Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Fun for FSA Offices--Direct Attribution

FSA just issued a notice on cleaning up their computer files which will be used in enforcing direct attribution of payments for payment limitation rules. Unfortunately the 2008 farm bill caught FSA partway through its change from the System/36/AS400 system (minicomputers in each county office communicating nightly with the mainframe in Kansas City) to an Internet-based solution. A problem with the first system which we fought beginning in 1985 with its first implementation is keeping all the data consistent between counties and mainframe (now it's called synchronizing and software packages handle it, then it was called a pain in the a** and it requires human intervention and troubleshooting). And that means you're dependent on everyone doing their job perfectly and no glitches in the process.

As far as I'm concerned, USDA's failure to get FSA's basic farmer and farm data moved completely to the Internet shows Secretaries Glickman, Venneman, Johannes, and Schafer were not good managers. (I'm sure they're all greatly concerned about my lack of regard for them.)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

+1

Bill Harshaw said...

I assume you mean Secretary Espy. (Did you know his first name was "Alphonso"?) I guess you're right, if I'm going to knock Glickman I should knock Espy. But the two Dems were trying to implement the Madigan strategy of consolidation of agencies (at least partially). When that failed I'm not sure what strategy the Reps had.