Put the Dog Out of Its Misery

 I'm not usually this harsh, but I've never ever been impressed by USA.gov.

As the spokesman in this FCW article says: 

""Right now, one of the things that happens is that people go to USA.gov and then we refer people, but it would be ideal, I think … for people to just be able to get stuff done, right there on USA.gov,"

I've always found Google to be a better search engine.  I don't see the point of spending money to improve the site.  It will be a long time before we have one access point for government that works well.  I've only to look at farmers.gov, which tries to be an access point for USDA agencies serving the farmer.  The problem is that it reproduces the silos of USDA.

GAO"s Farmers.Gov Evaluation

 From a GAO report evaluating the overall Technology Modernization Fund operation:

The Farmers.Gov Portal project was originally intended to update and modernize the conservation financial assistance and payment operations at the Farm Services Agency and Natural Resources Conservation Service in order to improve the services through the portal. The scope of the project was updated in August 2020 after the agency determined that additional process re-engineering would be required prior to further development of the technology solution for common enrollment processes for the two agencies. While the project developed tools to help reduce manual data entry, and developed a proof of concept for the system, the project was closed out prior to implementation in May 2021.

I wonder whether the closing of the project was due to its not meeting expectations or perhaps because of "not invented here" thinking by the new administration? I don't remember what I initially thought of the project--probably somewhat skeptical (since I wasn't involved, :-) 

GAO includes this rationale:

Agriculture leadership determined that additional process re-engineering would be required prior to further development of the technology solution for common enrollment processes.

USDA had two other TMF initiatives which seem to be continuing, although perhaps with reductions in scope and/or expectations.  

GAO's report is critical of GSA's management of the TMF; it wasn't specifically directed at the agencies with projects which received funds. 

Representative Capacity and Data Sharing

 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.  

Interesting FSA Notice For Farmers.gov Positions

 Some 35 years ago ASCS advertised 2-year positions in DC called "SCOAPers".  IIRC the acronym stood for "state and county office automation project".  Leroy Mitchell was, I think the Kansas City Management Office person who pushed it.  He was recognizing that the job of converting our manual and batch processing operations in the field to applications running on our new IBM System/36s couldn't be handled by the personnel on hand in DC. He had also been very impressed by the program assistants KCMO had worked with in the guinea pig counties (first one county--IIRC Osage Kansas, and then a group of 6 or so counties.

The DC office had big problems in hiring field people the way we had done in the past--i.e., hiring county executive directors for permanent positions.  Typically they'd get a grade increase to GS-11 or 12, with the possibility of getting to GS-13. In the old days that may have been a good enough carrot for an ambitious type, but as DC area housing prices soared in the 70's and early 80's due to inflation and a housing boom, it just didn't work.

Another problem, which I don't think most of us realized, was CED's could be at a loss in trying to handle automation.  A lot, most IMHO, were used to being the public face of the county office, relying on their clerks/program assistants to handle the nuts and bolts, the paperwork.

So the bosses worked out a deal with the Civil Service Commission and USDA's Office of Personnel to offer 2-year positions to program assistants and CED's to work on the automation from the DC side. The key to the deal was that they would technically still be county employees, not federal, so they didn't count against federal personnel ceilings. 

The program turned out to be key in changing the ASCS DC workforce from almost male-only.  In the end many of the SCOAPers stayed in DC, converting to GS status and advancing up the ladder to management.  There was another batch in 1987-8.

It sounds to me as if FSA is taking a similar approach to staff the farmers.gov initiative, as outlined in this notice.  Good luck to them. 

I note some differences:  it's a 2-year minimum with possible extensions up to 5 year max. And there's the possibility of relocation allowances. Despite the innovation of locality differences in pay, I suspect the problem of attracting field employees to DC remains, possibly not improving any since 1997. I also suspect management has underestimated the problems of implementing the farmers.gov.  

MFPromises Made But Not Kept

It's been 2 weeks since the MFP was activated.  There's this promise on the farmers.gov website which hasn't been implemented yet:

Use the digital form on Farmers.gov

Coming soon, you’ll have the option of completing a user-friendly digital application form right here on farmers.gov - optimized for your mobile phone or tablet. No authenticated account or password required. Just complete the digital form, and the application will be sent automatically to your county office. Then stop by your local USDA service center to sign the form and provide your production evidence any time.

Not sure what the holdup is since the form is online--maybe it's the optimization for phone or tablet?  If so, I wonder if they have statistics showing percent users of PC's versus phones/tablets? 

A Compliment for Farmers.gov

I've a jaundiced view of initiatives to put government operations on-line, which is a carryover from my experiences when I was at FSA.  However, I want to compliment farmers.gov for at least a small attempt at transparency--they're including on the site some promises of additions to the site as well as an early stab at presenting metrics.

I've always believed  government websites should publicize their views and usage.  I suspect the figures would disappoint people like me who want to push e-government.

MFP Form Is Missing?

USDA now has some material on the MFP other than the press release up its website, farmers.gov.

They give the name of the application form, CCC-910, but it's not available in the FSA Forms database.  Nor is there any notice on MFP listed in FSA notices.  I assume any training for administering the program would also show up in a notice there.

Time to Check Farmers.gov

Why?

USDA just got $10 million for it, one of three agencies to get the first awards from OMB's Modernization Technology Fund, according to this article.

Personally I wonder about two things:

1. what is the management and organizational structure supporting the effort?  Dedicated resources or detailed from the agencies? Full-time managers and programmers, or part-time?
2. what metrics do they have, and how are they fed back into the management structure?   

In other words, how is the bureaucracy organized.