U.S. Department of Agriculture: Status of Closing and Consolidating County Offices

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the status of the Department of Agriculture's (USDA) consolidation and closure of 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, focusing on: (1) the data reported by USDA to the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry on consolidating field offices, particularly the reasons for inconsistencies in the Department's reported progress in reorganizing these offices; and (2) a comparision of the Department's most recently reported reorganization data with the data GAO obtained directly from the Department's state agency offices in 10 states.