grant colleges, 27 colleges of veterinary medicine, and other 

institutions and individual scientists. Figure 3 identifies the locations of 

ARS facilities, along with the land-grant colleges and universities 

established under the Morrill Act of 1862, those established under the 

Second Morrill Act of 1890 (historically black land-grant colleges), and 

those established under the Equity In Educational Land-Grant Status Act 

of 1994 (tribal colleges).

16

 

16Act of July 2, 1862, Ch. 130, 12 Stat. 503; Act of Aug. 30, 1890, Ch. 841, 26 Stat. 417;

Pub. L. No. 103-382, tit. V, pt. C, 108 Stat. 3518, 4018.
 

Page 11 GAO-13-255 Agricultural Research

Figure 3: Locations of ARS Facilities and Land-Grant Colleges and Universities

Note: ARS consists of nine areas (Beltsville, MD; North Atlantic; Midwest; Pacific West; Northern 

Plains; Mid South; South Atlantic; Southern Plains; and the National Agricultural Library) and its 

human nutrition centers, which address research needs related to improved dietary recommendations 

and a healthier population. 
 

Page 12 GAO-13-255 Agricultural Research

Congressional legislation establishes the funding levels, eligibility 

requirements, and scope for each of NIFA’s research, education, and 

extension programs, and NIFA’s national program leaders manage and 

oversee these programs. NIFA generally funds grants for 1 to 4 years. In 

addition to direction from Congress, stakeholder input informs the 

development of NIFA requests for applications to its competitive grants 

programs. Each request generates from 2 to 600 applications, each of 

which must undergo external peer review by a panel of 3 to 25 individuals 

with expertise in the relevant field.17 The panels evaluate each application 

for scientific merit, how well the application addresses the research 

priorities, and the work’s potential to make a positive scientific impact.

The panels then rank the applications and recommend the top projects for 

eventual funding. NIFA awards the following types of grants for 

distributing its research funds:

• Formula grants (commonly referred to as formula funds). Through 

several program authorities, NIFA provides funds for research and 

extension to land-grant colleges and universities, schools of forestry, 

and schools of veterinary medicine. The amount of funding provided 

to each institution is determined by formulas, often statutorily defined, 

which may include variables such as rural population, farm population, 

and poverty levels. According to NIFA’s website, local or regional 

university leaders decide which specific projects are to be supported 

by an institution’s formula grant allotment. As a result, according to a 

2011 Congressional Research Service report,18 specific research 

priorities for formula grants tend to be more geographically focused 

than for NIFA’s other grants.

• Competitive grants. NIFA awards nearly 40 types of competitive 

grants for research, extension, and higher education, as well as for 

 

17Peer review is an integral part of scientific research and publication, occurring both 

before and after a research project is completed. Specifically, funding agencies such as 

NIFA review applications for research before awarding funds to do that research, and 

when research results are ready for publication, scientific journals conduct a peer review 

of submitted articles before agreeing to publish the work. ARS’s external peer review was 

modeled, in part, after peer review for grant proposals submitted to the National Institutes 

of Health and the National Science Foundation. Fields of expertise represented in NIFA 

peer review panels are varied and include, for example, food safety, plant production, and 

animal protection.

18Congressional Research Service, Agricultural Research, Education, and Extension: 

Issues and Background, 7-5700 (Washington, D.C.: 2011).
 

Page 13 GAO-13-255 Agricultural Research

projects that integrate all three activities. Competitive grants are 

designed to enable USDA to (1) attract a wide pool of applicants to 

work on agricultural issues of national interest and (2) select the bestquality applications submitted by highly qualified individuals, 

institutions, or organizations. Eligibility, administrative rules, and 

procedures vary for each specific competitive grant program 

according to authorizing statutes, and NIFA awards funds following 

external peer review of the applications.19 NIFA’s flagship competitive 

grant program is the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative, which 

funds research, education, and extension in the food and agricultural 

sciences and, according to NIFA’s website, awards grants to address 

agricultural problems of national, regional, or multistate importance.

• Noncompetitive grants. Before fiscal year 2011, according to the 2011 

Congressional Research Service report, appropriated NIFA funds 

were directed by Congress to support a designated institution or set of 

institutions for particular research, education, or extension topics of 

local, regional, or national priority. These projects were supported 

through “special research grants” or “direct federal administration 

research or education grants.” Recent appropriations have not 

included such spending items, allowing NIFA to award more of its 

funds through competitive grants, according to USDA officials. 

Even with growing demand for agricultural research over the past decade, 

total appropriations for ARS and NIFA decreased when adjusted for 

inflation. Specifically, from fiscal year 2002 through fiscal year 2011, 

funding for ARS decreased by 23 percent, from $1.2 billion to 

$934 million, and funding for NIFA increased by more than 28 percent, 

from $1.1 billion to $1.3 billion. When adjusted for inflation, however, ARS

and NIFA funding decreased by nearly 42 percent and 3 percent, 

respectively.

To document USDA’s publicly funded activities, including research 

conducted or funded by the department, and to provide ready access to 

information about its research projects and related work, USDA in 1966 

developed CRIS. According to officials from NIFA, which is responsible 

for managing this system, CRIS contains descriptive project-by-project

 

19ARS scientists are eligible to compete for certain NIFA grants. In fact, nearly 1 percent 

of all ARS projects (accounting for nearly 2 percent of ARS’s research dollars) are funded 

by NIFA competitive grants.
 

Page 14 GAO-13-255 Agricultural Research

information for all completed and ongoing projects carried out or funded 

by ARS and NIFA, respectively, and by some other USDA agencies and 

state institutions. USDA scientists, stakeholders, and the public can 

search CRIS for ARS and NIFA projects, as well as for some information 

on related publications and researchers. USDA has expanded CRIS over 

time to also cover a number of education, extension, and integrated 

activities. According to NIFA’s website, a part of CRIS’s mission is to help 

users do the following:

• keep abreast of the latest developments in agricultural and forestry 

research and education,

• plan future activities,

• avoid costly duplication of publicly funded work, and

• establish valuable contacts within the research and education 

community.

Concerning collaboration among federal agencies, in March 2000, we 

reported that agencies face a range of barriers when they attempt to 

collaborate with other agencies.20 Faced with these barriers, federal

agencies carry out programs in a fragmented, uncoordinated way, 

resulting in a patchwork of programs that can waste scarce funds, 

confuse and frustrate program customers, and limit the overall 

effectiveness of the federal effort. Subsequently, in an October 2005 

report, we discussed key practices that can help enhance and sustain 

collaboration among federal agencies.21 Among the practices we 

identified were (1) defining and articulating a common outcome; 

(2) defining and agreeing on roles and responsibilities; (3) establishing 

mutually reinforcing or joint strategies; (4) identifying and addressing 

needs by leveraging resources; and (5) establishing compatible policies, 

procedures, and other means to operate across agency boundaries. In 

our 2005 report, we stated that, while we generally believe that the 

application of as many of these practices as possible increases the 

likelihood of effective collaboration, we also recognize that agencies work 

together in a wide range of situations and circumstances.

 

20GAO, Managing for Results: Barriers to Interagency Coordination, GAO/GGD-00-106

(Washington, D.C.: Mar. 29, 2000).

21GAO-06-15. 
 

Page 15 GAO-13-255 Agricultural Research

ARS and NIFA generally focus on many of the same broad topics, and 

the agencies rely on agency-developed safeguards, as well as on the 

scientific community’s professional norms, to prevent duplication of 

research projects within and between the agencies. Indeed, agency 

officials and stakeholders could provide no recent examples of duplication 

within or between the two agencies, and our review of 20 randomly 

selected agency research projects did not identify duplicative projects. 

Nevertheless, our review identified some shortcomings in certain 

safeguards the agencies rely on—shortcomings that somewhat limit the 

utility of these safeguards in preventing duplicative research.

ARS and NIFA generally focus their work on the same broad topic areas. 

Our analysis of each agency’s research spending for fiscal years 2002 

through 2011 shows that during this period, ARS performed and NIFA 

funded scientific activities in largely the same six broad topic areas: 

(1) plant systems; (2) human nutrition; (3) animal systems; (4) natural 

resources; (5) food and nonfood products; and (6) agricultural, natural 

resource, and biological engineering. For example, in fiscal year 2011—

the most recent year for which data from the agencies were available—

both agencies performed or funded work on plant systems (ranging from 

plant genetics to plant pests) more than on any other topic area, 

representing about 41 percent of ARS’s total $1.1 billion research 

spending and about 23 percent of NIFA’s total $1 billion fiscal year 2011 

research spending (see table 1).22 ARS and NIFA both focused the nextlargest shares of their spending in fiscal year 2011 on human nutrition, 

animal systems, and natural resources. NIFA also funded activities in two 

topic areas on which ARS did limited or no research from fiscal year 2002 

through 2011: (1) economics, markets, and policy and (2) families, youth, 

and communities. Similarly, within some topic areas, ARS conducted 

 

22ARS provided spending data for all its research projects, but NIFA could not provide 

comparable research-only spending data because the agency was unable to distinguish 

between research, education, and extension activities for its integrated projects. Instead, 

NIFA’s data represent all of its research-only dollars, as well as dollars spent on projects 

that also include an undetermined amount for extension, education, or both. Thus, for the 

purposes of this report, NIFA research spending includes all NIFA-funded research, as 

well as some extension and some education dollars. Also, ARS was able to spend more in 

fiscal year 2011 than was provided in that year because it carried forward unobligated 

balances from prior years.

