Those Special Interests and Public Data

One of the things that's problematic these days is the line between public data and non-public data. Obama ran on transparent government, meaning government data should be freely available. But you run into problems, as is illustrated in the following, when private interests have found a way to exploit public data and sell it, or perhaps some farmers are trying to claim a privacy interest:

"If you are an FSA/NRCS/RD employee or have an E-Authentication account, go directly to the USDA Geospatial Data Gateway to order the Common Land Unit (CLU) data. Be sure to click on the Login menu item for the E-Authentication.

Please be advised that with the enactment of The Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008, Title I - Commodity Programs, Subtitle F - Administration, Section 1619 on May 22, 2008, the Farm Service Agency (FSA) is no longer allowed to make the geospatial data, including access to the Common Land Unit records, available to the public, even through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Section 1619 is an Exemption 3 statute that prohibits FSA from sharing this data with the public."

This isn't an "earmark", mandating the spending of taxpayer money on a particular project, but it works the same, because a narrow interest is being served without a proper debate.

USDA, EEO, and GIS

I blogged earlier about the problems USDA has in trying to get a reliable and effective reporting system for civil rights cases and issues (in the context of a critical GAO report).

This page of a new manual for USDA agencies on GIS (geo-spatial information) systems shows what the problems are in a different context: three different agencies (NRCS, FSA, RD), three different approaches to GIS data. (Almost 11 years since I retired and 16 years since InfoShare, I can only laugh. Matter of fact, it looks as if the entire manual is, from the right viewpoint, great comic material for a computer head. ) More seriously, I can only guess at the problems the authors of this manual had, so a tip of the hat to them.

Privacy or Public's Right To Know?

USDA faced that question back in the 1990's. A public interest group, Environmental Working Group, had requested records from ASCS (now FSA) on the people getting payment. We initially denied the request based on the Privacy Act of 1974. (I well remember when that was enacted, the Act required that before someone could be required to give information, you had to describe the legal basis for the requirement, the uses to be made of the info, and estimate the amount of time required. In brief, all the fine print you can see on IRS 1040's. It was a major pain to figure out how to get that stuff in all the forms the agency used.)

But, we eventually lost the case in the Appeals Court. Turned out our assumptions back in 1974 were wrong--data wasn't covered by the Privacy Act (except Social Security numbers and a bit of other data) so our IT shop had to figure out how to give the data to EWG in a usable form while leaving out the SSN's--they succeeded, and the rest is history, as you can see in the EWG farm database.

Now USDA has lost another appeal on other data. I'm not clear on the files covered, but might be the basic acreage data--the location and acreage of farms and fields and the yearly report of planted acreages.

It's nice to know how realistically the courts view agriculture:

"The appeals court noted that disclosure of crop information may compromise an individual's privacy interest since not all farms are owned by large corporations. However, in this instance, the court found that this was not a valid concern.

"We conclude that the public interest in disclosure of the Compliance file and GIS database outweighs the personal privacy interest...

It's not EWG asking this time, but Multi Ag Media LLC, which seems to own some magazines for dairymen. The decision is here.

FSA's GIS Replacement

Not sure how I feel about this announcement in FCW (Federal computer week):

"The Agriculture Department is seeking information about methods for delivering, disseminating and integrating large geospatial datasets for its Farm Service Agency and other users. USDA is interested in commercial software and/or online mapping interface services that could replace FSA's current systems."

On the one hand, I hope they do better and faster than the System/36 replacement project(s). It's also interesting it's described as strictly FSA--NRCS is not mentioned.

On the other hand, they're pushing centralization. That's an idea which I approve of as a bureaucrat, but resist as a retiree thinking of the small towns of rural America.

As usual, I'm ambivalent.