SSA, FSA, and Internet Operations

The Post's Federal Page reports a controversy between Social Security Administration and its union, a controversy which may prefigure similar tensions between FSA and its employees.  (SSA is usually considered to have done well in use of the Internet.)

Witold Skwierczynski, president of the National Council of SSA Field Operations Locals, part of the American Federation of Government Employees, sent a letter to the SSA demanding “to bargain over the impact and implementation of the Agency’s decision to shorten the hours field office employees interview the public.”
The letter said that “the Union disagrees with the Agency’s position that most services do not require a field office visit and can be done on the Internet or by the 800 Number.

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?  

Why Congress Drives Program Developers Crazy

Yes, I was crazy by the time I retired.  Chris Clayton reports Sen. Grassley is guessing a 1-year extension of the farm bill.  Where does that leave the MIDAS people.  I don't know.  If I were in their shoes a year or so ago, there would be these choices:

• develop to support current programs, in which case if Congress does its job, you've wasted your efforts
• develop to support current programs, minus the direct payment and counter-cyclical ones which the conventional wisdom says are going to bite the dust, in which case if you believe Grassley you've missed the boat and need an emergency effort
• develop to support only the basic records, with some sort of bridge to existing software to provide support for ongoing programs, in which case you run the risk of hanging counties out to dry, sort of like the SURE program under the 2008 legislation.

I've no idea which way they went; maybe there's another option which is better.  But it points out the difficulties of software development scheduled to coincide with farm legislation.

MIDAS Update

A new set of materials on MIDAS are available--see here.  I'm a little bothered by the gap between May and August in the release.  Maybe  I have a romantic view of communication in projects: ideally there'd be a continual flow of questions and answers and information among the developers and the soon-to-be users.  As I say, it's romantic and because most of the communication is probably on the intranet I've only a partial view.

I wonder about coordination among the program officials and the MIDAS implementation team.  That was an area we were deficient in during the System/36 rollout.  The tendency was for program people to focus on current program issues, assuming the systems people had things under control.  Not so.

Farmer Software in the Cloud

The Times has a piece by a business professor describing some software applications, a couple of which reside in the cloud: FarmLogs and Farmeron,.

I suppose the next step will be communication between MIDAS and the data in such applications.

Farm Bill Status and MIDAS

As of now, I don't have a clear picture of what will happen on the farm bill, mainly because the House Republicans don't seem to have a clear picture of what they want. Will we have a disaster bill only, or an extension, or a process leading to a 5 year bill?  Who knows.

I want to point out the problem I suspect MIDAS planners are having.  At some point they had to decide whether to support the livestock programs contained in the 2008 bill, which carried through 2011.  I've no idea which way they went: one alternative would be to say we need software to implement everything in the law as of right now, which presumably was sometime last year; another alternative would be to plan for what was in the law for 2012;  a third would be to plan to be flexible, to support whatever cockamanie ideas innovative policy designs Congress came up with.

Now the last alternative is the most difficult and most expensive; sticking to the 2008 language at some point is likely to mean wasting some money assuming Congress changes provisions for 2013.  Either way the managers are likely to be screwed, at least in being vulnerable to criticism.

[Updated: added link to the extension now pending in the House--Hat tip Farm Policy]

MIDAS Update and Implications

The "Midas Press blog" was posted about 3 weeks ago--just catching up to it.  Posts on several different subjects.  I note with some regret SCIMS is being replaced.  The march of progress kills old attachments.  This has been true since the beginning of time.

Interesting discussion of how GIS will finally drive farm records and reconstitutions here, including a comment on implications:

For a typical county FSA office, this integration means that there will no longer be separate individuals handling GIS, Farm Records, and reconstitutions. To move forward with the new system, there will need to be a greater understanding of these processes and how each one affects the other.