ARS and NIFA Use 

Agency and Scientific 

Safeguards to Prevent 

Duplication of 

Research Projects in 

Similar Topic Areas, 

but Some 

Shortcomings Exist

ARS and NIFA Generally 

Focus on the Same Broad 

Topic Areas
 

Page 16 GAO-13-255 Agricultural Research

research on certain issues that NIFA did not fund. For example, ARS 

includes six human nutrition research centers that conduct studies on a 

wide range of topics, such as the nutrient content of commonly eaten 

foods and food choices in schools.

Table 1: Percentage and Rank Order of ARS and NIFA Research Spending by Topic Area in Fiscal Year 2011 

Topic areasa

Spending as a percentage of

agency’s total researchb budget (rank order)

ARS NIFA

Plant systems 40.7% (1) 23.2% (1)

Human nutrition and food safety 16.1 (2) 16.5 (2)

Animal systems 15.7 (3) 12.9 (4)

Natural resources 15.6 (4) 14.8 (3)

Food and nonfood products 9.0 (5) 7.3 (7)

Agricultural, natural resource, and biological engineering 2.6 (6) 2.3 (9)

Economics, markets, and policy 0.3 (7) 7.7 (6)

Program support, education, and outreachc 0 8.9 (5)

Families, youth, and communities 0% 6.5% (8)

Source: GAO analysis of USDA data.

Note: Totals may not equal 100 percent because of rounding.

a

Some CRIS topic areas listed in this figure have been shortened from the original.

b

NIFA’s data represent all of its research-only dollars, as well as dollars spent on projects that also 

include an undetermined amount for extension, education, or both. In contrast, ARS provided 

spending data for all its research projects, but NIFA could not provide comparable research-only 

spending data.

c

This category represents portions of NIFA grants that focus on programmatic and statistical design, 

efficiency, and effectiveness of single and multistate projects, education, and outreach. In contrast, 

ARS includes spending on program and project support as part of each topic area.

ARS and NIFA also share responsibility for many actions needed to 

address REE goals as identified in its 2012 REE Action Plan. Our 

analysis of the 2012 REE Action Plan shows that ARS and NIFA share 

responsibility for two-thirds of the 139 planned actions delineated as 

involving either agency or both.23 Specifically, the action plan identifies 

 

23The REE Action Plan includes a total of 230 planned actions that USDA agencies are 

assigned partial or sole responsibility for. We found that 176 of these planned actions are 

research actions and that ARS, NIFA, or both have partial or sole responsibility for 139 of 

them. For planned actions for which ARS or NIFA are partially responsible, ARS or NIFA 

share responsibility with at least one other USDA agency.
 

Page 17 GAO-13-255 Agricultural Research

ARS and NIFA as jointly responsible for 92 (66 percent) of the 

139 planned actions. For the remaining 47 planned actions (34 percent), 

ARS or NIFA is solely or partially responsible. These planned actions 

align with strategies REE identified as needed to address its seven goals. 

For example, to help address its nutrition and childhood obesity goal, the 

action plan discussed a strategy to develop and extend approaches for 

preventing obesity and related diseases, and it designated both ARS and 

NIFA as responsible for determining the causes and consequences of 

obesity and related conditions.

ARS and NIFA use various safeguards to prevent duplication of research 

projects within and between the agencies. Specifically, each agency has 

built its own safeguards against project duplication into processes for 

developing and reviewing research proposals. The agencies also rely on 

the scientific community’s professional norms, which discourage 

duplicating the work of other scientists, even in similar topic areas. 

Indeed, agency officials and stakeholders could provide no recent 

examples of duplication within or between the two agencies, and our 

review of 20 randomly selected agency research projects did not identify 

duplicative projects.

ARS has developed several internal agency safeguards to help prevent 

duplication, which operate at different stages in the agency’s 5-year 

research cycle. The agency implemented this research cycle to help 

ensure the relevance, quality, and impact of its research. As part of the 

cycle, leaders from ARS’s 18 national programs assign research 

objectives to scientists in the field, and to meet those objectives, these 

scientists, in turn, work with national program and local area management 

to develop project plans for the forthcoming 5-year period. Project plans 

are reviewed by independent experts in the relevant field of science, ARS 

managers and officials, including those in ARS’s Office of Science Quality 

Review. The key safeguards ARS developed to help prevent duplicative 

research projects include the following:

• National program leaders set research project objectives. ARS’s 

national program leaders set the objectives for all proposed research 

under the agency’s 18 national programs and review each proposal to 

ensure that research plans align with assigned objectives. 

Specifically, national program leaders work with local managers to

translate the research priorities of each national program into 

research objectives for the next 5 years. According to ARS officials, 

this step serves to prevent research duplication because national 

The Agencies Rely on 

Various Safeguards to 

Prevent Duplication of 

Research Projects

ARS Developed Several 

Safeguards for Use during Its 

Planning Process 
 

Page 18 GAO-13-255 Agricultural Research

program leaders who write and assign the objectives can see if, for

two different research projects, they are writing objectives that are too 

similar, and these national program leaders can rework objectives to

be distinct.

• Scientists develop project plans using specific guidance. Teams of 

ARS scientists then use the objectives approved by the national 

program leaders to develop project plans—research proposals for 

either a single assigned research objective or a group of assigned 

objectives. These project plans are to discuss the nature of the 

problem to be addressed and detail experimental approaches for 

examining the problem. According to USDA officials, each national 

program has multiple project plans, each addressing different 

objectives within the national program. ARS guidance states that each 

project plan must (1) discuss gaps in knowledge that proposed 

research is intended to address and (2) describe how proposed 

research relates to, and complements, other related research within 

and outside of USDA. Together, these required discussions of gaps in 

knowledge and relation to other research help the agency identify and 

prevent approval of potentially duplicative research projects within and 

outside of ARS.

• National program leaders review project plans. Throughout 

development of each project plan and after a plan is complete, ARS 

national program leaders and local managers review the proposed 

research to ensure that the final objectives are consistent with the 

ones assigned. This process can identify when two research 

proposals are too similar or when a proposal has the potential to 

duplicate other proposed or existing work. For example, one scientist 

told us that his national program leader noticed that his proposed 

applied microbiology research was very similar to work already being 

done at another ARS laboratory. As a result, this scientist ceded his 

research to the other laboratory, thus averting duplication within ARS.

• External peer review by independent experts. In response to the 

Agricultural Research, Extension, and Education Reform Act of 1998, 

which requires the establishment of procedures for external peer 

review every 5 years of all research conducted by ARS,24 ARS 

 

24Pub. L. No. 105-185 § 103(d), 112 Stat. 523, 527. According to ARS officials, this 

requirement for successful completion of peer review has been in place for over a decade. 
 

Page 19 GAO-13-255 Agricultural Research

scientists now submit completed project plans for review by an 

external panel of scientific experts before ARS approves funding for 

any research. According to ARS officials, successful completion of 

external peer review as a prerequisite for ARS’s funding of its own 

intramural research was a significant change for the agency.25 ARS’s 

Office of Science Quality Review coordinates this external peer 

review, in which external peer review panels—comprising non-ARS 

scientists selected for their expertise in a field pertinent to the 

research proposals under review and coming from different places, 

such as universities, industry, or other federal agencies including 

NIFA—independently assess the quality of ARS’s proposed research, 

including specific assessment of each proposal’s significance and 

relevance. According to agency officials, these external peer review 

panels each typically review from 4 to 12 ARS project plans and 

evaluate individual project plans for adequacy of their experimental 

approaches, probability of their success in achieving stated 

objectives, and significance of the proposed research. On the basis of 

recommendations from the peer review panels, officials from ARS’s 

Office of Science Quality Review certify project plans that successfully 

pass peer review or decline to certify plans that fail to adequately 

address peer reviewers’ concerns. ARS’s best practices on peer 

review state that the agency’s project plans must provide assurance 

that proposed work addresses a unique gap in knowledge and is not 

duplicative of ongoing or completed ARS work. Moreover, ARS 

guidance states that ARS scientists are to demonstrate to peer

reviewers that they are aware of others performing similar research 

and to show how ARS’s proposed research is unique. Successful 

completion of ARS’s external peer review means that a proposed 

project has scientific merit and addresses relevant gaps in 

knowledge—including, in essence, that the proposed research is not 

duplicative.

• CRIS search for duplication. ARS guidance directs the agency’s 

scientists to search CRIS for potentially duplicative projects when 

preparing their project plans. As part of “due diligence,” ARS scientists 

 

25ARS scientists receiving external funding for their work do not submit their proposals for 

ARS’s external peer review, although their externally funded projects must be approved by 

ARS national program leaders as complementing ARS’s intramurally funded project plan 

guiding the scientist’s research. Such ARS proposals for extramural funding must also 

meet the standards of the funder—whether NIFA or another federal research agency—

including any additional safeguards against duplication.
 

