MIDAS Presentation

NASCOE has a MIDAS presentation up on its website. (If, like me, you don't have Microsoft Office, you may have to download the Microsoft Powerpoint Viewer. MIDAS is the FSA project, partly funded by stimulus funds, to redo their processes and software.) My initial reaction on viewing it is: been there, done that.  A couple points:

• one slide has a disingenuous claim that it's not about closing county offices.  I heard that in 1992 with Infoshare, and it made equally as little sense then.  To make the case to OMB and Congress to get the money, you have to argue people will be more productive once the new systems are installed. Because it's a fair assumption FSA won't be serving more farmers in the future than it is now, that means fewer employees to provide better services to the same universe of farmers.  Fewer employees spread among the same number of offices doesn't make sense.  (Now there could be other changes which would alter the logic, but such changes are unlikely.)
• the people working on this project don't have the burden we had from 1991 to the early 2000's--the effort to include FSA, NRCS, and RD in one effort.  From a quick review of the slides, they aren't even doing the farm loan (old FmHA side), just farm programs. That makes the job much much easier.  Of course, it perpetuates the silos of the different agencies, but since USDA has repeatedly failed at the cross-agency effort, narrowing the scope probably makes sense.