Greg Mankiw Beat Me to It--The Truth About Economists

See the link.

Fritterware--Google Experiments

A former co-worker called some software "fritterware" because you'd fritter away time using it. Here's Google experimental search site, for anyone with time to spare.

Saving Everything in the Government

This is an interesting endeavor:

"A new international task force will convene for the first time Tuesday to address the problem of maintaining data for future generations.

The National Science Foundation and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation are funding the Sustainable Digital Preservation and Access panel's two-year mission, with support from institutions like the Council on Library and Information Resources, Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, and the United Kingdom's Joint Information Systems Committee."

And later

"But she said the formal processes used to designate materials for storage or deletion are integral to sustainability across the globe because it is impossible to save everything."

It might well be possible to save everything. After all, Google Docs saves all the changes made to a document, just as Wikipedia does. Storage costs are going down and down and down.

But if you do save everything, will anyone be able to find what they want? Maybe. Google desktop indexes most everything.

But if you save everything, and anyone can find anything, will anyone care? The problem is the same as for wiretapping, or security cameras, you mostly can only review some stuff in real time. And humans are easily bored. As a natural born pack rat, I saved most everything from my bureaucratic career, at least after the PC landed on my desk. But no one will care. (Unlike Samuel Pepys, no one will write books about mid-level bureaucrats.)

Noted Bureaucrats--Bob Ball

See here for Josh Marshall's note on Bob Ball--the face of the Social Security system for many years. Here's the Post obit.

Rep. Gingrich, Pay Attention

Here's a site which impresses me, at least on first glance. I particularly like the ability to blog about bills, though I suspect the design might not scale up to a national level. I don't know what other states have done. It's possible people in other states are ahead of this. Comparing state and local government operations, although this isn't governmentally sponsored, is something our media doesn't do well, but should

Identifying Government Employees

Government Executive reports on the progress towards having all government employees given background checks and given secure ID cards. (HSPD-12) (Goal was Oct 27, 2007 for < 15 year employees--no agency met the deadline.) The article cites Labor and Education for doing well, both using gradual rollouts.

Most Depressing News of the Day

Here
(Ralph Nader launches exploratory effort to run for President.)

Innovation in Government

Here's a Post story on the government's use of a wikipedia.

This sort of thing is needed. I remember the old SCOAP QandA's and the various bulletin board systems and mailing lists we used to have. There's limits on how much you can do with a straight up and down hierarchy--you need some other methods. A problem for us in ASCS was that technology opened up possibilities, and each innovator followed his or her own nose. Of course, when technology is changing fast, you don't want to standardize quickly.

And another problem was that this was all guerrilla stuff--top management was mostly only vaguely aware of what was going on, if that. It's possible now that wikipedia has given the "wiki" methodology enough visibility and prestige, and its experience has mapped out some parameters that this is truly a useful exercise. (Assuming that the relevant user community is all comfortable with computers, etc.)

Another Rural Program

Ran across this Federal Register document:

Household Water Well System Grant Program Announcement of
Application Deadlines and Funding

I'm no doubt being unfair by linking to it without any background--my guess is that it's funding one or two non-profits who loan money for drilling wells in God-forsaken places, but that's only a guess.

Noted in Passing--E-regulation

The No National Animal Identification System blog refers to a Federal Register document requesting public comments on a "naturally grown" label. (They don't like the proposal, nor does Sugar Mountain farm.) I took the opportunity to try out the regulations.gov process for submitting comments on regulations (said their label ought to be more like the FDA food label, rather than a certification of history).

The process worked reasonably well, though the "help" process is a little lame. I requested a report on the usage of the process--I'm betting they don't have one, but maybe I'm too cynical. We'll see.