ARRA and MIDAS

This piece on the ending of the Recovery Act database reminded me--MIDAS got $50 million if I remember correctly.  Maybe not, maybe the $50 mill was partly to upgrade the creaky technology at the time.

I do wish they'd included some usage figures on the website--how much did the media and others actually use the site?  I know while I checked it a few times early on, I never did go back to see what if any updates for MIDAS had been added.  It may well be the best contribution of the effort was to establish a precedent, to teach people what was involved so the next try can be more useful.

FSA and ARRA--Update 1

I blogged last week about FSA's failure to update its Recovery Act (ARRA) data on the MIDAS program. I sent a message for the Administrator through the FSA site.

Well, I've not received a final answer to the message, just a boilerplate interim message. And the MIDAS report still has a 4/28/2009 date on it. But the overview ARRA page has been updated.

OO and FSA and ARRA

Was browsing the USDA's Recovery Act reports on infrastructure expenditure. I have to compliment the Office of Operations (or whatever their name is now). Back in the day I had mixed feelings about their abilities, but they've got a pretty good report out on the renovation of the 5th wing of the South Building. I think a taxpayer would have benefited by a bit more background--when the building was constructed, what's exactly wrong with it, but all in all, they did good.

ARS is so-so, RD looks good, OIG is poor (an Excel worksheet that's not very informative in my eyes).

And FSA? FSA is absolutely terrible. The link for "more" leads to a page which was last updated on April 28, 2009. I know they've had 3 administrators in the last 6 months (one acting, then Doug Caruso, then Mr. Coppess). I used their "Ask FSA" function to ask about the status. We'll see if they live up to their promises (of course, I didn't ask their support department, I asked Mr. Coppess when he was going to get it updated):

"The reference number for your question is '090815-000001'.You should receive a response by email from our support department within the next business day.If you need to add information to or cancel your question, you can do so by updating it through the questions sub area of the 'My Stuff' section of this site."

I must be feeling mean today, because I'm tempted to carry things up the line if I don't see action. One of the things that a bureaucracy needs is countervailing pressure. In other words some retired geezer with nothing better to do than fuss and nitpick.

FSA Gets Better on Recovery

I've criticized FSA for being tardy in updating their site to cover ARRA (recovery act) activities. They seem to have updated in the last week--here's the IT page. It doesn't say much, except $19 million for MIDAS. In my surfing of websites I mentioned earlier today I stumbled across a joint project of RMA and FSA for crop acreage reporting. I'd like to know more about that.

USDA's Recovery Sites

Well, USDA now has an active link from the recovery.gov site. It's a good bureaucratic creation, lots of boilerplate and repetition, (as is the pdf file entitled "USDA's plans") but it does contain links to three agency sites, FNS, FS, and NRCS.

From the NRCS link you get another bureaucratic page, then a link to this page, which shows promise of tying dollars to projects. Unfortunately, none of the 3 links on that page work, which seems odd because my impression is the stimulus package gave NRCS money to do more work under existing programs, so I would have thought they'd be able to link to existing pages. I would have notified NRCS of the problem, but got discouraged by the number of links I was facing.

FNS, on the other hand, does well, at least for SNAP (i.e. food stamps)--providing a page of explanation of the increased benefits. Unfortunately the other links under their recovery page haven't been updated for the stimulus package.

FS does so-so--they look good, but the video is out-of-date (done before ARRA was signed) and is possibly addressed both to FS employees and to the public and the text page is bureaucratically vague. Additionally, the chief forester promises the work will be done in 2-3 years, mostly. I wonder if that's what they promised OMB?

Where's FSA? Not a clue.