 One of the things which bothered me back in the Infoshare days: selling the Infoshare plans meant claiming big savings in order to justify the procurement of hardware and software.  But the reality was that big savings could only come by reduced employment, which should have raised all sorts of issues, none of which were being addressed at that time.  I guess over the 20 years since Infoshare employment has been reduced.

The second sentence of the quote also raises issues: what sort of training and implementation sequence will be possible?

I like the idea of a MIDAS blog--I wonder if it's been publicized, certainly not to the public.

FSA Strategic Plan I

The FSA Strategic Plan 2012-16, has been released.  Beginning at  page 35 I'll quote and add emphasis:

"Objective 4.3 Strategies
• Migrate to and leverage integrated Web based solutions.
• Increase security for customers’ personal and financial information.
• Ensure the integrity of posted county price data.
• Modernize reporting capabilities to increase the usefulness and availability of data.
• Increase use of technology to support enterprise wide knowledge management.
• Streamline customer reporting and program application processes.
• Expand the customer’s ability to apply for assistance, track programs, and update farming operation information online.
• Standardize program development processes.
• Provide fully integrated geospatial solutions.
• Streamline the disaster designation process and utilize GIS to identify disaster areas quicker and more accurately.

Objective 4.4 Improve Customer Service
Pillar 1 Expand Service Delivery Capabilities
FSA will continue to offer services at its local county offices; however, program and service delivery systems must expand beyond the traditional walk-in local offices. FSA will ensure that customers are aware of e-services available and that these services are easy to use."

Under "Performance Measures for Strategic Goal 4" the unit of measure is "the number of Farm Programs eligible customers may apply for via the internet."  Currently it's 5 percent, the goal is 100 percent.


Seems to me the plan is rather wishy-washy: the idea is to expand the ability  to go online, but without worrying about whether the capability is used.  

MIDAS Schedule

The MIDAS schedule from the MIDAS newsletter:

"We will deploy MIDAS in two phases nationwide. Each deployment is currently scheduled to include the following components:

Release 1.0	Release 1.1
Acreage Reporting with GIS	Marketing Assistance Loans
Farm Records	SCIMS within SAP
Common Processes	Supporting Master Data
Supporting Master Data

As we developed the deployment strategy for MIDAS, we accounted for the business cycles of farmers and our FSA county offices. We also considered the peak in Acreage Reporting during June and July, as well as final program payments in November. Milestones on the way to these releases are Realization-Build, Testing and Final Preparation with a target go-live of early 2013 for Release 1.0 followed by Release 1.1 in spring 2013.

Training will take place this fall, close to MIDAS go-live so people can absorb and apply their learning right away. Training sessions will honor different learning styles and be delivered in new ways; this may include online Web-based sessions via a “train the trainers” approach. Both training and testing will be based on business scenarios provided by end users."

Not sure what everything means("common processes", "SCIMS within SAP") but that's fine.  The big problem I have is one I've mentioned before: the possibility that deployment of MIDAS and implementation of the next farm bill will overlap and compete. We'll see--IF, and it's a big "if", the project can meet their schedule they'll do better than we did in 1985.  If they don't meet their schedule....

SSA a Model for Online Operations at FSA

Social Security Administration wanted to have 44 percent of retirees sign up for SS payments online.  That was their announced goal:

The actual percentage who filed online was 41 percent, states the SSA Performance & Accountability Report for Fiscal Year 2011.

I applaud SSA for setting the goal and announcing it, even more for the followup report.  If and when USDA aims to have farmers to do more stuff online with FSA, I'd like to see USDA specify what the goals are and what the results are.

How Good Is FSA's Management?

Federal Computer Weekly has a piece on a GAO report which analyzed why seven big IT projects were successful. 

• The most common factor was the involvement of program officials, particularly in ensuring the participation of internal and external stakeholders. 
• The next most factor was the knowledge and skills of the program officials and the support of senior management.

