FSA and Texting

Those forward-looking people at FSA are looking at Web 2.0. From a Nextgov post.

Jeff Kerby, Web manager for the Agriculture Department's Farm Service Agency, which provides loans and subsidy payments to farmers, said the agency recently has begun testing how social networking could be used. He and other technology managers at FSA are analyzing how the agency could text the latest crop prices to farmers every morning so they don't have to come into the county office to look up the information. "They're receptive," Kerby said. "It's a matter of getting them used to it."

Whoopsie, USDA Press Screwup

Or maybe it's the Rural Information Center's error. Anyhow, they posted links to the transcript of Michelle Obama's visit to USDA (yes, that was 6 weeks ago) and to President Bush's acceptance of Secretary Johann's resignation. The latter was dated 1/21/09 by USDA, but my memory is he resigned last summer to run for (and win) a Senatorial seat, so it's likely 6 months old.

News From Front Street

The shooting in Binghamton, NY brings some sociological observations:

The NY Times reports Binghamton is a city of 48,000. It was about 80,000 when I grew up 12 miles outside. The shoe factories of EJ were the biggest employers, being responsible for the presence of lots of eastern European immigrants. EJ shod the Army during WWI and II, but is now not a factor.

The Daily News reports: More than 7,100 immigrants have settled in Binghamton since 2005, 71% from Asian countries, according to city statistics. If true, it's likely because the housing is cheap. Utica, another rust belt city in NY, has also seen lots of immigrants for similar reasons. [Revised--this seems too high to me.]

Binghamton University achieved a little infamy because its basketball team made NCAA (and Tony Kornhauser is an alumnus, though I think it was called "Harpur College" then) and its graduation rate of its players was abysmal.

An Administration Failure on Pay Limits

The NYTimes has a front page story on the failure of the Obama administration to get support for its ill-conceived changes to payment limitation. It shows the problems in hitting the ground running for a new administration. To the city slickers, even including OMB director Orzag, it sounded good. But I'm sure they didn't check with the remaining division directors and branch chiefs in FSA for a reality check. And apparently, John Berge, who's supposed to be the White House liaison to USDA and a former FSA state director, wasn't consulted. I doubt the White House checked with any of the "reformers" in agriculture, those who want to reduce payments. If they did, I'm not confident people like EWG would have spotted the problem. That's why you need bureaucrats, to give a reasonably objective appraisal of the pluses and minuses of a policy proposal.

The problem is that reputation is almost all you have in DC--if you're known as someone who knows her business and keeps her promises, you have clout. Screw up, and that becomes your reputation and your clout dwindles.

Who's Tending the Garden?

While Michelle is hugging the Queen and otherwise stunning the Brits (see here). Who's getting the kids out into the garden and planting those seeds? Time is slipping fast; a day lost now is forever gone.

By way of comparison, our (i.e., wife's) peas, lettuce, onion sets, radishes, etc. have sprouted and we're probably 10 days behind the White House. If their peas aren't planted and showing by now, it's going to be tough on them--our weather gets hot. Or maybe the Obamas are like so many in our community plots--an early burst of enthusiasm followed by distractions. Like the Queen.

IPhone a Model for Feds

Technology Review carries a piece suggesting that an electronic health record system, sponsored by the government, should be modeled on the IPhone:

Their approach is modeled on successful IT products outside of health care, including the iPhone and Facebook, which rely on innovative applications from third-party programmers. Mandl and Kohane propose what they call a platform approach, in which EHR vendors sell a flexible, basic platform that is designed to work with components from other vendors, much as the iPhone works with applications made by a myriad of third-party developers.

I'm really out of my depth here, but it seems just a little facile. I'm not clear that either Apple or Facebook started out with the idea they were doing a "platform"--they did something, they made it open, and the snowball started rolling. It's possible a software package that established identity, privacy, and security, sponsored by the government could work. Indeed, in systems terms we already have a government sponsored system for identity (i.e. birth certificates, drivers licenses, death certificates, green cards, etc.) which is the basis for most of commerce.

Plain English--Been There, Done That

Government Executive reports on a "plain English" bill-requiring gov documents to be written in such.

I recall Jimmy Carter had the same thought. As a matter of fact, if I had the energy I suspect I could find there's still a requirement that regulations, to be published in the Federal Register, must be accompanied by a certification that they are in plain English. (That was back in the day when part of my area of supervision was the processing of documents to the Register.)

Offloading FSA Data into Your PC?

Here's a post on a test of allowing Medicare patients to offload their claim records into Google Health. So why not allow farmers to offload data from FSA to their PC?

Genealogy and History

I do some genealogy and am a failed historian. So this series by Errol Morris at NYTimes looks promising. It's a 5-part series on how a picture of 3 children found on the Gettysburg battlefield was used to identify a dead soldier.

The Office of Circumlocution

Watched Little Dorrit (Masterpiece Theater) on Sunday. As a bureaucrat, I particularly enjoyed Robert Hardy's bit as head of the Office of Circumlocution. (Reminded me of John Cleese and the Ministry of Silly Walks.)