Page 20 GAO-13-255 Agricultural Research

must show that research proposed in their project plans is relevant 

and unique, and ARS guidance directs the scientists to survey 

relevant literature, including searching CRIS. According to ARS 

officials, the purpose of this CRIS search is to see if ARS or NIFA has 

already funded the research the scientists are proposing.26 ARS 

officials responsible for managing external peer review commented 

that this CRIS search is typically the best method for identifying 

potentially duplicative government research. In addition, the officials 

told us that reviewers expect to see that such a CRIS search has 

been done and will say if they feel that the search has not been done 

adequately. ARS officials told us that this CRIS search generally 

consists of using keyword lists associated with each project in CRIS 

and names of scientists leading the work to identify projects that might 

be too similar or have overlapping objectives. For example, an ARS

team proposing to work on avian influenza found through its CRIS 

search that NIFA had funded a grant on various avian influenza 

strains; after reading the objectives of that grant, however, the team 

determined that, although similar, these objectives were not the same 

and that the ARS team’s research would be substantively different 

and not duplicative.

Like ARS, NIFA has also built several agency safeguards into its reviews 

of proposed work, which help prevent the funding of potentially duplicative 

research projects. These safeguards operate in NIFA’s competitive grants 

programs and, to some extent, in the provision of formula funds to the 

states. The key safeguards NIFA relies on to help prevent duplicative 

projects include the following:

• External peer review of competitive grant applications. NIFA uses 

panels of external scientists—typically comprising 3 to 25 experts in 

the field pertinent to the applications being reviewed—to assess the 

strengths and weaknesses of all competitive grant applications and to 

confirm that proposed work is original.27 These panels generally 

review each application on the basis of scientific merit and how well 

 

26Among other benefits, according to ARS officials, this CRIS search can also help 

scientists identify possible opportunities for research partnerships or collaborations.

27NIFA research opportunities originate in authorizing statutes, with funding levels set by 

subsequent congressional appropriations. For competitive grants, NIFA staff translate this 

legislation into research programs and then into specific requests for applications for each 

grant. NIFA then reviews applications for its various competitive grants to determine which 

applications merit funding.

NIFA Has Developed Key 

Safeguards as Part of Its 

Application Review Process 
 

Page 21 GAO-13-255 Agricultural Research

the application addresses, among other things, NIFA’s research 

priorities. For example, criteria for the agency’s Agriculture and Food 

Research Initiative include, among other factors, originality of 

proposed research and relevance to NIFA priorities, including the 

importance of the proposed topic to agriculture. As part of their 

assessments, peer review panels check that the proposed work is not 

already funded by other grant-making agencies. According to USDA 

officials, panelists rely on their own familiarity with work in their fields 

to determine whether a proposed project duplicates existing work in 

those fields.

• Application forms for competitive grants. According to agency officials, 

they use the application process to help identify and discourage 

potential duplication. NIFA requires competitive grant applicants to 

submit two forms, each of which serves as a partial check against 

potentially duplicative projects. The first form, called the Current and 

Pending Support form, requires a project’s lead researcher to 

document all sources of funding requested or received for his or her 

active and pending projects. The second form requires applicants to 

verify whether their application has also been submitted to other 

agencies for funding and states that submitting the same application 

in response to more than one NIFA request for application is not 

permissible. According to NIFA officials, information in these forms 

can alert the peer review panel or national program leader reviewing 

applications to instances where the research proposed in an 

application under review has already been funded, or is currently

being considered for funding, by NIFA as part of a separate 

application and thus serves as a safeguard against duplication.

• CRIS duplication check for competitive grants under the Agriculture 

and Food Research Initiative. NIFA’s national program leaders direct

staff to conduct a CRIS duplication check, using relevant keywords 

and the names of lead scientists, before awarding funds for any 

application submitted to this key competitive grant program. NIFA 

guidance on reviewing Agriculture and Food Research Initiative

applications states that national program leaders must check CRIS to 

determine if the proposed work has already been funded by NIFA or 

ARS and to ensure that it is not unnecessarily repeating work not yet 

published. National program leaders must also check if the proposed 

work is receiving funds from two different sources for essentially the 

same work. NIFA guidance states that the Agriculture and Food 

Research Initiative will not fund projects that overlap with work already 

being funded by USDA or work that is unnecessarily duplicative. 
 

Page 22 GAO-13-255 Agricultural Research

National program leaders are to document this CRIS search and 

attest to the proposed work’s originality and uniqueness.

• Review of formula funds for innovation. Even though formula-funded 

projects do not undergo external peer review, and NIFA’s national 

program leaders are not required to check CRIS for duplication when 

reviewing formula-funded projects,28 agency guidance emphasizes 

that work proposed for formula funds be relevant and innovative. NIFA 

guidance states that, as part of their general quality review, national 

program leaders should consider whether the proposed research 

addresses an important problem. In addition, NIFA guidance directs 

national program leaders to assess whether the proposed work is 

innovative, by asking whether it has the potential to add to the body of 

scientific knowledge by, among other things, addressing new issues 

or taking an innovative approach. This assessment in effect evaluates 

whether the proposed project is potentially duplicative of other 

research and thus serves to safeguard against duplication.

In addition to the agency safeguards they have developed, ARS and 

NIFA rely on several of the scientific community’s professional norms to 

help safeguard against duplicating research projects. According to 

agency officials, scientists we spoke with, and the literature we examined 

about science, the agencies rely on three such professional norms:

• Scientists have a strong incentive to produce original research and to 

make new discoveries. According to scientists and stakeholders, 

scientists are rewarded for producing new or original research, not for 

re-creating existing work; grants are not awarded for duplicative 

research. Scientists we spoke with often told us that a scientist would 

be penalized professionally for conducting research that 

unnecessarily duplicated another’s work. According to the 1991 

National Academies report, a premium is placed on making

breakthrough discoveries, and penalties may accrue for doing 

 

28According to NIFA guidance, an assessment of the quality of work proposed for formula 

funding takes place through peer reviews at universities before applications are submitted 

to NIFA. In addition, all applications under a single multistate project—where scientists 

across multiple states develop related applications as part of the same larger project—

must have the same title. Even though such applications would appear to be duplicative 

by a title search in CRIS, the projects are all complementary parts of a single multistate 

research project.

The Scientific Community’s 

Professional Norms Serve as 

Additional Safeguards against 

Duplicative Research 
 

Page 23 GAO-13-255 Agricultural Research

unnecessarily duplicative work, including difficulty in obtaining federal 

or private funding for future research.29

• Scientists must stay abreast of new research in their field to stay 

competitive. According to numerous scientists and USDA officials we 

spoke with, scientists must stay abreast of new research in their fields 

to incorporate novel ideas into their research, compete for research 

funding, and advance in their careers. Scientists keep current by 

reading professional journals; attending scientific conferences and 

related gatherings, where they and their peers present new findings; 

and communicating with colleagues worldwide on a continual basis. 

Moreover, scientists must successfully publish the results of their work 

in scientific journals to be competitive for new funding and promotions 

at the university level. This practice is also true for scientists at ARS, 

according to several ARS officials we spoke with. In fact, several 

scientists we spoke with echoed the expression “publish or perish,” 

underscoring the need for scientists to publish new findings in journals 

to remain competitive. According to USDA officials, the requirement to 

publish in peer-reviewed journals is an element in every ARS 

scientist’s annual performance plan, and a chronic failure to publish is 

grounds for termination of employment. Staying in touch with other

scientists through online networks, conferences, and scientific 

publications reduces the likelihood of duplication.

• The peer review process used by scientific journals limits the 

publication of unnecessarily duplicative research. As described in the 

literature we examined and illustrated by scientific journals’ 

instructions to authors and reviewers, peer review is the means 

journals use to vet the accuracy and quality of articles before they are 

published. Scientists submit articles detailing their research findings to 

a publication of their choice, which then sends the articles to several 

scientists working in the research area discussed by the article. These 

reviewers provide feedback on submitted articles and recommend to 

the publication’s editor whether they think the research merits 

publication. As explained in the literature we examined, only articles 

that meet certain scientific standards—including building on and not 

duplicating other work in the research area, as well as being 

sufficiently original, significant, and valid to merit the attention of other 

scientists—are accepted for publication. In effect, according to the 

 

29Institute of Medicine, Research and Service Programs in the PHS.
 

Page 24 GAO-13-255 Agricultural Research

1991 National Academies’ report, the peer review process serves to

limit unnecessary duplication of research.

