Summary: The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is seeking to consolidate and close many of the its county offices for three of its field-based organizations--the Farm Service Agency, the Natural Resources Conservation Service, and the Rural Development mission area. These offices, known as county office service centers, now account for about 30,000 employees, or about 27 percent of USDA employees across the United States. This testimony discusses USDA's progress in meeting its goal of reducing the number of county offices for all three agencies to about 6,300 and reducing the number of county office locations--facilities that include from one to three offices--to about 2,555. GAO also examines the data reported by USDA to Congress on consolidating field offices, particularly the reasons for inconsistencies in the Department's reported progress in reorganizing them. To further determine the accuracy of USDA's data, GAO also compares the Department's most recently reported reorganization data with the data that GAO obtained directly from the Department's state agency offices in 10 states.