Grand Promises

Secretary Vilsack said, according to the Des Moines Register: "

“We are updating our computer software, which dates from the 1980s, so that farmers will be able to do much of the application and paperwork from home rather than have to personally visit a USDA field office,” Vilsack said during a stopover in Des Moines on his return from Hawaii, where he had addressed the American Farm Bureau Federation."

 By chance this came just as I was reading Daniel Kahneman's "Thinking Fast and Slow", and had reached the point where he recounts a story that's appropos.  Seems he was on a task force to come up with a textbook in Israel.  They'd been working for a while (maybe a year, don't have the book handy), had an outline and a couple chapters drafted.  So they were planning on when they'd finish, which they thought would be 2-2 1/2 years.  Then Kahneman asked a task force member about his experience and knowledge of other similar efforts.  The person asked, who had been in full agreement with the 2 year estimate, said that 40 percent of such efforts had never produced anything, that the rest had taken 7 years to accomplish the result, and that the task force in question was below average (in resources, etc.) compared to the other task forces he knew of.  

I.e., bottomline, the task force was not going to achieve its goal timely, and likely wouldn't do it at all. 

The members of the task force gulped, and proceeded to ignore the information.  The textbook was actually delivered in 8 years, and was never used.

Two points Kahneman made: when the meeting took place, the members were near the peak of their commitment to the effort, and had just tackled some of the big, easy pieces, so they underestimated the drain on the effort from lessening commitment and grim reality.

Congress and MIDAS

From the conference report on the appropriations bill:

The conferees provide that not less than $66,685,000 shall be for Modernize and Innovate the Delivery of Agricultural Systems. The conferees strongly support the implementation of Modernize
and Innovate the Delivery of Agricultural Systems (MIDAS), and encourage the agency to ensure that MIDAS’s initial operating capability will be released by October 2012. The conference agreement provides $13,000,000 for the Common Computing Environment.

October 2012 seems a bit late to me, but then it's easy to carp from the sidelines.

No Super Committee Resolution and the Farm Bill

If the super committee fails to reach agreement, that kills the 2012 farm bill for this year.  Presumably the Ag committees and the ag lobbies will use the holidays to consider what they put together in a rush, and early next year we'll start to see legislation drafted.  In other words, we'll be back to the regular order of things.  The 64 dollar question is what sort of funding baseline they'll work with. Will they have the dollars they propose to the super committee, more or less?

The other question of importance is what will the farm economy be doing next spring and summer?  Recently corn and wheat prices have slid (see this Des Moines Register piece for corn.) Problem is that Ukraine and other grain producers have had good years.  (Back in the day, Ukraine used to be the breadbasket of Europe.  Just maybe modern farming methods and rational organization has finally arrived there so they can resume their place?)

I don't know enough to guess what will happen if prices have retreated significantly, but I would assume that it would change the bargaining and perhaps the framework of the programs in the farm bill.

As I've written, I now realize there's a window of opportunity for FSA/RMA to install MIDAS and ACRSI before being hit with the new farm bill.  But if the super committee fails, there may be an extended period of uncertainty over the future 2013 and on, meaning the bureaucrats have a compressed lead-time to get things in place. 

So if I'm an FSA bureaucrat do I pray for the success of the super committee, knowing it might well mean program changes which eviscerate much of the agency, or do I pray for failure, guessing it might make next fall torture?

ARRM Bill S 1626

Farm Policy has the text of the Brown/Thune/Lugar/Durbin   bill establishing the Aggregrate Risk and Revenue Management Program. Given the prominence of the co-sponsors, it's got to be taken seriously.  See this for a diagram of the calculations.

I'm too far away from current law to comment reliably, but I didn't see the commodity-specific determination as all that specific in the bill's language.  I do wonder about WTO compliance, because the program is tied to planted acreage and seems to discourage switching to new crops. That was a prime selling point for "Freedom to Farm", which became the direct payment program.

