All Federal Departments are required to prepare five-year strategic plans that identify their key goals and objectives, their strategies for attaining them, and measures of progress. USDA's most recent strategic plan, covering 2010-2015, was released in June 2010. It is available on the web at http://www.ocfo.usda.gov/usdasp/sp2010/sp2010.pdf.
USDA’s Strategic Goal 4, “Ensure that all of America's children have access to safe, nutritious and balanced meals,” sets out the major objectives for the 15 Federal nutrition assistance programs administered by the Food and Nutrition Service – programs designed to work together to improve food security and diet quality for children and low-income people throughout the United States. Goal 4 includes performance measures that assess progress with regard to these outcomes.
The work of the Food, Nutrition, and Consumer Services mission area is captured under Goal 4’s two supporting objectives.
Objective 4.1: Increase Access to Nutritious Food, representing FNS’s efforts to reduce and prevent hunger by providing food-based nutrition assistance program benefits.
Objective 4.2: Promote Healthy Diet and Physical Activity Behaviors, representing the work of FNS, along with its sister agency, the Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion (CNPP), to support and encourage healthful diets through state-of-the art, science-based nutrition guidance and information, and strong nutrient standards and nutrition education.
USDA's strategic plan provides an organizing structure for a corporate priority-setting process that promotes focused and effective management of scarce administrative resources. To ensure accountability, these priorities are linked to the performance standards of Agency staff. FNS planned priorities for FY 2010 include:
Objective 4.1: Increase Access to Nutritious Food
- End Childhood Hunger by 2015: Develop and advance Administration strategy to use Federal nutrition assistance programs to end child hunger by 2015.
- Promote Food Safety in FNS Programs: Ensure and enhance the safety of food provided through the nutrition assistance programs.
- Continue Modernizing FNS Programs: Determine and monitor how modernization of nutrition assistance program operations is working in States across the nation, and ensure that such efforts enhance, rather than impair, program access and effectiveness.
Objective 4.2: Promote Healthy Diet and Physical Activity Behaviors
- Expand the Farm to School Connection: Expand the farm to school connection by connecting nutrition assistance programs to local producers.
- Develop a Comprehensive National Effort to Reduce Obesity: Promote healthy eating and physical activity behaviors across nutrition assistance programs and to the public.
- Make Nutrition Education More Effective: Ensure that nutrition education and promotion strategies used by FNCS are based on strong science.
General - Supportive of All Goal 4
Click here for a brochure explaining FNS's planning system, its priorities for the current fiscal year, and their relationship to the USDA Strategic Plan 2010-2015.
- Enact a Groundbreaking Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization: Advance administration priorities to increase access, improve nutrition and reduce obesity through the Child Nutrition/WIC reauthorization process.
- Implement FY 2010 Agriculture Appropriation Bill: Implement new nutrition assistance-related grants and demonstrations, policy changes and program expansions authorized and funded by the 2010 Agriculture Appropriations Bill (P.L. 111-80).
- Honor Civil Rights Throughout FNS Programs: Strengthen civil rights in both Federal program delivery and employment by fully integrating civil rights within FNS offices, standardizing key processes, and improving efficiency through nationally-managed strategic performance evaluations.
Click here for a brochure explaining FNS's planning system, its priorities for the current fiscal year, and their relationship to the USDA Strategic Plan 2010-2015.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is the Government Performance Results Act (GPRA)?
- What is the purpose of USDA’s Strategic Plan?
- What are "performance measures"?
Annual Performance Plans and Reports
Each year, the Department prepares as part of its budget an Annual Performance Plan (APP) that explains the annual performance goals, derived from the five-year strategic plan, that each intends to pursue for the year, and links them to agency resources. Click on the links below to download the USDA Budget Summary and APP in PDF format:
- USDA 2009 Budget Summary and Annual Performance Plan (includes performance information for FY 2007, and targets for FY 2008 and 2009)
- USDA 2008 Budget Summary and Annual Performance Plan (includes performance information for FY 2006, and targets for FY 2007 and 2008)
- USDA 2007 Budget Summary and Annual Performance Plan (includes performance information for FY 2005, and targets for FY 2006; updated targets for FY 2007 are in the 2008 Summary/Performance Plan, linked above)
USDA also prepares Performance and Accountability Reports (PARs) for submission to the President and Congress that document and assess program performance in relation to the goals set in the APP. Click on the links below to download these reports in PDF format:
We welcome your comments or questions about our planning system. Click here to send an e-mail to FNS.