The U.S. Drought monitor receives a great deal of attention and a tremendous amount of web traffic

The product is the "go to" resource for drought assessment and information for the united states, and any enhancements and additions that can be made will greatly benefit all users, including USDA. Because so many programs are tied to the U.S. Drought monitor within USDA (as well as others outside of IT, such as the IRS), being able to publish the weekly data in a way that benefits all stakeholders and users will provide benefits to many in all facets of society and industry. Each of the tasks will have direct benefit to the usdm product or process, USDA, stakeholders, or a combination of all of them. Many of the ideas for enhancements included have been developed directly from correspondence with stakeholders over the years. The national drought mitigation center (ndmc) at the university of nebraska-lincoln (UNL) will work with the U.S. Department of agriculture's (USDA) office of the chief economist (OCE) to enhance its role in providing national-, state-, tribal-, and local-scale drought information services to support the U.S. Agricultural sector and multiple USDA agencies, including the USDA climate hubs.