A Salute to COBOL

Federal Computer Week has an article on the persistence of COBOL. Seems FSA isn't the only agency stuck in that world. (I met my wife when we both took a COBOL class way back when, so I have fond memories of the language. )

"because Cobol uses programming terminology that is close to the way people use regular English, it’s still considered the best language for capturing an organization’s business rules. Other languages use fairly arcane terminology that make it hard to capture those processes..."

"The Social Security Administration is wrapping essential Cobol applications in Extensible Markup Language envelopes and publishing them as service-oriented architecture services. It will retain about 20 percent of the 36 million lines of Cobol code it uses...."

Problem is, when you accept COBOL and the business rules it embodies, you accept the past. As a liberal, I have to think the future will require different business rules. And if neither the programmer nor the business type understand the rules in the IT system, you're, as we used to say, "cruising for a bruisin' ".

More on Caruso

Government Executive has a piece on Doug Caruso's replacement, which doesn't say much. Possibly Caruso didn't realize how little autonomy he would have, possibly there was a big disagreement on appointments of State executive directors. Who knows? Vilsack moved quickly to make it a one-day story by appointing a replacement. In the old days, it would have been a Southerner, because tobacco and cotton was that important, but not now.

Public Enemies and Terrorists

Saw the movie Public Enemies (wife's favorite Johnny Depp as lead) about John Dillinger yesterday. It's good, not as good in my opinion as Collateral, also directed by Michael Mann. One thing Dillinger says, in explaining why he can rob banks: "they (the authorities) have to watch every bank, I only have to hit one" or something close.

I thought of that in watching the ABC news last night, which led with a Senate committee hearing on a GAO report on how easy it was to smuggle into Federal buildings the materials necessary to make a small bomb.

Generally speaking, I think worries about security are overdone. Security details for mayors and governors? How many have been assassinated? Security for USDA buildings? I remember one incident in the South Building of USDA; if I recall correctly it was domestic violence, certainly not terrorism directed at the hard working bureaucrats of Agdom.

We used to have typewriters walk out of the buildings. But I wonder how many typewriters are left in the department. We used to have to account for calculators. But Moore's law took care of that. I suppose they still have to account for PC's, and security could deter their theft. But Moore's law will take care of that as well, as everyone will have his or her own personal electronics implanted at birth.

I wonder whether an economist has studied the evolution of loot for robbers/burglars: does minaturization increase the availability of high-profit loot (no one could steal a mainframe computer) or does Moore's law wipe out such loot? Do the two forces counterbalance?

But, having security makes people feel better, and that's important.

Coppess as FSA Administrator

That was fast--Vilsack's press release announcing the new FSA administrator is here

Luddites at Work

The spirit of Nick Ludd has not fled the sceptred isles.

Some British believe it's better to run services through local post offices than on the Internet. Reason? It keeps the offices open.

They're fighting this:

The government’s Digital Britain strategy calls for a “digital switchover” for public services from 2012 that would make the internet the primary delivery route for many government departments.

To overcome the issue that more than a third of the population do not have internet access, the plan also aims to widen digital inclusion by introducing universal broadband. Gordon Brown has appointed Lastminute.com founder Martha Lane Fox to lead the drive to bring the digitally excluded online.

I'm sure many in FSA county offices have the same feelings.

Caruso Out

Doug Caruso resigned as Administrator, FSA. See DTN. No FSA press release but the website is updated.

The Power of the Purse

Via Farm Policy, Representative Lucas tried to cut off money for FSA to pass program participant info to IRS, to have them tell FSA if the AGI limit was exceeded. His try failed, but it's an example of how the power of the purse can determine policy. (I remember when House appropriations tried to block the salaries of the Deputy Administrator, State and County Operations and the assistant..)

Failure

From Nextgov:

Justice has been trying to develop a departmentwide case management system for the past 28 years. In 1982, it awarded a $9.6 million contract to Inslaw Inc., a small Washington company, to deploy a case management system called Promis at 22 U.S. attorneys offices. The contract became embroiled in a series of controversies, including allegations by the company that Justice appropriated its software without payment and provided it to Israeli intelligence agencies. Justice then withheld payment to Inslaw, which filed for bankruptcy in 1985.

It's another chapter in failed IT projects. ASCS/FSA at least did one reasonably successful project. (At least us DC bureaucrats thought it was, some county office people thought we had our heads in a dark place.)

Pardon a Geezer

From Amazon, a terabyte hard drive:

List Price:	$2,064.00
Price:	$89.99 & this item ships for FREE with Super Saver Shipping. Details
You Save:	$1,974.01 (96%)

[Updated: Not sure where they got the start price for the drive, but it's cheaper than a 7.5 meg drive was back in 1994.]

1930 Again

It seems I'll probably end up posting regularly on the 1930 news (the summary of Wall Street Journal reportage). This time:

Editorial criticizing Dept. of Agriculture's forecast that wheat prices will be lower over the next 7 years. Suspicious this fits into Farm Board plan to reduce wheat acreage; says this is doomed to fail since foreign growers will take up slack and farmers will convert to other crops, with resulting pressure on those. Compares plan to “taking a part of the load from one end of the wagon and piling it on the other end.” No alternative plan suggested.

It's a reminder of the predecessors to the New Deal--in this case Hoover experimented with price supports without a production adjustment/supply management program in place. One item on my to-do list is to write on "supply management" for wikipedia.