President Obama has committed his administration “to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government” and “a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration.” Since transparency, participation and collaboration depend upon communication, it is strange that the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s on-line organizational directory is “temporarily unavailable,” and has been for some time.
The organizational directory lists telephone and FAX numbers for all USDA offices, including those of the Undersecretary of Agriculture for Natural Resources and Environment, which oversees the U.S. Forest Service. No directory means it takes a phone call to Undersecretary Harris Sherman’s office to get his FAX number – you would also have to know his name to make that phone call.
FSEEE seeks to save you that trouble and the toll charges associated with it. Without further ado, here is Undersecretary of Agriculture Harris Sherman’s FAX number:
(202) 720-0632 (FAX)
And, if you want to talk with Mr. Sherman, you can call him at
(202) 720-7173
We look forward to the restoration of the USDA’s organizational directory, which will happen as soon as this blog post is brought to Mr. Sherman’s attention.
P.S. During the first Bush presidency, the Forest Service deleted its own organizational directory from the web due to “national security” concerns. FSEEE, however, happened to have downloaded the directory’s files several months earlier. As a public service, we posted the entire directory on our own website. A couple months thereafter, a Republican staffer on the Senate Natural Resources and Environment Committee complained to the Forest Service that he had to go to FSEEE’s website to get agency phone numbers. The directory was restored the next day.
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2011-05-02 14:50:50 | Claire Moseley - Thanks for the infoI've been searching high and low for Harris Sherman's fax number. Even the folks in my local FS office don't have it. This administration is something else...transparency indeed!
