This article in the Post notes that USDA paid farmers' estates, often without checking for compliance with rules, or paid entities like partnerships that included estates as members. Compliance was checked in 60 percent of the cases, but not in 40 percent, meaning some gross mistakes.
Here's the GAO report highlights (why the Post didn't provide it, I'm not clear).
When you dig into the details, and I start remembering, I think I share some blame. In the old days, before computers in county offices, after all payments were issued for a year, we'd run a series of mainframe matches on the deficiency payment files and give county offices data on possible problems. I'm pretty sure at that time that we matched social security numbers against the Social Security Admin's death file (at least, a bell tinkles in the growing obscurity of my memory).
As we automated, we started building more and more checks into the county software and relying less and less on the after-the-fact checks. And, frankly, the after-the-fact checks became less of a priority, meaning the best people weren't given the job of designing and programing them. So I tend to think the match with SSA fell through the cracks. We didn't add it for the county software. We may have discussed it for the new database being designed for NRCS/FSA usage, but that took so long to develop that personnel changed and the idea was probably lost.
This illustrates one problem of massive databases, whether they're proposed for national security, immigration, or whatever--they need maintenance because time is an everflowing river. And if you don't imagine what may happen, like people dying, you can't design for it.
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