Despite the challenges and changes faced during 2021, the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) saw success in propelling U.S. agriculture forward. Celebrate the New Year with NIFA as we highlight our 2021 achievements!
NIFA aggressively worked to complete hiring a full staff of the nation’s most qualified experts. NIFA continues to build a strong team of leaders in the Office of the Director, who work to improve our processes and ensure we are delivering optimal partner service and scientific leadership. At the request of key stakeholders, we are building a strong 4-H & Positive Youth Development Team that will be critical to preparing the nation’s future workforce and agricultural leaders.
Through a two-year focused effort to improve processes and procedures based on stakeholder feedback, NIFA fully implemented a published schedule of funding opportunities, developed and delivered a suite of training modules to ensure new employees had needed guidance to do their jobs while teleworking, and developed a new process to efficiently recruit, hire, and train more diverse peer-review panels.
For more than five years, NIFA has worked closely with stakeholder teams to create an integrated, single NIFA Reporting System that improves data collection and reduces the reporting burden on our partners. The system went live in May 2021, on schedule, as promised.