USDA officials we spoke with stated that duplication of research projects 

had occurred in previous years, especially before ARS implemented its 

external peer review process, and NIFA shifted to more competitive 

grants. Moreover, in a March 2012 hearing, the Secretary of Agriculture 

testified before Congress that some duplication in research projects may 

exist today. During our review, however, USDA officials and stakeholders 

could provide no recent examples of duplication within or between ARS 

and NIFA, and many stakeholders told us that duplicative research 

projects were not a problem for ARS and NIFA today. In addition, we did 

not identify duplicative projects within or between the two agencies during 

our review of selected research projects. Some stakeholders and USDA 

officials called our attention to instances where they believed ARS or 

NIFA supported research that appeared duplicative but that, upon further 

investigation, was found to be complementary. For example, ARS 

researchers who used the agency’s base funding to study the potential of 

ultraviolet processing to improve the healthfulness of foods received a 

NIFA grant under the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative to 

investigate whether ultraviolet light improved the nutritional properties of a 

wide range of specialty crops, such as berries and apples. We found that 

this work built on previous ARS research in mushrooms in a way that 

extended ARS’s research, rather than duplicating it. Other instances 

called to our attention were, in fact, cases where industry intentionally 

funded research duplicating what ARS or NIFA was already funding to 

see which team would find the better solution. Further, we found no 

instances of actual duplication within or between ARS and NIFA during 

our review of 10 ARS and 10 NIFA research projects (see app. I for more 

information).

Our review also identified some shortcomings with certain agency 

safeguards, which may somewhat limit their usefulness and increase the 

potential risk of duplication between or within the two agencies. Three of 

these shortcomings limit CRIS’s utility to guard against duplication of 

research projects, specifically, (1) ARS data in CRIS are not current; 

(2) NIFA directs staff to conduct a CRIS duplication check for what 

amounts to two-thirds, but not all, of its competitive grants; and (3) CRIS 

searches are not user friendly.

Some Shortcomings May 

Limit the Utility of Certain 

Agency Safeguards
 

Page 25 GAO-13-255 Agricultural Research

According to USDA officials, the effectiveness of CRIS in preventing 

duplicative research projects depends on the system’s information on 

new, ongoing, and completed research. Our analysis of agency 

safeguards, however, showed that project information in CRIS may not be 

current because ARS has not always sent its project information in a 

timely manner to be entered into CRIS by NIFA, which maintains the 

system. ARS sends information in batches once or twice per fiscal year 

on its newly started or revised projects for uploading into CRIS. In 

contrast, NIFA officials stated that they upload information on new and

revised NIFA projects continually throughout the year. According to ARS 

officials, the agency sent its project information for uploading only once in 

fiscal year 2011 (June),30 twice in fiscal year 2010 (February and July), 

and twice in fiscal year 2012 (February and June).31 According to ARS 

officials, any given batch contains data on all research projects started or 

revised since ARS sent its last batch of project data. For example, the 

July 2010 batch contained information on all ARS projects started or 

revised since March 1, 2010 (see fig. 4). All together, we found that 

information in CRIS about ARS projects started from February 2010 to 

December 2012 was typically at least 6 months out-of-date; at least one 

new project we identified was nearly 21 months old when ARS sent 

information about it to NIFA for uploading into CRIS.

 

30ARS sent its June 2011 information at one time but in two batches, given the large 

amount of information.

31ARS sent its first batch of project information for fiscal year 2013 in December 2012.

ARS Data in CRIS Are Not 

Current
 

Page 26 GAO-13-255 Agricultural Research

Figure 4: Elapsed Time of ARS Transmissions of Project Information to NIFA

Note: Each rectangular division on the timeline represents 1 month.

ARS project information that is typically at least 6 months out-of-date 

when uploaded limits CRIS’s utility as a safeguard to prevent duplication 

of research projects and increases the risk of inadvertent project 

duplication at the two agencies. For example, a university scientist or 

NIFA national program leader searching CRIS for possible duplication 

could inadvertently propose or approve a project that unnecessarily 

duplicates an ARS project that might have started nearly a year before 

but had not been posted in CRIS. Agency information technology staff 

and managers agreed that sending ARS project data more often—such 

as quarterly—would be feasible, cost no more than 1 additional staff day 

of work, and increase CRIS’s utility as a safeguard to prevent project 

duplication by keeping ARS’s project information up-to-date. NIFA and 

ARS officials also acknowledged that requiring submissions of project 

information at least quarterly would help prevent other workload priorities 

from delaying ARS submissions. After discussing this topic with us, 

agency officials said that ARS now expects its staff to send ARS project 

information on a quarterly basis to NIFA for uploading. This expectation, 

however, is not documented in guidance. Under federal standards of 

internal control, agencies are to clearly document internal control in 
 

Page 27 GAO-13-255 Agricultural Research

writing, in the form of management directives, administrative policies, or 

operating manuals.32

NIFA directs its staff to conduct a CRIS duplication search for certain 

projects accounting for about two-thirds of the funding it awarded for 

competitive grants over the last decade. In response to a 2008 USDA 

Inspector General’s recommendation specifically directed at grant 

applications for the predecessor to the Agriculture and Food Research 

Initiative, NIFA developed written guidance directing that such a 

duplication check specifically be done for Agriculture and Food Research 

Initiative grants.33 That recommendation advised the agency to develop 

written guidance—rather than rely on informal, unwritten guidance—for 

these types of grants. As a result, NIFA guidance states that its national 

program leaders must search CRIS for possible duplication when 

reviewing project applications recommended for funding under its 

Agriculture and Food Research Initiative; these projects, however, 

accounted for about two-thirds, but not all, of the agency’s competitive 

grant funding. The duplication search directive does not apply to projects 

funded by NIFA’s other competitive grants or to formula-funded grants. 

The amount of funding for competitive grants not subject to this directive 

has increased each year from about 31 percent of the funds the agency

awarded for competitive grants in fiscal year 2002 to more than one-third, 

or about 37 percent, of the funds the agency awarded for competitive 

grants in fiscal year 2011.34 Thus, an increasing amount of the agency’s 

competitive grant funding has been awarded to projects without the 

 

32GAO, Standards for Internal Control in the Federal Government, GAO/AIMD-00-21.3.1

(Washington, D.C.: November 1999).

33U.S. Department of Agriculture, Office of Inspector General Northeast Region, Audit 

Report: Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service’s National 

Research Initiative Competitive Grants Program, Report No. 13601-1-Hy (Washington, 

D.C.: 2008). At the time of this Inspector General’s audit report, these grants were part of

the National Research Initiative—the predecessor program to the Agriculture and Food 

Research Initiative.

34The funding for competitive grants not subject to NIFA’s directive to conduct a CRIS 

duplication search increased each year from $54 million (out of $175 million the agency 

awarded for competitive grants) in fiscal year 2002 to $155 million (out of $419 million the 

agency awarded for competitive grants) in fiscal year 2011.

NIFA Staff Are Not Directed to 

Conduct Duplication Checks 

for All of Agency’s Competitive 

Grants
 

Page 28 GAO-13-255 Agricultural Research

benefit of this safeguard.35 In contrast, ARS’s CRIS search directive 

applies to all project plans proposed by ARS.

Although NIFA responded to the 2008 USDA Inspector General’s 

recommendation by issuing written guidance directing staff to conduct 

CRIS duplication checks for the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative, 

it has not issued similar written guidance for the rest of its competitive 

grant programs. According to NIFA officials, many but not all national 

program leaders informally conduct CRIS duplication checks when 

reviewing competitive grant applications that are not part of the initiative, 

even though no written guidance explicitly directs them to do so. The

agency recently convened a task force to study, among other issues, 

whether this directive should be extended to other competitive grants. At 

the time of our report, the task force was still studying expanding the 

CRIS duplication search to all competitive grants and had not yet made a 

decision. Under federal standards for internal control, agencies are to 

clearly document internal control in writing, and this documentation 

should be readily available for examination.36 Without written guidance 

directing staff to conduct CRIS duplication checks for all of NIFA’s

competitive grant programs, the agency does not have an internal control 

in place to ensure consistency among national program leaders in 

checking for potential duplication when reviewing applications. As a 

result, NIFA cannot be assured that grant funds are consistently used for 

supporting unique work.

In addition, NIFA does not conduct CRIS duplication checks on formulafunded grants, meaning that research and related work proposed in the 

states’ plans of work are also not subject to this safeguard. According to 

NIFA officials, the agency’s formula funds are often used for researcher 

salaries and preliminary research, and CRIS duplication checks are not 

typically applicable. For example, the officials said, enough detail is 

seldom contained in these high-level plans of work to check CRIS for 

potential duplication on research objectives. Moreover, many projects 

proposed for formula funds, such as component parts of multistate 

projects, are all required to have the same title; consequently, a search in 

CRIS on any one of these would flag the others as being potentially 

 

35Calculations are based on appropriations to NIFA and exclude plant and facilities 

funding. 

36GAO/AIMD-00-21.3.1.
 

Page 29 GAO-13-255 Agricultural Research

duplicative, even though they are complementary and intentionally titled 

the same.

