FCW reports on a White House deal about improving the nation's health and food situation. Reading between the lines it sounds as if some of the plans involve USDA and other agencies sharing data so they can improve participation in USDA food programs.
That may be mistaken, but 30 years ago there was a law restricting our ability to share data. I wonder whether that's changed or is now being ignored, or maybe privacy advocates no longer wish to oppose such deals?
It's been almost 25 years since I retired. In my absence USDA has made progress in getting data sharing among agencies.
Consider this release about Emergency Relieft Program payments.
(I guess I'm losing my grasp on what's happening in USDA--I'm not at all clear on how these payments fit with crop insurance, NAP, or other programs. My impression, which may well be wrong, is that the Biden/Vilsack regime is following the precedents of the Trump administration's use of CCC funding.
I saw this notice today. I was struck by this paragraph:
In late 2020 and early 2021, shared services were developed to make RepCap data available for use by Farmers.gov and other FSA systems through a Representative Authority for Producers (RAP) service. This means the RepCap data (which is loaded and stored in Business Partner) is now being shared with external FSA systems and in the future will be shared with other agencies. Therefore, it is critical that County Offices ensure that data is still valid and correctly loaded.
I don't remember seeing references to sharing data with farmers.gov or other agencies before. I'm sure it's failing memory, but data sharing hasn't been very common.
