No EEO on USDA Investments?

Here's the USDA's list of major investment areas for IT, reached from the performance.gov site.  Don't I recall that Vilsack was supposedly redoing the culture of the Department, and hasn't his Assistant Secretary for EEO (not the correct title, but I'm too lazy at the moment to check) responded to OIG/GAO with proposals for better systems in the EEO area?

Where does that appear in the list?  Is Vilsack really putting money where his mouth is?

[Damn, as I age I'm getting more cranky.]

Non Land Costs on Small and Big Farms

Here's an Illinois study comparing costs among farms of different sizes.  The surprise to me: big farms don't have any cost advantage, at least among the farmers included in the study (which I would suspect is a bit biased towards the farmers with the best records).

The other surprise: the smallest farms are defined as under 500 acres.

American Ingenuity

Did you know Ben Franklin invented mail order?  And Thomas Jefferson invented the swivel chair and the wheel cypher (think Enigma machine)  And Tabitha Babbitt invented the circular saw?

All these from this timeline.

Our Weak Government

I occasionally assert the weakness of our governmental system.  This professor of political science has a different name for it: kludgeocracy.

Is There "Pink Slime" in Bologna?

Tyler Cowen linked to an article on Newfoundland's fixation on bologna, which refers to "ham trim" and other "mystery meat", which caused me to wonder.

USDA Performance Measures

Forgive my asking,but aren't we now in FY13, nearing the end of the first quarter?  Having nothing better to do, I was trolling through the performance.gov site for USDA.  

When I copy the data over, I lose the formatting but these relate to MIDAS and OCE, and they seem to be a tad out of date. Tsk, tsk.

Initial Operating Capability (IOC) Deployment

IOC Release 1 acquisition and detailed planning will occur in FY11 Q3-Q4. Releases will follow SAP ASAP methodology (project prep, blueprint, realization, final prep and go live). Less

2011-07-01

2012-09-30

$119098

% of Field Offices with WAN Acceleration Monthly % 80 -- 2012-02-28 % of Field Office with centralized file services Monthly % 55 -- 2012-02-28 % of Field Office on centralized backup Monthly % 55 -- 2012-02-28 % of infrastructure components out of life cycle (goal is to refresh prior to out of life cycle so l More.. Monthly % 55 -- 2012-02-28 % End Users Satisfied with OCE-related IT Infrastructure Components Monthly % 55 -- 2012-02-28 % of Field Offices with Telephone systems upgraded Monthly % 75 -- 2012-02-28

The question is, is anybody looking at the measures?

The Wisdom of Engineers

For some reason, although the engineers (former engineers) whose blogs I follow are more conservative than I, they often have posts with which I agree, or at least appreciate.

John Phipps has a good post on "The survival rate scam" for cancer (i.e., better detection at earlier stages doesn't mean much).

The always impressive Walt Jeffries at Sugar Mountain Farm summarizes the year's achievements in building the butcher shop.

Blueberries and Innovation, Bipolar USDA

The local Safeway has had blueberries for sale every day for the last year or 18 months, I think. I've seen berries from Chile (now), Mexico (earlier), North Carolina, New Jersey, Michigan, and Maine. And probably other sources. They aren't cheap, but considering the distance they have to travel, it's worth while.

I get the extension RSS feed, and have seen posts on blueberry cultivation in the South. They're reporting the results from experiment stations, and from the field  Extension is, of course, partially funded by USDA.  But there's also this announcement -- USDA is spending $16 million to buy wild blueberries for school lunch and food bank programs.

So on the one hand USDA is promoting the spread of blueberry culture through the US, while on the other hand it's encouraging wild blueberry growers, partially to mitigate downward price pressure.  What's the reason for the downward pressure: I assume it's the development of cultivated blueberries in the US and to the south.

Not sure what the locavores would make of this--wild blueberries are pretty regional.

USDA and OIP

FCW refers to the 6-month review of the digital government strategy.  Via links, I come on this page from USDA.  From what I see, it appears USDA is bragging on the Office Information Profile system.

I'm amazed, really amazed. OIP was a result of work in the 1990's, Paul Whitmore from FSA and someone from NRCS and RD, which had actually evolved from Gerry Deibert's efforts to construct a database of USDA offices back in the day when Sec. Madigan was trying to consolidate field offices.

Unfortunately, it got done as a separate silo from SCIMS, which was unfortunate, or at least I thought so then.  Anyhow over the years I've occasionally looked at the OIP page(s) just to see what's happened.  I could swear, though I might be wrong, that NRCS had dropped the links to it, though it seems to be back now.  It's not evident on the USDA web page.

It looks to me as if maybe they blew the dust off the old software, added in the link to the Bing map  (which is good) and resurrected it.  I wonder what sort of usage statistics USDA maintains on it.  Pardon my doubts, but I think the design too closely reflects the bureaucracies involved, rather than meeting the needs of the user.  If I'm looking for an FSA/NRCS/RD office:

• I might be looking for the closest one to my current location, or a specific location.  In that case, I'd be best off if office locations were integrated with Google maps (and Bing, etc.). In other words, if I stick Reston, VA in Google maps, and add the ": FSA office", it should flag the closest office.  Or if I add ":gov", it should show the closest government offices.  Seems to me this would be good for OMB or whoever to work on.  I tried this sort of search a few times and the results vary.  The closest FSA office to Reston is at 14th and Independence, but it didn't show the county offices.  RD and NRCS didn't get that result.
• if I want to know which office services a specific geographic area, the OIP does okay, except for the fact you need to drill down through state, to county, to agency.  If you ask Google: "what FSA office serves Mills County, IA?, I get the state office, not the county office.

bin Laden Alive: Would It Be Better?

Read a thoughtful op-ed by David Ignatius in the Post today, keyed to the new movie " Zero Dark Thirty" and the argument over whether torture works. He argues that it may have in the case of bin Laden, but we need to accept the idea that torture can work, can have benefits.  So in weighing whether to torture we weigh the moral costs versus the possible benefits.

The op-ed caused me to muse about another possibility: suppose we had never gotten the info on bin Laden so we never killed him.  Is it possible that would have been better for us?  Certainly his death satisfies the visceral need for revenge we feel, but are we better off?

As I understand it, bin Laden was having great difficulty communicating with his organization and in getting people to do what he wanted.  I'd assume as time passed that difficulty would increase, bin Laden would be more isolated, more out of touch, less effective.  But we killed him. So now what's left of the organization are perhaps free to form organizations more local in scope, with perhaps more effective leaders.  So in weighing costs and benefits, maybe we traded one big organization with an aging, out-of-touch leader for several smaller organizations with younger and possibly more effective leaders?