MIDAS Presentation II

Some more random thoughts on the MIDAS presentation::

Two things struck me about the geographic distribution of the field people they've brought in to work on it:

• there's no one from the western third of the country.
• there's only one person from the southeast.

Now I understand that with the phaseout of tobacco and peanut programs and the establishment of Freedom to Farm direct payments regional differences in agriculture and in landownership and operation aren't as significant as they used to be. And I know all the hard-headed SOB's capable specialists who used to staff the state offices have now retired. So what you have in the state offices are easy-going types anxious to improve operations.  But gee, just for small p political purposes it'd be good to have a more diverse set of people.

Another nit to pick: the presentation refers to "SAP" as if everyone knows what/who they are. 

And finally, it seems I won't be able to restrain myself from commenting on MIDAS, so I've added a label for it.

What's Hard About Farming?

Bob at StonyBrookFarm has a two-word answer: making money. Read the whole thing--Bob and wife came to farming as adults, BTW.

Recommended Website

I'm curious about people.  Blogs are great; people say more on blogs than they often do in person, at least when I'm the other person. So whether it's a depressed English English teacher in central France or a crofter in Scotland or an artistic photographer and farm wife or various farm blogs (Phipps), Colorado corn/beans, or cattle, or African-American urbanite who's into Jane Austen (yes) and rap (ugh), I enjoy them all.

I want to (belatedly) add to that list Butterfly Moments. Read it.

Moving Day

One thing which always startles me is the concept of "moving day", the various laws which set a specific date for real estate leases to expire.  Apparently there are such laws in some states, pertaining to farmland at least.  And in France according to the estimable Dirk Beauregard it's illegal between November and late March to expel tenants. It's part of an article on French housing, including the imposition of rent controls in Paris. 

Another Pet Peeve--Obama Disappoints

The Post puts up Obama's latest memo on reorganizing trade and competitiveness functions.  But, much to my chagrin, it's in monospaced type, not proportionally spaced.  Way back in 1970-1 I was researching a replacement for the IBM MT/ST (magnetic tape selectric typewriter), which got me into CRT displays (like 7x9 pixels) and into the difference between proportional spacing and monospaced.  The NIST article which convinced me said that type designers over the centuries since Gutenberg had figured out how to maximize readability by controlling spacing, using serifs to lead the eye, etc., but that typewriters, because of the mechanical constraints sacrificed that readability.  Ever since I have objected to using monospaced type on PC's and the Internet. It's too bad the word hasn't reached all of Obama's staff--I had expected better from him.

Michael Kinsley and Budget Cuts

I agree with Michael Kinsley most of the time, but not on the issue of budget cuts. He says whenever budget cutting is in the air, there's a template for arguments--note, I like the template:

1. Expression of general support for deficit reduction. Reference to easy answers (there are none). Reference to burden (all must share).
2. Reference to babies and bathwater. Former should not be discarded with latter.
3. This program/agency/tax break is different. A bargain for the taxpayers. Pays for itself many times over. To eliminate or cut would be bad for children/our troops.
4. Cost is small (a) as percentage of total budget; (b) compared with budget of Pentagon; (c) compared with projected cost of health care.
5. Optional comparisons: to cost of just one jet fighter or 3.7 minutes of War on Terror
6. Names of famous people who support this program or tax cut, especially Colin Powell. Other good names: Madeleine Albright, Natalie Portman, George H.W. Bush (not W), Warren Buffett.
7. This is not about fair, responsible, across-the-board budget cutting. This is about the other side irresponsibly pursuing an ideological agenda, penalizing programs it doesn’t like.

(Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0311/51256.html#ixzz1GnjahBut) 
So, if I like the template, which points out the dynamic of budget cutting fights, what do I have a problem with?  Kinsley says most domestic programs are incremental: the more money we spend, the more outcome we are likely to get, whether it be roads, dams, orchestras, whatever.  But the military, he says, is different.  Security is binary; we either spend enough to be secure or we don't.  That's where I have a big problem. The truth is often that we define our security interests by our capability, as in Libya.  If we had more military might available, we probably would define our security interests as requiring the overthrow of Qaddafi, even if it meant "no drive zones". Since might is tight right now, we're a lot more hesitant. 

Garrison Keillor Beat You There

Barking Up the Wrong Tree has a post on the errors in people's self-assessments:

In general, people’s self-views hold only a tenuous to modest relationship with their actual behavior and performance. The correlation between self-ratings of skill and actual performance in many domains is moderate to meager—indeed, at times, other people’s predictions of a person’s outcomes prove more accurate than that person’s self-predictions. In addition, people overrate themselves. On average, people say that they are ‘‘above average’’ in skill (a conclusion that defies statistical possibility), over- estimate the likelihood that they will engage in desirable behaviors and achieve favorable outcomes, furnish overly optimistic estimates of when they will complete future projects, and reach judgments with too much confidence. Several psychological processes conspire to produce flawed self-assessments.

SAIC and USDA

SAIC picked up another IT contract with USDA.  This one's for RMA support, the previous one was for FSA and MIDAS.

[Updated: I may be wrong--it seems SRA may have gotten the MIDAS contract.]

MIDAS Presentation

NASCOE has a MIDAS presentation up on its website. (If, like me, you don't have Microsoft Office, you may have to download the Microsoft Powerpoint Viewer. MIDAS is the FSA project, partly funded by stimulus funds, to redo their processes and software.) My initial reaction on viewing it is: been there, done that.  A couple points:

• one slide has a disingenuous claim that it's not about closing county offices.  I heard that in 1992 with Infoshare, and it made equally as little sense then.  To make the case to OMB and Congress to get the money, you have to argue people will be more productive once the new systems are installed. Because it's a fair assumption FSA won't be serving more farmers in the future than it is now, that means fewer employees to provide better services to the same universe of farmers.  Fewer employees spread among the same number of offices doesn't make sense.  (Now there could be other changes which would alter the logic, but such changes are unlikely.)
• the people working on this project don't have the burden we had from 1991 to the early 2000's--the effort to include FSA, NRCS, and RD in one effort.  From a quick review of the slides, they aren't even doing the farm loan (old FmHA side), just farm programs. That makes the job much much easier.  Of course, it perpetuates the silos of the different agencies, but since USDA has repeatedly failed at the cross-agency effort, narrowing the scope probably makes sense.

Principals, Teachers, and Google Management

The Times has a piece on Google's efforts to deduce principles of good management.  Interesting.  One bit:

The traps can show up in areas like hiring. Managers often want to hire people who seem just like them. So Google compiles elaborate dossiers on candidates from the interview process, and hiring decisions are made by a group. “We do everything to minimize the authority and power of the manager in making a hiring decision,” Mr. Bock explains.

 One of the problems in establishing a fair system for evaluating teachers is ensuring the principals who are in charge of evaluations are good managers, and fair.  Which raises the question of who hires teachers in today's schools?  I assume the principals.  Maybe they shouldn't in the light of the above?

(And maybe government managers, like me, shouldn't have been deciding on whom to hire.)