USDA officials, including those responsible for system management, 

acknowledge that CRIS is not user friendly, especially for project 

searches. Specifically, they reported that CRIS is not straightforward to 

search; links to authors, publications, and patents are limited or 

nonexistent; and researcher names are listed inconsistently. For example, 

as explained by agency officials, one must go through several nonintuitive 

steps to search all text in the system for specific keywords or subjects, 

such as “bark beetles” or “bioenergy.” In addition, because CRIS does not 

have a standard way of listing researcher names, someone using CRIS 

must enter a single researcher’s name into the system in multiple ways—

such as Doe, J., and Doe, J. A.—to be certain of finding all projects by 

that one researcher. Consequently, CRIS searches are not always 

efficient, which, according to some scientists, has discouraged or kept 

researchers from using the system for duplication searches. NIFA has 

been trying to upgrade CRIS to make it less cumbersome but, according 

to USDA officials, it has not secured the resources to do so.37

To provide additional capabilities for accessing and disseminating federal 

agricultural research, USDA’s Chief Scientist is implementing a new web

platform called VIVO,38 which, according to USDA officials, has powerful 

search functionality for locating scientists and their research. According to 

 

37NIFA is in the process of addressing certain limitations in how data are entered into 

CRIS through its implementation of REEport, the project-reporting system replacing how 

officials enter data into CRIS. REEport, however, addresses only how to enter data and 

not how to search for project information in CRIS. According to USDA officials, NIFA has 

developed other tools to help improve search capabilities, including the Leadership 

Management Dashboard and the Research, Education, and Economics Information 

System. Although several USDA officials acknowledged that the Research, Education, 

and Economics Information System is more user friendly than CRIS because it uses the 

Google Search Appliance to identify projects, USDA officials knowledgeable about such 

systems told us that the Research, Education, and Economics Information System is not 

as robust as CRIS in searching for projects and does not include sufficient detail to identify 

potentially duplicative projects. Moreover, USDA does not direct staff to use the Research, 

Education, and Economics Information System or the Leadership Management 

Dashboard as a duplication safeguard.

38VIVO was developed at Cornell University in 2003 and is being expanded through a 

National Institutes of Health grant. It can be found at http://vivoweb.org/. The VIVO 

platform provides a common framework into which USDA science agencies can report 

data from their respective systems, which can then be linked through the VIVO platform.

CRIS Searches Are Not User 

Friendly
 

Page 30 GAO-13-255 Agricultural Research

USDA officials, a key purpose of VIVO—which is expected to become 

operational in 2013—is to serve as a one-stop source for USDA science 

expertise by integrating project information from all five USDA science 

agencies,39 thereby allowing USDA scientists to find possible research 

partners and allow those outside USDA to easily find USDA expertise in 

specific scientific topics (e.g., honeybees) or geographic areas (e.g., the 

Pacific Northwest). Unlike CRIS, VIVO is expected to contain not only 

information on ARS and NIFA projects but also active links to scientists 

and associated publications, organizations, patents, projects, and 

locations and to scientists’ contact information. VIVO also lists 

scientists—authors and coauthors—in a standardized format. Further, 

USDA officials stated that VIVO will reflect any new improvements made 

in the quality of project information fed into CRIS from other USDA project 

information systems because these systems of record are the source of 

VIVO’s data. For example, VIVO is expected to reflect improvements 

under way at NIFA to standardize researchers’ names in CRIS.40 In 

addition, USDA officials stated that they expect a related initiative known 

as STAR METRICS, a collaboration between federal science agencies 

and research institutions to coordinate federal investments in science,41 to 

build on VIVO and use the data to, among other things, illuminate 

research gaps and potentially duplicative research projects at ARS and

NIFA, as well as at other federal science agencies. USDA officials agreed 

 

39USDA’s five science agencies are ARS, NIFA, the Economic Research Service, the 

National Agricultural Statistics Service, and Forest Service Research and Development.

40According to NIFA officials, REEport asks researchers to enter their names in a 

standardized format so that one improvement expected from the agency’s upcoming 

rollout of this system is the standardization of researchers’ names in CRIS.

41STAR METRICS is a multiagency initiative—which, according to USDA officials, 

includes the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, Environmental 

Protection Agency, USDA, and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, 

as well as the participation of approximately 90 research institutions that receive federal 

research awards—to document the outcomes of science investments to the public. 

According to USDA officials, a benefit of STAR METRICS is a common empirical 

infrastructure available to participating institutions and federal agencies that can be used 

for new kinds of analysis of research outputs (e.g. publications; patents; scientific 

collaboration networks; and Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics 

education). USDA officials stated that STAR METRICS agencies will develop tools that 

combine the data from such analysis with existing approaches—such as examining 

documents to identify what topics are covered and the relative frequency of those topics—

and responding to requests for information from internal and external stakeholders. USDA 

science agencies have participated in the multiagency initiative 

(https://www.starmetrics.nih.gov/) since 2012. 
 

Page 31 GAO-13-255 Agricultural Research

that VIVO has the potential to be a more robust and user-friendly system 

than CRIS in helping to identify USDA scientists and their work and, thus, 

in identifying potentially duplicative research projects.

Under policy issued by the Office of Management and Budget in 2000,42

agencies are to ensure that the information systems they select 

(1) maximize the usefulness of information and minimize any burden on 

the public and (2) do not unnecessarily duplicate existing information 

technology capabilities within the same agency, from other agencies, or 

from the private sector. USDA officials have identified potential benefits of 

VIVO for both elements of this 2000 policy because of VIVO’s more 

robust search capabilities. They said, however, that the department has 

no plans to assess whether VIVO significantly improves search 

capabilities compared with CRIS or is more effective or efficient than

CRIS in identifying potentially duplicative research projects within and 

between ARS and NIFA.43 As a result, USDA has not assessed its 

information systems in a way that would allow it to (1) maximize the 

usefulness of information and minimize the burden on the public and 

(2) avoid unnecessarily duplicating existing information technology 

capabilities, as described in the 2000 Office of Management and Budget

policy. Unless USDA officials assess VIVO’s effectiveness and efficiency, 

and unless USDA officials establish written procedures for staff to use the 

best method when searching for duplicative research projects, ARS and 

NIFA scientists and managers could remain dependent on a less robust 

safeguard.

 

42Office of Management and Budget, Circular No. A-130, Revised Transmittal No. 4 

(Washington, D.C.: Nov. 28, 2000), accessed December 5, 2012.

43Even though CRIS and VIVO both have capabilities to search for potentially duplicative 

research, they also provide additional functions that support the coordination and 

management of research projects.
 

Page 32 GAO-13-255 Agricultural Research

Over the past few years, USDA’s Chief Scientist has facilitated increased 

collaborative planning within the REE mission area, particularly between 

ARS and NIFA, but agency-level collaborative planning between these 

two agencies has not been systematic. Specifically, the Chief Scientist 

and her staff have led several REE-level planning efforts that, over the 

past several years, have brought together staff from the two agencies and 

generated key products. Nevertheless, six USDA officials with planning 

responsibilities said that collaborative planning between ARS and NIFA 

national program leaders has not been systematic for topic areas the 

agencies have in common, and 20 officials and stakeholders said that 

ARS and NIFA should systematically hold joint planning and stakeholder 

input meetings to make the best use of limited agricultural research 

resources.

Over the past few years, the Chief Scientist, her senior advisors, and 

other staff have led efforts that have facilitated REE-level collaborative 

planning among ARS, NIFA, and the other REE mission area agencies, 

and these efforts have resulted in several key products. First, the Chief 

Scientist led a collaborative planning effort that involved the four REE 

agencies to develop the REE Action Plan. The Chief Scientist and her 

staff established seven teams, focused on the action plan’s seven goals, 

which held planning meetings from November 2010 to February 2012 and 

involved staff from multiple agencies in developing the subgoals, 

strategies, planned actions, and agency responsibilities corresponding to 

the action plan’s goals. For each goal and subgoal, the teams also 

identified specific challenges facing agriculture, natural resources, and 

conservation to be addressed by the planned actions. Several USDA 

officials told us that because the meetings led to more collaboration 

across REE agencies, these planning meetings were a major benefit of 

REE Action Plan development. For example, according to one USDA 

official, discussions among USDA officials during meetings about a 

subgoal related to energy and biofuels research highlighted the fact that 

research areas overlapped between USDA and the Department of 

Energy, creating the potential for duplicative work. Such discussions

suggested a solution—a decision to focus USDA research efforts on 

developing biofuel feedstocks (i.e., materials such as perennial grasses 

from which biofuels are generated) and to move away from technology for 

converting materials into biofuels, a research area for which the 

Department of Energy has predominant responsibility. Further, according 

to this official, the discussions between ARS and NIFA officials during the 

development of the REE Action Plan clarified each REE agency’s role in 

each of the goals, strategies, and planned actions. Overall, this planning

High-Level 

Collaborative 

Planning Has 

Increased, but 

Agency-Level 

Collaborative 

Planning between 

ARS and NIFA Has 

Not Been Systematic

High-Level Collaborative 

Planning Has Generated 

Key Products
 

Page 33 GAO-13-255 Agricultural Research

effort made use of practices consistent with two we identified in our

October 2005 report as helpful to enhance and sustain agency 

collaboration, in particular, establishing mutually reinforcing or joint 

strategies and agreeing on roles and responsibilities.44

Second, the Chief Scientist’s senior advisors led a collaborative effort 

from early 2011 to mid-2012 that resulted in six specific “white papers,” 

issued by the Office of the Chief Scientist, on the topics of global food 

security, bioenergy, nutrition and childhood obesity, climate change, food 

safety, and sustainable agricultural systems. These white papers were 

developed through a series of meetings and discussions with multiagency 

teams from ARS, NIFA, and other USDA agencies, and each white paper 

was independently peer reviewed. The senior advisors worked with these 

teams to describe in more detail challenges and strategies identified in 

the REE Action Plan, including (1) roles to be played by the agencies in 

addressing each challenge, (2) key strategies to focus on in fulfilling those 

roles, (3) USDA’s current actions, (4) USDA’s future plans, and (5) the 

research outcomes that USDA anticipates. Like the collaborative planning 

that led to the REE Action Plan, the white paper planning effort also made 

use of collaboration practices consistent with several we previously 

identified, particularly, defining and articulating a common outcome, 

establishing mutually reinforcing or joint strategies, and agreeing on roles 

and responsibilities.45

Third, the Chief Scientist’s senior advisors stated that in 2010 and 2011

they coordinated input from ARS, NIFA, and other agencies to help 

develop a number of products, including Feed the Future: Global Food 

Security Research Strategy. Issued in May 2011, this global research 

portfolio serves as an integral part of the President’s broader Feed the 

Future initiative. Specifically, the senior advisors said that they

established multiagency working groups of USDA officials, who worked 

with their counterparts in the Agency for International Development to 

identify research priorities—aimed at sustainably advancing productivity, 

transforming production systems, and enhancing nutrition and food safety 

around the world—to help implement this strategy.

