The USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) is deploying the Customer Service Toolkit which features desktop GIS integrated with Microsoft Office to over 2500 service centers. It will serve as the primary means for developing and delivering to NRCS customers technical assistance products such as maps and narrative documents related to conservation planning and resource assessment.

Implementation involves migrating tabular customer and land unit information from the legacy system, loading DOQ base maps and other geospatial data such as common land unit boundaries and soils mapping units, linking the geospatial and tabular data, and storing them in a directory structure that can be easily accessed and managed by the service center staff. Since deployment is staged over several years, flexibility is crucial to foster migrating easily to improved commercial technology and to add enhanced business functionality.

In 1997, the NRCS task force report, Future Directions: A Vision of Information Technology for Field Conservationists¹, presented a guide for the use of information technology to foster more effective and efficient delivery of NRCS business lines at the field level. The design of the Customer Service Toolkit followed implementation strategy principles from this report

• Use only commercial off-the-shelf productivity tools
• Use only open system, industry standard commercial tools for data management, security, and operating systems
• Migrate field data to the new environment, where possible, to minimize data entry
• Establish mobile computing platforms nationwide

Development of the Customer Service Toolkit was undertaken as a business process re-engineering effort described in a paper presented at last year's Esri User Conference². The application went through two pilot versions, 1.0 and 1.1, and a version 2.0 which was sent to 52 NRCS State Offices in January 2000 for information and evaluation. The first production version is 2.0.1.

The Toolkit makes extensive use of the commercial software deployed on desktop and laptop computers provided through the USDA Service Center computer modernization initiative and consists of six major components as shown in Figure 1:

Figure 1. Overview of the Customer Service
Customer Service Toolkit³

1. FOCS Data Transfer moves legacy system data to the computer with a Microsoft Windows NT® operating system and prepares it for use with the Toolkit.
2. Customer Data is managed and organized with Microsoft Outlook®.
3. Conservation Reports is a set of tools used to create or revise conservation plans and contracts. Tools include a Report Wizard, Excel® spreadsheets, and Access® databases
4. Local Options includes tools to customize the Toolkit.
5. Toolkit ArcView Extensions make Esri ArcView® GIS easier to use for conservation planning and resource assessment. This component is optional and available if Esri ArcView is installed.
6. Soil Data Viewer is an ArcView application used to view soils interpretation maps on-the-fly. This component is available if both Esri ArcView and a Microsoft® Access® database with NASIS data are available.

When the Toolkit was certified by an independent USDA test lab, a deployment plan⁴ was approved calling for distribution of the Customer Service Toolkit Version 2.0.1 to all service centers as part of a standard computer environment upgrade in June 2000. The plan stated that:

The plan also provided a detailed deployment strategy for the NRCS State Management Team and Support Staffs to consider before determining the extent of implementation on an office by office basis. It included guidance on issues in seven main areas: installation, data management, security, support, training, maintenance, and future development.

Issue #2 - Certain NRCS support offices, universities, private sector companies are not directly involved in delivery of conservation products to NRCS customers. These people want to use the Soil Data Viewer but do not need the Toolkit Customer related functionality.

Resolution - Beyond the basic decision path of a GIS installation or not, there are options presented to help the user custom fit the Toolkit to meet specific needs. With the GIS installation there are three options:

1. Install the Soil Data Viewer only
2. Install the Toolkit only
3. Install both the Toolkit and the Soil Data Viewer

Issue # 3 - Some offices do not have data from the legacy Field Office Computing System (FOCS) to transfer. Even in offices that do have such data, the transfer only needs to be done one central computer so the FOCS Data Transfer application is not needed on other machines in that office.

Resolution - For both GIS and non-GIS installations there are options to not include the capability to transfer legacy data from FOCS⁵. See Figure 2

Figure 2 - Customer Service Toolkit Installation Options

Issue #1 - Service Centers currently have a mix of desktop and laptop personal computers but budget restrictions have prevented purchasing data and application servers and software. There is a need to provide an interim solution for sharing customer data among the computers.

Resolution - The Toolkit documentation contains a recommended approach for exchanging customer data among office computers by designating one computer as "Toolkit Central." This computer is used as a warehouse for customer data, to store spatial data, transfer FOCS data, and control revisions to standard data.

The remote "Workstation" computer users, through the use of local area networks and shared directory structures, can copy customer data files to their workstations, work on those files, and then copy back the revised files to the Toolkit Central computer. While the files are "checked out", they may travel with a planner on a laptop computer to a farm or ranch site for direct work with a landowner. The files may also be augmented with up to-date-spatial data or with new planned conservation practices. Refer to Figure 3

Figure 3 Managing Shared Data from Toolkit Central

Issue #2 - Not all legacy data from FOCS is needed by the current version of Toolkit but there is concern this data be accessible for other purposes.

Issue #3 - Spatial data used by the Toolkit will be provided to service centers over time and needs to be placed into standard directory locations as it becomes available. A Service Center may service multiple counties which have different sets of spatial data.

Resolution - When the Toolkit is installed in sites with ArcView, a folder called Service Center Themes is created on the C: drive. Orthophotos, digitized farm field boundaries, soils, and other spatial data may be stored in subfolders under this folder. If there is data for more than one county, a subfolder for each county can be created.

