Lesson for Web Designers: Use Common Sense and Test

That's the gist of this post at "Partnership for a More Perfect Union", which rates Congressional websites. While their advice is directed to Congressional webmasters, it applies to everyone.

Saddest Phrase of June 12: Prison Is a Safe Place

"...prison appears to be a healthier place than the typical environment of the nonincarcerated black male population." 
From a study reported by Barking Up a Wrong Tree, comparing death rates of prisoners with civilians. Part of it may be healthcare differences.

Different Ways to Skin the Cat--Bus Arrivals

Metro has signs showing when the next subway trains will arrive.  That's new since I stopped riding regularly (meaning about 13 years ago, so not exactly a recent development).  It's very nice, though people now will take it for granted.  There's been efforts over the years to do the same for urban bus systems: have the stop display when the next bus is due.  I think there've been a few implementations of this.

A different approach than displaying the arrival time at the stop is probably better; after all, once you arrive at the stop unless it's very late you're pretty well committed to taking that bus. So this approach of Google's seems a lot better: display the real arrival times on your cellphone.  Presumably there's the same logic behind the scenes as when the display is at the stop, but putting it on the Internet and available to cellphones is so much better.

Public Management Conference With No Public Managers

That seems almost be the case (there were two civil servants there) at this conference reported by Federal Computer Weekly.

Erroneous Payment Process and Eligibility

Here's a Federal Computer Weekly article on the administration's hopes and plans for VerifyPayment.gov, their portal to try to reduce erroneous payments and the more detailed Federal Times article.

It strikes me as a parallel to one of my better ideas, the FSA eligibility file.  As I've mentioned before, I visited ASCS county offices in the late 60's, spending enough time to observe the detailed work processes.  I remember being struck in one office by the clerk's (this was in the days before they were called "program assistants", much less "program technicians" as I believe today's nomenclature is) systematic process for issuing deficiency payments.  Essentially she had what Atul Gawande has written a book about: a checklist.

Move forward a number of years and we're trying to implement the payment process on the IBM System/36.  But there was a problem between assembling the necessary data to compute the payments and actually approving and printing the checks.  That's where the idea of the eligibility file/checklist came in: a place to record the various determinations which affected payment eligibility (i.e., controlled substance conviction, sod/swamp, etc.). And our Kansas City developers could create a common routine, so any FSA program area could inquire to see if the producer was eligible for that program.

As a digression, I've always regretted we didn't have the available people to build on the eligibility file to automate the source documents  It wouldn't have been that difficult and would have eliminated the gap between the county committee making a determination and getting it  recorded in the eligibility file.

Anyhow, back to the Verifypayment process--it seems to me the Feds could and should take the same approach: make a front-end process which tells the calling entity whether the subject is alive and eligible for the payment.  The website lists some of the major program areas they're focusing on, but the approach could be expanded so that state and local governments could access it, as well as OPM for deceased annuitants. 

Ho Hum, A White House Rural Council

From the USDA blog, an announcement of a cross-cabinet council to focus on rural matters.  The chances of this accomplishing anything significant: zilch.

The "name" members are all cabinet officers, who are much too busy doing their day jobs to spend any real time or effort, much less money, on this.  The people who will actually attend the meetings, after the first one, are assistants to the  deputy assistant under secretary, someone whose time is not valuable. 

They're With the Protestant Supreme Court Justices

That's my answer to the question John Fea uses as the title of his post.  I suspect there is some relationship between the lack of mainline Protestants on the Supreme Court and as candidates for President on the Republican ticket.

If You Can't Do It, Change the Rules

Via Farm Policy, here's an article on the possibility of going to 2-year budgets.  It's probably a good idea, but it reflects Congressional failure to pass budgets under the current system.  And the current system reflected Congressional failure to pass budgets under the prior system  And the prior system reflected Congressional failure to take a comprehensive view of expenditures and income.  It's called moving the goalposts.

Brooks and Economics of Healthcare

One of the things I miss in the current chattering classes commentary is a focus on market structure.  The questions of monopoly and pricing power don't play much of a role in current debates.  For me, I remember the strain surrounding the receipt of the monthly (I think) milk check and egg check.  We'd shipped off our milk and eggs, consigned my parents' work to the fates, and waited to see what we'd receive in return.  Open the envelope and see the check amount: maybe it's up, maybe down.  The closest parallel I can come to in today's life is the arrival of the bills for electricity and water/sewage.

In both cases, the person has no pricing power; they're at the mercy of the market structure.  

David Brooks has a piece  on healthcare saying Democrats believe in the power of government experts to cut costs, Republicans believe in the power of competition and consumer choice.  I'd say that misses the fact that government, as purchasing agent for consumers, can have pricing power; consumers in the context of the healthcare market don't.

USDA's IT Reforms

Described here at the CIO  blog.  Everyone is moving to the cloud for email and collaboration?