Flash: GAO on MIDAS

FiercegovernmentIT discusses a GAO report on MIDAS.  Doesn't look like good news.  [Updated with the following]

It's behind schedule and there's no clear roles for management. The second paragraph of the summary:

Executive-level governance for MIDAS has not been clearly defined and does not
fully follow department IT investment management guidance. Specifically,
oversight and governance has been assigned to several department and agency
bodies, but roles and escalation criteria are not clearly defined among them.
Department officials reported that department guidance is being followed for
monthly status reviews, but not for department-level reviews at key decision
points. The lack of clarity and definition for the roles of the governance bodies
could result in duplication or voids in program oversight, as well as wasted
resources. Moreover, because MIDAS is not being governed according to the
department’s investment guidance, the department may not be rigorously
monitoring and managing the program and its risks, and may not have the
information it needs to make timely and appropriate decisions to ensure the
success of MIDAS.

Payment Limitation Progressing

Chris Clayton reports the House Appropriations committee approved an amendment by Rep. Flake setting a $250,000 payment limitation on certain farm programs.

Tidbits from the committee report:



Cultural Transformation.—USDA is carrying out initiatives such as cultural transformation without a budget request or a specific appropriation for this activity. One of the concerns is the way in which this initiative is spending scarce Federal resources. According to USDA documents, the Department spent $50,000 to train
900 senior leaders on cultural transformation. This appears to be a legitimate expense; however, USDA spent nearly $500,000 on personnel and travel to send 43 employees to one of the most expensive business schools on the East Coast for a week of training. This does not appear to be a wise expenditure of Federal dollars. Furthermore, the Committee does not believe that holding cultural transformation activities on the National Mall is a wise expenditure of funds either. Lastly, the Department has not defined what cultural transformation is, what requirement is attempting to be met, what the goals are, and what measurements are being used in order to determine its effectiveness




State Office Collocation.—The Committee continues to direct that any reallocation of resources related to the collocation of state offices scheduled for 2011 and subsequent years is subject to the Committee’s reprogramming procedures.


FSA IT.—The Committee does not approve reprogramming the $23,600,000 from MIDAS. In providing the fiscal year 2011 funding level, the Committee expected that $49,500,000 would be spent on MIDAS in 2011. The Committee has acknowledged the tenuous stability of the system and directs the agency to provide a briefing to the Committee by June 10, 2011, on this issue.

CCC Funds to FSA.—The Committee has learned that, through the Commodity Credit Corporation, an additional $20 million has been made available to the agency. The Committee directs the agency to report by July 1, 2011, on its plans for the use of those funds.

Acreage Crop Reporting Streamlining Initiative--InfoAg

First heard of this in the USDA response to E.O. 13563.  It's to be discussed at the infoag.org meeting in July, by Michael Scuse. As a matter of fact,he's the opening speaker.  This is on the website:

The Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services (FFAS) mission area is considering a review of process improvements that could be achieved through the consolidation of information required to participate in farm programs administered by the Farm Service Agency and the Federal Crop Insurance Program administered by the Risk Management Agency. FFAS is interested in hearing from the public on how best to simplify and standardize, to the extent practical, acreage reporting processes, program dates, and data definitions across the various USDA programs and agencies. FFAS also welcomes comments on how best to develop procedures, processes, and standards that will allow producers to use information from their farm-management and precision-ag systems for reporting production, planted and harvested acreage, and other key information needed to participate in USDA programs. These process changes may allow for program data that is common across agencies to be collected once and utilized or redistributed to agency programs in which the producer chooses to participate. It also may provide a single Web site for producers to report commodity information if they so choose, or access their previously reported information.

 I suggest Googling the title. (It looks to me as if MIDAS has been at least impacted, if not overtaken, by other initiatives, those coming from higher levels.  That's an occupational hazard of bureaucratic initiatives.

What's Bad for the Military Is Bad for Civilians

Tom Ricks The Best Defense has a post citing a book by a Vietnam-era general:

Prudent military planners should draw the obvious conclusion that operations which span two administrations may lose their support in midstream. Very short operations like Grenada are about perfect. Long inconclusive operations like Vietnam are now known to be doomed. We may take this to be a legitimate consideration in connection with the doctrine governing operational art. It is a political refinement which is no less organic to the problem.

 I'd paraphrase this to say that prudent bureaucratic planners should draw the obvious conclusion that IT projects which span two administrations may lose their support in midstream.  (That's a conclusion reinforced by my review of the new Civil Rights Assessment report at USDA. )  It's not really a question of politics, but of Not Invented Here.  I hope they plan for MIDAS to be complete by Jan 20, 2013.

Was MIDAS Hit?

From a Federal Computer Week post on the budget resolution:

More directly, the Agriculture Department’s CIO office would get $40 million, which is $22 million less than in 2010 and $24 million less than the president wanted.

MIDAS Presentation II

Some more random thoughts on the MIDAS presentation::

Two things struck me about the geographic distribution of the field people they've brought in to work on it:

• there's no one from the western third of the country.
• there's only one person from the southeast.

Now I understand that with the phaseout of tobacco and peanut programs and the establishment of Freedom to Farm direct payments regional differences in agriculture and in landownership and operation aren't as significant as they used to be. And I know all the hard-headed SOB's capable specialists who used to staff the state offices have now retired. So what you have in the state offices are easy-going types anxious to improve operations.  But gee, just for small p political purposes it'd be good to have a more diverse set of people.

Another nit to pick: the presentation refers to "SAP" as if everyone knows what/who they are. 

And finally, it seems I won't be able to restrain myself from commenting on MIDAS, so I've added a label for it.