 

44GAO-06-15. 

45GAO-06-15. 
 

Page 34 GAO-13-255 Agricultural Research

The Chief Scientist’s senior advisors also facilitated collaborative planning 

efforts not resulting in products. For example, in September 2012, one 

senior advisor began an effort to better coordinate ARS’s intramural and 

NIFA’s extramural research on nutrition and obesity. In this instance, the 

Chief Scientist provided guidance for the initial joint meeting, and the 

senior advisor scheduled follow-up meetings to address unresolved 

issues. 

Program leaders in ARS and NIFA meet throughout the year for various 

purposes, but, according to six USDA officials who have planning 

responsibilities, the program leaders have not systematically held joint 

planning meetings to help determine research priorities for topic areas the 

agencies have in common or their roles and responsibilities for 

addressing these priorities. According to our review of meeting agendas 

and other agency documents, ARS and NIFA program leaders meet with 

stakeholders—such as agricultural producers and industry 

representatives—at scientific society, commodity group, stakeholder 

input, and other meetings throughout the year. The six USDA officials 

acknowledged, however, that the two agencies do not systematically plan 

or hold joint stakeholder input meetings, nor do they hold joint planning 

meetings. Rather, each agency generally holds separate stakeholder 

input meetings, even when agency research topics and stakeholders are 

the same or similar. For example, according to our review of meeting 

documentation, ARS held most of its recent stakeholder input meetings 

for its national programs independently. Even though ARS and NIFA 

generally hold such meetings independently, ARS’s and NIFA’s websites 

both identify collaborative ARS-NIFA stakeholder input meetings for the 

animal sciences programs. According to these websites and agency 

documents, animal sciences is the one broad topic area in which the 

agencies have for several years systematically held joint ARS-NIFA 

national stakeholder input meetings. The animal sciences team also holds 

joint ARS-NIFA planning meetings afterward to address stakeholder input 

and help each agency determine its research priorities as well as roles 

and responsibilities. In contrast, according to the six officials, national 

program leaders have not systematically held joint planning meetings to 

(1) help the agencies determine their research priorities for topic areas 

they have in common or (2) help each agency determine its roles and 

responsibilities for addressing these priorities.

According to USDA officials and stakeholders we interviewed, 

collaborative agency planning is important because the collective 

knowledge of both ARS and NIFA is needed to ensure that the agencies’ 

Several USDA Officials 

Said That Collaborative 

Planning between ARS and 

NIFA Has Not Been 

Systematic
 

Page 35 GAO-13-255 Agricultural Research

research areas and projects address top priorities and that research is 

complementary and not duplicative. In addition, these officials and 

stakeholders said that collaborative planning helps identify the 

appropriate entity—whether ARS itself, universities, or other 

organizations—to address a research problem. Each entity, they said, 

may have unique expertise, facilities, and equipment, and no one agency 

or official has all the relevant knowledge.

Over the last decade, USDA and others have emphasized the need for 

enhanced collaborative planning and joint stakeholder input, but USDA 

has not implemented key recommendations. USDA’s 2010 Roadmap

states that solutions to many of the nation’s most serious problems 

demand change that USDA will bring about, in part, by better coordinating 

its science planning among and between REE science agencies and with 

other federal science agencies and by listening to the needs of 

stakeholders. Also, a 2010 annual report in the plant sciences area cited 

the lack of strategic planning for research across federal agencies and it 

stated that regular team meetings held quarterly would help improve 

collaboration within NIFA.

46 In addition, reports by USDA and others 

made specific recommendations to enhance collaborative planning and 

joint stakeholder input. USDA, however, has not implemented these 

recommendations. For example, USDA has not implemented the 

recommendation from an ARS-NIFA-sponsored study that the agencies 

develop a unified approach to the stakeholder community to address and

solve critical problems.47 Neither has USDA implemented the 

recommendation in a 2003 National Research Council report that REE 

hold a national summit every 2 to 3 years to engage the agencies and a 

broad spectrum of national, regional, and local stakeholders.48

The Chief Scientist told us that she envisions greater collaborative 

planning between the agencies in the future through, in particular, more 

 

46National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Portfolio Annual Report 2009: Plant Systems

(Washington, D.C.: January 2010).

47Bobby R. Phills, An Interagency Effort to Strengthen and Enhance the Collaborative 

Relationship of the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and the Cooperative State 

Research, Education, and Extension Service (CSREES), a report prepared for ARS and 

NIFA’s predecessor agency, January 2005.

48National Research Council, Frontiers in Agricultural Research: Food, Health, 

Environment, and Communities (Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2003).
 

Page 36 GAO-13-255 Agricultural Research

joint meetings for obtaining stakeholder input and discussing agency-level 

research plans to support the REE Action Plan. Several USDA officials 

and stakeholders told us that joint ARS-NIFA stakeholder input should be 

sought at least every 5 years, to coincide with ARS’s 5-year planning 

cycle, and suggested that the two agencies hold joint planning meetings 

annually. In addition, two industry stakeholders said that joint meetings 

would benefit them by increasing their contact with NIFA national program 

leaders, whom they may not know as well as they know ARS national

program leaders.

Promising examples of systematic collaborative stakeholder input and 

planning, initiated independently by officials and individual teams within 

ARS and NIFA, already exist in one broad topic area—animal sciences—

and in more limited areas that may fall within a national program or broad 

topic area. Specifically, for more than a decade, an animal sciences team 

of ARS and NIFA national program leaders has jointly sponsored large 

stakeholder meetings led by both agencies every 5 years, with smaller, 

annual stakeholder meetings on more specific topics (e.g., swine). The 

team started holding these meetings after a stakeholder requested such 

collaboration to save time spent attending two sets of similar meetings. 

The national program leaders meet after the stakeholder meetings to 

discuss ongoing research projects and associated resources, gaps in 

addressing stakeholders’ needs and priorities, and their respective 

agency’s potential roles and responsibilities; the program leaders also 

meet monthly by telephone or in person. Collectively, these meetings 

facilitate development of specific ARS and NIFA plans or requests for 

application.49 Several USDA officials and stakeholders we interviewed 

praised the animal sciences team’s collaborative effort as a best practice, 

and the team was nominated for a USDA-wide award for sustained 

collaboration that “has facilitated strong engagement with stakeholders 

and leveraged intramural and extramural programs to benefit U.S. animal

agriculture.” Two industry stakeholders we spoke with who participate in 

these joint meetings said that the meetings assure them that the two 

agencies are coordinating their research plans.

According to USDA officials, many benefits have come from the animal 

science team’s collaboration. For example, according to USDA officials, 

 

49USDA officials told us that to prevent conflicts of interest—because ARS scientists can 

compete for certain NIFA grants—ARS staff are not involved in developing priorities or 

wording for competitive grants.
 

Page 37 GAO-13-255 Agricultural Research

this team’s collaborative planning led to the development of a network of 

researchers working to enable development of veterinary vaccines for 

cattle, swine, poultry, and fish. This network now includes scientists from 

ARS, several universities, and industry and coordinates with similar 

endeavors internationally. According to a USDA official and the network’s 

website, products developed from these collaborative efforts benefit a 

large group of researchers, including veterinary clinicians, immunologists, 

pathologists, and microbiologists. Additionally, joint stakeholder and 

planning meetings hosted every 5 years by the aquaculture subgroup of 

the animal sciences team have led to NIFA funding for a 2008 Regional 

Collaborative Research and Extension Catfish Forum, linking ARS, NIFA 

multistate committees, and land-grant college and university programs. 

According to NIFA and ARS aquaculture program leaders, the 

collaboration helped bring about the development of an innovative catfish 

production system that is now used commercially.