In terms of administration, I surely hope FSA and RMA have merged into one entity, because I don't see how it can be effectively administered otherwise.  Assuming FSA writes the checks, they need the RMA APH and insurance premium amounts, plus the planted acreage and the actual production.  I shudder at the complexities.  I also wonder how MIDAS would plan to handle it.

MIDAS Demo Comments Continued

User One thing which is not clear to me in the MIDAS demos is whether the "user" in the demos is conceived of as the tech in the county office or the producer online.  Conceptually I think it works to have the same basic software available to both, but to make it work I think you need an elaborate upfront security apparatus so that producer A can't change (or maybe even view) data pertaining to producer B but the technician for the office serving producers A and B can do everything.  That means an extensive validation process behind the scenes to check whether the current user has authority to manipulate the data to which she is requesting access.


Organizational Changes  The last demo module, on Reporting, includes a visual showing 12 systems currently in place which would be replaced by the software being demoed. I suspect there are several organizational units in DC, and perhaps in KC, which are currently responsible for the systems.  At least there were in my day and although USDA and FSA don't update their online organizational data as they used to (the USDA organizational directory is 4 years old), I've enough faith in the inertia of bureaucracy to believe it's true today.

One of my problems with the current FSA website, which I may or may not have mentioned, is the hodge-podge of services available online under the "Online Services" tab.  I suspect that's because different siloswithin FSA were responsible for creating the individual options, without having one outfit coordinating.  The result for any producer who tried to make use of online services would be an unfriendly and awkward user experience. 

So I wonder how FSA is going to set up organizationally to handle software development and delivery of services online?

MIDAS Strawman

I wonder what NASCOE's members thought of the MIDAS strawman (actually "limited preview") at their recent convention. 

I call it "strawman" because it reminded me of the Infoshare strawman Greg Montgomery created back in 1991.  He had a indexing software package which could do hyperlinks as we know them now--remember 1991 was before the advent of World Wide Web browsers. Tim Berners-Lee put the first website up about a month before Greg did his stuff. Anyhow, while Greg couldn't do WYSIWYG interfaces, he was able to model a lot of ASCS operations running on a PC.   Of course, Infoshare, like other similar efforts since, turned out to be a dead end. 

My first reactions to watching a couple of the MIDAS demos is:

• I like the software which was used to create the demo.
• Most of my reactions to the actual FSA software being demoed is probably personal feelings along the lines of NIH. 
• The one really big (as Ed Sullivan used to say) thing I'd raise is: where is the ability for FSA field personnel to discuss and provide feedback?  They can and will point out the problems in what's being developed, and you need that input as early as possible. 

I'll probably have more reaction later if my energy and interest holds up and I don't get distracted.

Cotton Growers Throw in the Towel on Direct Payments?

Via today's Farm Policy, here's a press release from the National Cotton Council. I read it as conceding the end of direct payments and counter-cyclical payments in favor of this:

The revenue-based crop insurance safety net would be complemented by a modified marketing loan that is adjusted to satisfy the Brazil WTO case.

 Now a question for those working on MIDAS: how do you create software for this? My points, based on sad experience from the past;

• trying to do software in the midst of farm bill consideration and implementation is like trying to have a picnic during a hurricane: management's time and attention is concentrated on adapting to changed circumstances, and there's none left for those working on the project
• even if you can continue working on your project, the odds are great your end-product won't fit the new farm bill.  That's because no one in management (i.e., Congress, the President, or the Secretary) knows what the hell FSA operations will look like in the future.

MIDAS Takes a Hit?

In the Farm Policy interview with Rep. Peterson, he says, with regards to the Deficit Control Act process:

"It could impact the effort that we’ve got underway to modernize the computer
system, all of which, in a way, affects producers"

From Service Center Intiative to MIDAS

I'm curious how USDA went from the Service Center Initiative of the late 1990's and the MIDAS plan of 2004--was there a rational decision process or just the switch from Dems to Reps?