From Service Center Intiative to MIDAS

I'm curious how USDA went from the Service Center Initiative of the late 1990's and the MIDAS plan of 2004--was there a rational decision process or just the switch from Dems to Reps?

Flash: GAO on MIDAS

FiercegovernmentIT discusses a GAO report on MIDAS.  Doesn't look like good news.  [Updated with the following]

It's behind schedule and there's no clear roles for management. The second paragraph of the summary:

Executive-level governance for MIDAS has not been clearly defined and does not
fully follow department IT investment management guidance. Specifically,
oversight and governance has been assigned to several department and agency
bodies, but roles and escalation criteria are not clearly defined among them.
Department officials reported that department guidance is being followed for
monthly status reviews, but not for department-level reviews at key decision
points. The lack of clarity and definition for the roles of the governance bodies
could result in duplication or voids in program oversight, as well as wasted
resources. Moreover, because MIDAS is not being governed according to the
department’s investment guidance, the department may not be rigorously
monitoring and managing the program and its risks, and may not have the
information it needs to make timely and appropriate decisions to ensure the
success of MIDAS.

Save.gov and USDA

In effect the White House's Save.gov is the government-wide suggestion site for federal employees. As a retiree I can't participate, but I can offer comments here:

•  there's a total of 5300 suggestions on the site, maybe 400 or so for USDA.  The 5 "hot" ideas include 3 which are perennials or nonstarters (pay Congress for performance--come on now, be serious).
• the 80/20 rules seems to apply, a few suggesters seem to be providing many of the suggestions (1 person 80 suggestion). IMHO there's lots of unrealistic and trashy suggestions; perhaps limiting people to their 10 best suggestions would work better.
• an FSA employee suggested the "dislike" button be added, similar to what FSA has.  Sounds good, but I wonder why FSA needs a separate suggestion site--why not kill all such sites and rely on save.gov
• the rating algorithm is faulty--it privileges the earliest suggestions. I'd add a percentage of viewers who liked it index.
• sounds to me as if USDA needs shared calendars (to eliminate emails on schedules)
• I don't see why there shouldn't be a separate comment/like operation for nonfederal employees
• I don't know why NASCOE didn't start a quiet campaign on some of their legislative suggestions (like FSA doing all back office work).

10 Lessons of Software Development: Kundra

Federal Computer Week has a post on what Mr. Kundra told Congress on his way out the door. The commenters diss him, saying these are golden oldies and he's out for bucks. Regardless of their age, they are good maxims, and I'm afraid USDA doesn't always follow them:
"

• Build end-to-end digital systems to reduce errors and protect the integrity of the data across the federal enterprise.
• Build once, use often.
• Tap into the "golden sources" of data. Don’t rely on derivative databases or data derived from other data sources. Go directly to the transactional systems that do the business on a day-to-day basis.
• Release data in a machine-readable format and encourage third-party applications.
• Employ common data standards. Think about what would have happened if railroads across the country had used different standards in terms of railroad track gauges.
• Use simple, upfront data validations.
• Release data as close to real time as possible.
• Engineer systems to reduce burdens.
• Protect privacy and security. This is critical, especially in the age of Facebook and Twitter. You can create a mosaic effect without really thinking about it. It’s one thing to release data when it comes to health care on a state level, and other thing to release it on a zip-code level.
• Provide equal access to data and incorporate user feedback on an ongoing basis."

A New Farm Bill, Deficits and the Bureaucracy

Farm Policy yesterday has extensive discussion of the next farm bill.  There are so many balls in the air right now it's (even more) difficult to write intelligently than usual.  From the bureaucracy's perspective it appears the bottom line is: it will be an interesting time, as in the Chinese curse. Working in FSA in Washington, or in Kansas City when a farm bill is being written and implemented is always fun. 

I think from a bureaucrat's view there are two separate timelines:

1. The first relates to the debt ceiling/deficit reduction. The Agriculture committees have been asking that they be given the authority to figure out where to cut; essentially saying tell us to cut $15 billion but don't specify where, we'll do.  That's essentially a form of the budget reconciliation bill which Congress has been using for 30 years so or, except that the cuts this time around likely will be deeper. (See this oldish Sustainable Agriculture post.) So I assume either by August, or by later this year, FSA will get changes needed for the 2012 crop year to save money.  Presumably those changes won't be too hard to implement, in that they'll cut rates or programs, not create new provisions. 
2.  The second is the actual new farm bill, which I assume gets written and passed in calendar year 2012 to cover crops in 2013 and later. The question now seems to me to be whether there's going to be a set of constaints on the Ag committees and how constrictive they are.  If I understand, the Biden group's proposal likely would require cutting $3 billion a year.  The McConnell/Reid proposal essentially punts the amounts of cuts for agriculture to a separate group.  If I'm an FSA bureaucrat, I'm hoping the cuts get set in stone sooner rather than later. Going with a separate group of legislators to figure out cuts means delay, which gives the Ag committees less time to do their work.  I suspect the bureaucrats and the Ag committees have separate incentives: bureaucrats want things settled as soon as possible, committees want as much flexibility as possible, which they probably get if things get punted down the road.

Given all the balls in the air, FSA might see a high proportion of people who are eligible actually deciding to retire.

Digital Archeology: An Answer to Obsolete Machines?

Technology Review reports on an exercise in understanding the operation of an obsolete CPU, the 6502 chip in the Commodore 64 and Apple II, among others.  I didn't follow the link in this quote, because I'm not really that techie, but it strikes me this is one answer to the problem of obsolete hardware causing the loss of data: the simulation of operations on modern hardware:

They've chronicled the results of their work at Visual6502.org, where they reveal that their understanding of the 6502 has become so sophisticated that they have not merely mapped all of its transistors and connections, they've actually managed to simulate the workings of the entire chip.

Self-Service Checkouts

Locally Home Depot has had self-service checkouts for a few years, the local Safeway just added them within the past year. I tend to like them because I have control, even though the checkout clerk is faster.  But here's a post on a chain possibly removing such checkouts, with an interesting comment from Sweden:

Are all self-checkout aisles set up like this in the US? Reason I ask is because where I live (Sweden) we use a slightly different approach. When you go into the store you grab a hand scanner on the way in. As you go through the store you scan each item before putting it in your bag. Items that needs to be weighed are weighed where you pick them up and scanned right away. So, when you're done you simply go to the self-checkout aisle, "upload" your purchase and pay.

 Makes sense to me. Another commenter says people would take the scanners, but tagging them like department stores do clothes should handle that.  I suspect there's two reasons for the US version: path dependency--that's the way things happened to develop and, perhaps, the learning curve.  It's easier to help customers at the checkout line than if they get stuck somewhere down an aisle.

Firing Federal Employees

This FCW post covers a USAToday study showing:

By researching the Office of Personnel Management’s database, the newspaper found that the job security rate for all federal workers was 99.43 percent last year and nearly 100 percent for those on the job more than a few years.

 I'm sympathetic to the idea firing employees is too hard.  On the other hand, there's some unknown fraction of the people who leave their jobs voluntarily who really don't. I'd love to see a study which compared job leaving rates among similar jobs in the federal and state governments and private enterprise. I don't know what it would show--maybe federal managers are skilled in making life uncomfortable for employees they want to get rid of.  Or maybe it would show managers are skilled in making employees to turkey farms, where they do no damage, except to the taxpayer.  Or maybe it would show managers are masochists who just suffer with their unsatisfactory employees.

From the Field: FSA, NRCS and State

Chris Clayton at DTN reports one Iowa farmer's experience: with EQIP:

The Natural Resources Conservation Service sent Bailey to the Farm Service Agency to see if the land had a conservation plan. FSA sent Bailey back to NRCS to create a conservation plan. Eventually, the conservation plan was established. Because it was a livestock operation, Bailey needed to apply manure, so he also had to create a manure management plan. Bailey had to learn a phosphorus application program. He then also had to file a manure management plan with the county.[And Iowa State Agriculture required a livestock premises ID.]

Reminds me of the Kentucky state executive director in 1993 and Infoshare/Service Center Initiative.

The farmer suggests:

"If we had a way in the Midwest to document how many pounds of nitrogen were going down the Des Moines and the Raccoon rivers, and could report that back to each individual farmer, he would quickly convert that back into dollars. That feedback response would be more powerful than a regulatory or an incentive-based approach. Part of the problem we have got in causing change to happen is providing timely feedback to the operator. That information becomes very powerful to correct and change the problems with the application on our landscape."

The Difference a Week Makes

John Phipps reports his operation switched to earlier maturity corn seed, so that his corn has already pollinated.  It may have been a great decision, given the heat wave in the middle of the country and the widespread concerns it will adversely impact pollination.

These sorts of decisions, and their accompanying risks, form the foundation for farmers feeling they deserve a safety net.