USDA officials also provided examples of other ARS-NIFA collaborative 

stakeholder input meetings and planning efforts that are more limited in 

scope or fall within a national program or topic area. For example, the 

National Plant Germplasm Coordinating Committee was established in 

2006. Largely funded by ARS, with support from NIFA and universities,

the National Plant Germplasm System protects plant hereditary material, 

or germplasm, including seeds, to preserve the genetic diversity of our 

nation’s crops. The coordinating committee, comprising ARS and NIFA 

officials and academic scientists, meets annually to review and set 

national scientific priorities for the system. The committee also initiates a 

strategic planning effort to better define and communicate a vision, 

mission, and short- and long-term goals for the system. In addition, in the 

area of food safety, ARS and NIFA national program leaders hold a joint 

annual meeting with a group of key stakeholders—three federal agencies 

involved in regulating food safety and preventing foodborne illness—to 

identify the research needs of these stakeholders. ARS and NIFA then 

use this information to help coordinate each agency’s research plans.

Even though the benefits of collaboration are widely recognized, part of 

the reason that ARS-NIFA collaborative planning may not be systematic, 

agency officials told us, is that REE does not require its agencies to 

systematically hold joint planning meetings or jointly meet with 

stakeholders. Moreover, some USDA officials we interviewed stated that 

it is a challenge for national program leaders—at both ARS and NIFA, 

where many national program leaders have heavier workloads because 

of recent retirements—to make systematic collaboration a high priority. 

One NIFA official stated that without a requirement for systematic
 

Page 38 GAO-13-255 Agricultural Research

collaborative planning, such planning is unlikely to increase. By 

enhancing collaborative planning for topic areas that ARS and NIFA have 

in common, as the animal sciences area has done, the agencies can take

full advantage of their collective knowledge and expertise in setting their 

research priorities and determining their roles and responsibilities for 

carrying out these priorities.

Agricultural science, like science in general, advances through research 

that may at first seem duplicative but may (1) actually replicate, and 

thereby validate or disprove existing research, or (2) complement and 

extend existing research. Recognizing the importance of both replication 

and complementarity in science—and in light of some duplication at 

USDA’s largest research agencies in the past and the potential for some 

duplication in the future—ARS and NIFA have each developed important 

agency safeguards for reviewing projects, which work in tandem with the 

scientific community’s professional norms, to prevent duplicative research 

projects within and between the agencies. We commend the agencies for 

developing multitiered safeguards. Modifications to these safeguards, 

however, could better position both agencies to further reduce the risk of 

duplicative research projects in the future. For example, information on 

ARS projects is not current in CRIS because ARS has no written 

guidance for how often to send its project information to NIFA for 

uploading into the system; as a result, ARS has not always sent its 

project information in a timely manner. Thus, ARS project information that 

is typically at least 6 months out of date limits CRIS’s utility as a 

safeguard against duplicative research. In addition, since NIFA does not 

direct that all competitive grant applications recommended for funding be 

checked against CRIS for potential duplication, about one-third of the 

funds NIFA awards in competitive grants go toward projects that are, in 

effect, not subject to a key agency safeguard to prevent potential 

duplication and are thus at increased risk of inadvertent duplication. NIFA 

recently convened a task force to study, among other issues, whether this 

directive should be extended to other competitive grants. At the time of 

our report, the task force was still studying expanding the CRIS 

duplication search to all competitive grants and had not made a decision. 

Moreover, without an assessment of whether the search functionality of 

the forthcoming VIVO platform is more effective or efficient than CRIS at 

finding duplicative research projects, and until assessment results are

used to drive procedures for identifying potentially duplicative projects, 

scientists and national program leaders cannot be assured that they are 

using the best method or system for detecting duplication. Finally, by 

successfully engaging ARS, NIFA, and other REE agencies, USDA’s 

Conclusions 
 

Page 39 GAO-13-255 Agricultural Research

Chief Scientist has enhanced high-level collaborative planning. In 

addition, some collaborative planning initiated jointly by ARS and NIFA

has occurred across national program areas, such as in the animal 

sciences area. By enhancing collaborative planning—including planning 

that involves key stakeholders—for topic areas the agencies have in 

common, ARS and NIFA national program leaders can consistently take 

full advantage of their collective knowledge and expertise to help set their 

research priorities and help the agencies determine their roles and 

responsibilities for carrying out these priorities.

To help further reduce the risk of duplicative research within and between 

ARS and NIFA and to improve the agencies’ collaborative planning, we 

recommend that the Secretary of Agriculture direct the Under Secretary of 

Research, Education, and Economics to take the following four actions:

• Require that ARS issue written guidance specifying that it should 

update its research project data in CRIS at least quarterly and ensure 

that this requirement is also applied to any new systems that receive 

these project data.

• Require that NIFA issue written guidance that its national program 

leaders ensure that staff check all of NIFA’s competitive grant awards 

against CRIS for potential duplication.

• Require, as USDA identifies promising systems for searching and 

disseminating research project information, the appropriate entity to 

(1) determine whether VIVO or other systems are more effective or 

efficient than CRIS in identifying potentially duplicative research and 

(2) revise guidance to reflect the best system and methods for 

identifying potentially duplicative research projects.

• Enhance ARS’s and NIFA’s collaborative approach across all topic 

areas they have in common—including holding jointly sponsored 

meetings with stakeholders—to help set their research priorities and 

help them determine their roles and responsibilities for carrying out 

these priorities.

We provided a copy of the draft report to the Department of Agriculture for 

its review and comment. In written comments from the department, which 

are reproduced in appendix II, the Chief Scientist stated that the 

department generally agreed with our findings. Nevertheless, USDA 

responded to the statement in our report that “collaborative planning 

Recommendations for 

Executive Action

Agency Comments 

and Our Evaluation
 

Page 40 GAO-13-255 Agricultural Research

between ARS and NIFA has not been systematic.” In our report, we 

define the term collaborative planning as the act of bringing research 

agencies and stakeholders together to discuss priorities, roles, and 

responsibilities, and we use the term systematic to mean marked by 

thoroughness and regularity. In its comments, USDA outlined six steps 

within REE that together it states constitute a system for collaborative 

planning, noting that the report accurately describes these steps. As we 

describe in the report, some of these steps have contributed to 

collaborative planning conducted jointly by ARS and NIFA across national 

program areas, such as in the animal sciences area. We concluded, 

however, that by enhancing collaborative planning—including planning 

that involves key stakeholders—for all topic areas the agencies have in 

common, ARS and NIFA national program leaders can consistently take 

full advantage of their collective knowledge and expertise to help set their 

research priorities and help the agencies determine their roles and 

responsibilities for carrying out these priorities. Such an approach would 

be more systematic in carrying out collaborative planning.

In addition, while neither explicitly agreeing nor disagreeing with our 

recommendations, the Chief Scientist stated that the department will give 

strong consideration to our recommendations as it seeks to improve how 

it identifies fruitful approaches to address the highest priority food and 

agricultural research needs. In these written comments, the Chief 

Scientist did not comment specifically on one of our recommendations: 

that USDA require that NIFA issue written guidance that its national 

program leaders ensure that staff check all of NIFA’s competitive grant 

awards against CRIS for potential duplication. Nonetheless, the written 

comments cite the benefits of implementing the three other 

recommendations. The following list summarizes the department’s 

comments on our recommendations:

• For our recommendation that USDA require that ARS issue written 

guidance specifying that it should update its research project data in 

CRIS at least quarterly and ensure that this requirement is also 

applied to any new systems that receive these project data: In the 

written comments, the Chief Scientist stated that such written 

guidance to direct more frequent updates of ARS data “to common 

data systems could benefit the use of these systems as decisionsupport tools.” The Chief Scientist also stated that such a “benefit 

extends to several efforts under way in REE to develop and improve 

common data systems,” including VIVO and others mentioned in the 

report.
 

Page 41 GAO-13-255 Agricultural Research

• For our recommendation that USDA require, as it identifies promising 

systems for searching and disseminating research project information, 

the appropriate entity to (1) determine whether VIVO or other systems 

are more effective or efficient than CRIS in identifying potentially 

duplicative research and (2) revise guidance to reflect the best system 

and methods for identifying potentially duplicative research projects: 

In the written comments, the Chief Scientist stated that, as the 

initiatives “mature and provide validated improvements over existing 

systems, guidance for use of the best available tools for safeguarding 

against duplication” could “enhance this benefit.”

• For our recommendation that USDA enhance ARS’s and NIFA’s 

collaborative approach across all topic areas they have in common—

including holding jointly sponsored meetings with stakeholders—to 

help set their research priorities and help them determine their roles 

and responsibilities for carrying out these priorities: While USDA did 

not expressly agree or disagree with this recommendation, it stated in 

its comments that it expects ARS and NIFA to “continue to increase 

the number of jointly sponsored planning activities” and that ARSNIFA joint stakeholder meetings in Plant Sciences and Aquaculture 

are already planned for 2013. 

We continue to believe that all four recommendations would enhance 

safeguards against project duplication and strengthen collaborative 

planning.

USDA’s Chief Scientist also provided technical comments, which we 

incorporated into the report as appropriate.