Issue #4 - Many of the Service Center computers have 6 Gigabyte hard drives and the average number of customers served by a Service Center is between 1,000 and 2,000. There is concern that the spatial files for both the county and individual customers will exceed the capacity of the hard drives.

Resolution - The Toolkit supports the display of digital orthophotography in compressed (MrSid*) format which reduces the storage requirement by a factor of 20.

Issue #5 - Service Center staffs organize work on a case file basis. Assistance is provided to individual farmers, ranchers, state and local governments, and other customers. Customer information including conservation products such plans and maps need to be easy for service center personnel to locate and access.

Resolution - While spatial data for soils, orthophotography, and farm field boundaries are stored on a county basis, the individual Toolkit projects are stored and managed as customer files. The Toolkit uses Microsoft Outlook 98 as the "filing system" for customer records. Customers' records, including standard address information, are stored as Outlook Contacts. Outlook is used as the access point to all customer data.

Customers' conservation practice schedules, land units, and cost share information are stored in individual Microsoft Access databases. Plan and contract support documents are generated and stored as Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. A combination of Outlook functions and custom-developed Visual Basic code links Outlook to these databases, ArcView projects and spatial data.

Electronic customer files are very similar to standard paper files kept in many field offices. They contain information on a variety of conservation and customer concerns. They also keep the data organized in a consistent manner from case file to case file. With Toolkit folders, the subfolders are simply subdirectories on the Service Center computer's hard drive. The Toolkit electronic customer folder is automatically organized as follows but may be added to for the convenience of the Service Center:

Figure 4 - Sample Toolkit Customer Folder Structure

Issue #6 - Conservation practice schedule information associated with land units transferred from FOCS or entered manually needs to be easily linked with land unit spatial data as it becomes available.

Resolution - Toolkit has a custom Visual Basic - Avenue script ArcView extension called the Land Unit and Conservation Practices Locator which matches tabular land unit data and their associated conservation practices with digitized land unit polygons. Unmapped land units may have been transferred from FOCS, or entered from Outlook with the Land Units tab.

The Locator has an auto link feature that detects matches between unmapped and mapped land units automatically when tract number, field number, and acres (within 10%) are the same. There is also an option to manually match records. Linking existing tabular records to land unit polygons will provide "geo-referenced" conservation practices and the ability to locate conservation practices to a field.

Issue #1 - Training is essential to the successful implementation of the Toolkit but agency budgets for travel to training sessions are severely limited.

Resolution - NRCS state staffs have the responsibility for training service center staff. The deployment plan calls for one or two participants per state who will coordinate and conduct Toolkit training to attend "Train the Trainer" sessions at the Information Technology Center. Training for additional state support personnel will be delivered through teleconferences augmented by remote computer demonstrations.

Some basic ArcView GIS skills are necessary to operate the Toolkit Extensions to ArcView but the Toolbar functionality simplifies performing these tasks to a point and click operation.

Figure 5 - Toolkit Toolbar

1. Total Acres to calculate the acres of one or more features such as fields, ponds, or easements.
2. Graphic Acres to draw a shape and automatically calculate acreage.
3. Map Products to create a header for your map with a title, your Service Center name and phone number, and other information.
4. Buffer to locate and size a buffer inside or outside of an area, around a point or line, or as a boundary both inside and outside a polygon.
5. Soils Map to locate and size a soils map and legend for the customer's land units.
6. Land Units to add or edit data about land units.
7. Practice Schedule to add or edit information about planned or applied conservation practices.
8. Structural Practice to add or edit data on planned or applied structural practice features.
9. Resource Inventory to add or edit data for features such as soil samples, wells, drains, etc.
10. Soils Inventory to view acres of soil mapping units within a field.
11. Import GPS Data to import and view data collected using a global positioning unit.
12. New Toolkit Theme to create a new theme and add it to the view. Also to create a Field Notes theme to write notes or add graphics to a map.
13. Land Unit and Conservation Practice Locator to link mapped land units with unmapped land unit and conservation practice data.
14. Map Symbol Loader to select and use a set of map symbols.
15. Owners and Operators to view, add, or edit customer information for selected land units.
16. Customer Service Toolkit Information to display information about the current view.

Issue #3 - There is a tremendous need for easy-to-understand training and reference materials.

Issue #1 - A system for answering questions and providing assistance with general Toolkit operation, FOCS data transfer, Toolkit GIS extensions is critical to successful implementation but resources to do this are limited.

Resolution - A three-tiered approach for technical support of the Toolkit will be implemented to efficiently utilize available personnel. The first tier involves identifying individuals in the service center or region who have the skills to provide basic support to fellow employees. The second tier is at the state office level where individuals will be responsible for supporting specific portions of the Toolkit. This will involve GIS specialists coordinating with agronomists, biologists, and engineers to support conservationists in developing Toolkit products. The third tier is the USDA West Region Help Desk which includes access to the Toolkit Development Team. Besides being able to log a support ticket, users can use a keyword search of the Help Desk database for solutions. The Toolkit Web Page also contains sections on Helpful Hints and Issues & Solutions

USDA-NRCS, Future Directions - A Vision of Information Technology for Field Conservationists, August 1997.

David McKay, Resource Conservationist, USDA-NRCS Conservation Operations Division, 14^th and Independence, Room 6032-S, Washington, DC, 20250, (202) 720-1835, david.mckay@usda.gov