Farm Service Agency Morale Declines

The Post reports on surveys of federal agencies under the title "Best Places to Work...". Technically it's an "index score [which] measures the performance of agencies and agency subcomponents related to employee satisfaction and engagement." My old home FSA is at position 149 among 200+ subcomponent organizations, index of 59.4 down 6.5 points from 2005.

It's still a better place to work than USDA Administration, which is less than 50. It looks as if those components with broad and vague missions, like administration, tend to score lower than those with more defined missions. However, Immigration and FEMA are both low.

More on Closing FSA Offices

Secretary of Ag Johanns and Admin. Lasseter (of Farm Service Agency) are pushing to close FSA offices before they have to implement a new farm bill:

But both Johanns and Lasseter said they are convinced those closures would ultimately result in better service for farmers and ranchers. Johanns suggested today's tech-savvy farmers are nearly as used to doing business via phone, fax and Internet as they are face-to-face.

"For them, doing stuff on the computer is as natural as the work that they would do during the day on their crops," Johanns asserted. "I just think we have to move this whole system forward, and it really is time."

They're right--if offices are to be closed, they need to get it done in 2007. But I wonder whether they've talked to the administrative people. Once you have a plan to close offices, and approval to do so, it still will take some time. I haven't seen any reference to closing National Resource Conservation service offices or Rural Development. I think FSA has had more offices than NRSC, so probably many of the closures are at sites where FSA is the only one there. But if that's not always the case, trying to get two or three agencies to agree on a move and coordinating the logistics is a hassle.

Perhaps in some of the moves, the receiving site already has office space vacant, so people can move in. Or, perhaps, there won't be any people and equipment to move--the people will have retired or resigned instead of moving.

Cash Lease/Share Lease

From the Farm News:

"An unprecedented raise in corn prices last fall brought with it gross revenue increases for Iowa farmers that in many cases were double from the year before. For landowners who cash rent their land, revenues were unchanged.

‘‘We have had a lot of calls from landowners and farmers, especially when they see prices this high for corn,’’ said William Edwards, Iowa State University Extension economist. ‘‘They want to know how they can make the cash rent scenario more equitable on both sides.’’"

The article goes on to point out that Farm Service Agency has concerns whenever a lease is changed, because it can impact eligibility for payments. A larger point is that any dramatic change in economic conditions causes people to try to adjust, which can then undermine the assumptions upon which a given piece of legislation was written.

Back

I'm back from my trip and catching up. (Now if I can only remember the great ideas I had while away.)

Who Measures the Measurers?

Received an e-mail on NASCOE's support of Sen. Thune's S.944, which basically says: USDA can't close any field offices until it reviews the operations at the headquarters offices and implement changes there.

The Farm Service Agency and its predecessor have long had a system for measuring the work done in each office (mostly in terms of numbers of forms pushed) in order to allocate dollars and staff among the States and counties. (My impression, for what's it's worth, is that the system worked relatively well. This may be a slur on the old Soil Conservation service but I believe they used to lack such a system, perhaps partially because some of their funds come from local soil and water conservation districts and part from the Feds.) But it's never had a true system for measuring work at the national level. So there's always a tension: an operative in the local county office sees the instructions and systems coming into the office that were created by some faceless bureaucrats in DC. If they're defective the operative is caught between an upset farmer and obedience to instructions. Comes a proposed reduction in staffing and offices and there's the entirely reasonable suspicion that the field comes out on the short end of the stick.

It all goes back to the Bible: it's so much easier to measure the beam in the other's eye than the mote in yours (or is it vice versa).

Someday I may write about the Government Performance Results Act of 1993 but today I close down blogging for the rest of the week. I'll be back Sunday or Monday.

Vue-Graphs, Powerpoint, and Progress

When I was in the Army, I took a week of "charm school" (or maybe just 3 days) on how to be an instructor. One of their things was transparencies, sometimes known as Vue-graphs. I think IBM was well known for using them, along with other graphic aids. Move the clock forward about 30 years and Powerpoint became the big deal. But move another 15-20 years and skepticism builds.
Margaret Soltan at University Diaries reports the possible death of the Powerpoint presentation. But even better is a link in the comments, showing Abraham Lincoln in modern dress.

Give George His Due

George W. has many faults, but we liberals need to recognize his occasional virtues. See this snopes.com post on the comparison of Gore and Bush, house-wise.

More Opposition to Closing Offices

Observers of the political scene tend to blame interest groups for perpetuating government programs. The fuss over closing Farm Service Agency offices doesn't change that, but it can remind us that "interest groups" aren't just K-street lawyers and ex-pols, they are neighbors and fellow citizens. A proposal to close one Nebraska office roused 250 people to a meeting--here.

Interview--Marjorie Harshaw Robie

The Belfast Telegraph prints its interview with my cousin on her book.

One piece of wisdom:

"You understand very quickly there were lots of voices never heard or long since forgotten. England wasn't a single monolithic point of view any more than the Presbyterians were."

Is E-Government Simpler?

Just had an experience which shows either: (1) my impatience as I get older, or (2) the bureaucratic limits of e-government.

Background: Ken Cook links to a report about a change in standards for organic coffee. The blog he cites includes a post asking where the old policy is. Coffee is always interesting to me, almost as much as bureaucracy, so I go off to try to find the change. From the Salon article I go to the AMS publication (required under FOIA) of the appeal decisions under the national organic program during the most recent period. It contains a (poor) Code of Federal regulations cite (poor in that it omits the "7 CFR " portion) of §205 .403(a)(1). There's no indication of a change.

Now, in researching further, I come across the "E-Regulation" site, http://www.regulations.gov,
which was developed as part of Bush's e-government initiative. But this is the point where bureaucracy comes in: the regulations site is only for the documents published in the Federal Register; the site for the Code of Federal Regulations is the Government Printing Office's CFR access site. I pity the poor civilian who has to follow this.

It's worthy of note that the GPO is not an executive branch agency under the President. They've had initiatives to make government documents available to the public (like depositing copies in "federal depositary libraries") for a long time. Their Access program was around in the 1990's. (What follows is speculation.) Naturally they were in no mode to cooperate with Bush's people, who were johnny-come-latelies. That's if the Bush people even thought of asking GPO to cooperate--they may not have had the knowledge. The Bush people were focused on improving the process of developing regulations and managing the floods of public comments that they very occasionally attract. They were looking at regulations as writers, not as readers.

The result is that there's two overlapping databases--the Federal Register portion of GPO and the regulations.gov site, and no integration between code and changes.

(What about AMS's change--I can't tell, it looks as if their regulations have always required 100 percent inspection, so the "change" may have been a change in implementation, not policy.