As agreed with your office, unless you publicly announce the contents of 

this report earlier, we plan no further distribution until 30 days from the 

report date. At that time, we will send copies to the Secretary of 

Agriculture, the appropriate congressional committees, and other 

interested parties. In addition, the report will be available at no charge on 

the GAO website at http://www.gao.gov.

If you or your staff members have any questions about this report, please 

contact me at (202) 512-3841 or garciadiazd@gao.gov. Contact points for 
 

Page 42 GAO-13-255 Agricultural Research

our Offices of Congressional Relations and Public Affairs may be found 

on the last page of this report. Key contributors to this report are listed in 

appendix III.

Sincerely yours,

Daniel Garcia-Diaz

Director, Natural Resources and Environment
Appendix I: Objectives, Scope, and 

Methodology

Page 43 GAO-13-255 Agricultural Research

Our objectives were to examine (1) the topics the Agricultural Research 

Agency (ARS) and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) 

focus on and the safeguards they use to prevent duplication of research 

projects, along with any shortcomings in those safeguards, and 

(2) collaborative planning ARS and NIFA engaged in and how, if at all, 

such planning could be enhanced.

For both objectives, we collected and reviewed relevant law and agency 

guidance, as well as reports from the National Academies; the Inspector 

General of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA); the National 

Agricultural Research, Extension, Education, and Economics Advisory 

Board (REE advisory board); and others. We also interviewed and 

gathered relevant documents from headquarters and field officials of 

USDA, including the Office of the Under Secretary for Research, 

Education, and Economics (REE); Office of the Chief Scientist; ARS; 

NIFA; and the Economic Research Service. We interviewed officials on 

the telephone and during our two site visits—one to ARS and NIFA 

headquarters offices in the Washington, D.C., area and the other to the 

University of California, Davis, and ARS’s field office in Albany, California. 

These officials included program leaders and other managers and 

scientists. In addition, we interviewed 16 stakeholders from the REE 

advisory board; industry organizations; and academic organizations, 

including land-grant colleges and universities. Stakeholders representing 

industry organizations came from the Florida Citrus Processors

Association, American Dairy Science Association, National Pork Board, 

Iowa Soybean Association, and the National Grape and Wine Initiative. 

Stakeholders representing academic organizations were current or former 

officials of the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities; the 

University of Arkansas; the University of California, Davis; the University 

of Georgia Agricultural Experiment Stations; and Ohio State University. 

We selected industry and academic stakeholders on the basis of input 

from officials with USDA and the National Academy of Sciences’ Board 

on Agriculture and Natural Resources.

To examine the topics ARS and NIFA focus on, we collected and 

analyzed agency funding, spending, and planning data related to the 

topics on which ARS and NIFA focus their work. We collected and 

analyzed the President’s budgets to identify total ARS and NIFA funding

for fiscal years 2002 through 2011 and NIFA budget data on the 

breakdown of its funding by mechanism (formula funding, competitive 

grants, and noncompetitive grants) for fiscal years 2001 through 2011. 

We assessed the reliability of these data and found them to be sufficiently 

reliable for our purposes. We also collected and analyzed spending by 

Appendix I: Objectives, Scope, and 

Methodology 
Appendix I: Objectives, Scope, and 

Methodology

Page 44 GAO-13-255 Agricultural Research

ARS and NIFA on research from fiscal year 2002 through fiscal year

2011. To assess the reliability of spending data provided from NIFA’s 

Current Research Information System (CRIS)—USDA’s primary database 

of completed and ongoing projects, which includes both financial and 

project information—we interviewed knowledgeable officials about the 

data, possible limitations of the data, and internal controls for the system 

containing the data. We found these data to be sufficiently reliable for our 

purposes. Nevertheless, our ability to quantify and compare the agencies’ 

spending on research topics was limited because, unlike ARS, NIFA 

could not isolate its research spending. Consequently, NIFA could only 

provide research spending data that also included an unknown amount of 

spending on education and extension activities. Moreover, we could 

compare ARS and NIFA research topics only at a high level and could not 

comparatively assess in detail the agencies’ spending on subtopic areas, 

such as which agency spent more money or a greater share of its money 

on childhood obesity or colony collapse disorder in honeybees. We also 

collected and analyzed estimates provided by NIFA on its research 

spending for fiscal years 2002 through 2011. These estimates are the 

same as those provided annually to the National Science Foundation. We 

assessed the reliability of these estimates by interviewing knowledgeable 

officials and comparing these estimates against data on spending and 

funding, and we determined them to be sufficiently reliable for our 

purposes.

To examine the safeguards used by the agencies to identify and prevent 

duplication within and between ARS and NIFA, we interviewed current 

and former scientists and agency officials, reviewed relevant scientific 

literature discussing professional norms and practices, and analyzed 

documentation of safeguards used at each agency to identify and prevent 

duplicative research. To identify shortcomings in those safeguards, we 

interviewed agency officials and analyzed relevant guidance. Also, we 

used agency guidance on searching CRIS to review for possible 

duplication a total of 10 ARS and 10 NIFA projects started in 2011, 

randomly sampled from the animal sciences and human nutrition areas. 

This review did not assess the extent of duplication across all NIFA and 

ARS projects. To ensure the reliability of the review, we also worked with 

knowledgeable USDA officials to develop the formulas used to query 

CRIS and obtain a master list of ARS and NIFA projects started in 2011 

from which to derive a sample. As part of this review, we followed ARS 

and NIFA guidance to search CRIS by keywords and scientists’ names 

for potentially duplicative research projects within and between the two 

agencies. One analyst reviewed all 20 selected projects to determine 

whether they were potentially duplicative or, rather, complemented or 
Appendix I: Objectives, Scope, and 

Methodology

Page 45 GAO-13-255 Agricultural Research

replicated existing work. A second analyst then reviewed the first 

analyst’s initial determinations. We resolved any disagreement between 

the analysts through discussion and afterward obtained additional input 

from relevant ARS and NIFA scientists and officials for any project that 

either analyst determined to be potentially duplicative. Our review of 

selected projects flagged one ARS project and one NIFA project as 

potentially duplicative; after discussion with agency officials, however, we 

concluded that neither project was in fact duplicative. In ARS’s case, the 

same project was recorded twice because of two external funding 

sources, and in NIFA’s case, an existing formula-funded project 

supported the collection of preliminary data for a related competitivegrant-funded project.

To examine collaborative planning engaged in by ARS and NIFA and 

how, if at all, such planning could be enhanced, we analyzed the Chief 

Scientist’s actions aimed at increasing collaboration and the products 

resulting from these actions. We also interviewed USDA officials and 

stakeholders regarding the effects of these actions. To examine the 

collaborative planning ARS and NIFA engaged in, we reviewed agency 

plans and agendas and other documents related to stakeholders’ input 

into research priorities. In addition, we examined our own and USDA’s 

documents, issued from 1996 to 2010, discussing the need for improved 

collaboration and planning. For example, we reviewed two of our reports 

on barriers agencies face when attempting to collaborate on selected key 

practices that can help enhance and sustain collaboration among federal 

agencies.1 To identify practices that can enhance and sustain agency 

collaboration, we also reviewed a 2005 USDA-sponsored study on 

improving ARS-NIFA collaboration, two reports we issued on federal 

agency collaboration, other reports of ours on agricultural research 

planning, and National Research Council studies. Finally, we analyzed 

our interviews with USDA officials and stakeholders to report their views

on whether collaborative planning—including stakeholder input meetings 

and priority-setting meetings—was sufficient and whether they had any 

recommendations that could enhance such collaborative planning. We 

also examined whether the agencies’ collaborative efforts reflected key 

 

1

GAO, Managing for Results: Barriers to Interagency Coordination, GAO/GGD-00-106

(Washington, D.C.: Mar. 29, 2000), and Results-Oriented Government: Practices That 

Can Help Enhance and Sustain Collaboration among Federal Agencies, GAO-06-15

(Washington, D.C.: Oct. 21, 2005).
Appendix I: Objectives, Scope, and 

Methodology

Page 46 GAO-13-255 Agricultural Research

practices we identified in October 2005 that can help enhance and 

sustain collaboration among federal agencies.

We conducted this performance audit from January 2012 through April 

2013 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing 

standards. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to 

obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for 

our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe 

that the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our findings 

and conclusions based on our audit objectives.
Appendix II: Comments from the U.S. 

Department of Agriculture

Page 47 GAO-13-255 Agricultural Research

Appendix II: Comments from the U.S. 

Department of Agriculture
Appendix II: Comments from the U.S. 

Department of Agriculture

Page 48 GAO-13-255 Agricultural Research
Appendix III: GAO Contact and Staff 

Acknowledgments

Page 49 GAO-13-255 Agricultural Research

Daniel Garcia-Diaz, (202) 512-3841 or garciadiazd@gao.gov. 

In addition to the individual named above, Karen A. Jones (Assistant 

Director), Kevin Bray, Tony Calero, Ellen W. Chu, Paula Moore, Beverly 

Peterson, Dan Royer, Michael Silver, and Tama Weinberg made 

significant contributions to this report.

Appendix III: GAO Contact and Staff 

Acknowledgments 

GAO Contact

Staff 

Acknowledgments 

(361362)
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