Fort Bliss More Dangerous Than Iraq?

That's a headline which could be derived from a NYTimes piece yesterday on the tribulations of an Army brigade returned from Iraq to Fort Bliss, Texas

I Helped Create a Monster

Farm Policy reports on calls for simplifying farm programs. Neither ACRE nor SURE work in all parts of the country.

I'm afraid I take a little credit for this.  By participating in installing computers and software programs in FSA county offices in the mid-80's, I became an "enabler".  Essentially we enabled the idiots in Congress and the farm lobby groups to design new and more complicated programs. I apologize.

I Don't Believe the Army Recruits

From a Politico piece on changes in basic training:

" Of those who are recruited, 54 percent of males and 43 percent of females are overweight."

Of course, most of my basic training unit were draftees, but I doubt there were more than 3 or 4 who were overweight.  The whole story is interesting.

One Time I Agree With Althouse

Ann Althouse quotes from a Washington Post interview with the head of Zappos.  The last bit:

Tony Hsieh: We offer tours to the public, and our headquarters are in Las Vegas. We will pick you up at the airport, ride in the Zappos shuttle, take an hour long tour and then drop you off at the hotel.

For candidates we do the same thing: We pick them up, give them a tour, and then they spend the day interviewing. But at the end of the interview process, our head of recruiting goes back to the shuttle driver and asks them how they were treated. If they were not treated well when they thought they were off the clock then we won't hire them, it's not even a question.

There are a lot of big shots who, away from the camera and the media, are a**holes. But this is about how you create a culture in your organization. And it's good--certainly makes me more likely to buy again from Zappos, not that a retired codger needs much wearing apparel.

Elect That Man to Congress

We need the incisive insights on Capitol Hill, as displayed here: " I think home teams play better at home,"  NL manager Manuel.

Ms Sullivan, C-Span and the FBI

I was channel surfing, partially catching Fran Sullivan, GWB's staffer over DHS, etc.  Quite interesting, in that she's coming from a bureaucratic perspective, and some of the audience were also bureaucrats (i.e Chertoff, Ben-Veniste).  One thing which caught my attention in the area of sharing data was mention of the FBI's case file system.  As she observed, if the key to your filing system is a case tied to an individual, and all information gets entered in that system, you're liable to be unable to find  data which doesn't.  Unfortunately the case file is embedded in the FBI's DNA, so their ability to design their software is limited.  Rather like FSA's reliance on county files.

Bureaucrat Who Did His Duty

You always have to have a signature on an order.  That's what Lt. Hamburger said.  See this Brad DeLong post

Open Government at NTIS

My first contact with NTIS (which I think stands for National Technical Information Service, the techie wing of the Commerce Department) was back in 1970 or so when I was trying to research word processors and then CRT's--bought a couple publications of theirs.  Not much has changed, as Matt Yglesias discovers--their publications are now on CD's, but they still cost ($80). Matt thinks information yearns to be free; I believe the problem for NTIS is their operations are not funded by Congress, but by user fees.  This is somewhat similar to the Administrative Conference of the US which uses its online document service fees ($.08 per page to download) rather expansively.

In principle I think all information generated within the government should be on line, searchable, and available at no charge.

Striking Sentence of July 11

" The engineers programmed RUBI to cry when its arms were pulled. "

This comes from a NYTimes article on how computer scientists are creating robots who act as partners, teachers, or helpers, particularly for children, especially autistic children. The first trial with RUBI, two boys pulled off its arms.  So crying turned out to be the solution; the boys backed off.  I recommend the article.

Cost Per Visit

Federal Computer Week has an article on the United Kingdom's effort to reduce the number of web sites the government supports. perhaps 75 percent of the 820 sites. They've also come up with a metric the US government should use: the cost per visit to the site. (The priciest was $17+ per visit.)  Although, on second thought maybe the metric should be the cost per minute of visit.  I've proposed before each government website should have a link to a set of metrics describing usage of the website.  I repeat the suggestion.