Blogging on bureaucracy, organizations, USDA, agriculture programs, American history, the food movement, and other interests. Often contrarian, usually optimistic, sometimes didactic, occasionally funny, rarely wrong, always a nitpicker.
Sunday, September 30, 2012
MIDAS Training/Information
FSA put out a notice on MIDAS training. I followed the instructions to this on the Foundational Learning System
The narrative for slide 5 (it's important to note slide numbers, otherwise you have to skip forward or back0 said: "in the future, the goal is for 24/7 access by the producer and employee to the data/forms... (This comes after slide 4 which outlines benefits for producers and field offices in the immediate future.)
I think that vision warrants a lot of discussion. I see elsewhere that the MIDAS team has presented to (staff on, I assume) the House and Senate Ag and Appropriations Committees. Given Congressional resistance to closing offices, I wonder how the Gordian Knot is going to be cut (online availability = reduced employees?).
I'd compliment the team on the slide show. The narration seemed not simply to consist of reading the slides, which is good. In future I hope they get more graphically minded.
As an old directives man, I'd also suggest they need a system for identification of their shows; using names rapidly gets awkward and I'm assuming there will be a process for getting feedback and making changes/corrections which can gain by such identification.
While the plans for training discussed by the Administrator are good, how will producers learn the system, will they be trained? And shouldn't the software be user-friendly enough not to need training? Or will the FSA training mostly consist of an interpretation: in MIDAS this is the equivalent of this process on the current system/System/36?
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An effort to make certain the foundational learning slides were beneficial was made and all employees will need to take the training prior to the hands-on training to be offered.
A total of at least 32 hours of hands on training for staff will occur in an effort to make certain that all employees have a basic understanding of the software prior to production software being deployed.
It is my understanding that the MIDAS team got the training funds appropriated with the software development so that training funds would not be an issue.
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