The Impact of Technology on FSA Communications

I posted previously on my discovery of the FDA Facebook group, which is a new means of communication across the organization.  Some further thoughts:

When I joined ASCS my impression was it was hierarchical organization.  Questions would come from the county through the district director to the state office to the area director to the applicable program specialist in the program division.  At least that was the theory. Over time I discovered the role of the county and state committees, which was contested.  In theory they were in charge of applying policy decisions to their counties and states.  (This is what they had been in the 1930's.) In reality it seemed to me that they often lacked the expertise and always lacked the day-to-day operational awareness really to fulfill that role.  As a result over the years their role had diminished, but smart county and state executive directors would manage their relationships with their committees.

The role of the district director was also evolving, as symbolized by the change in terminology from "farmer fieldman" to "district director".  My impression is that these positions were often quite political, with significant turnover when the political party in charge changed.  As a cynic my impression was the quality of the DD's varied, meaning they sometimes were obstacles and were bypassed by the more knowledgeable CED's.

When ASCS started installing System/36's in county offices, it put a lot of strain on the old systems.  First and foremost, nobody involved in the new technology had experience with it, so a simple question that a program assistant might take to a more senior person, or the CED, wouldn't receive an answer. The time required to move a question from county through state to DC (KCMO)and finding someone with an answer and then getting it back down the chain was simply too long.

Time and experience solved some of the problems as we all learned by trial and error. I suspect, but can't prove, that informal communication networks expanded.  People learned who in the state was more capable with the technology.