Blogging on bureaucracy, organizations, USDA, agriculture programs, American history, the food movement, and other interests. Often contrarian, usually optimistic, sometimes didactic, occasionally funny, rarely wrong, always a nitpicker.
Monday, April 30, 2007
J...S.. and Federal Employee Fraud
To make a long story short, I don't think J...S... hit all the bases on her way out. Anyway, if you go to the USDA's website to find her, you can, because she's still in the employee telephone directory.
How does that link to fraud? Last week when I was out of action, there was some publicity given to the federal employees who were getting Metro farecards from the government (to divert them from the roads to public transit) and selling them. In at least one case, a former employee kept receiving the cards for 5-6 years after leaving--i.e., the database wasn't updated.
Getting Databases to Talk
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Purdue and Farm Bill
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Politics Works--Kansas Offices Aren't Closed
describes the changes made in the office closure plan for Kansas.
Monday, April 23, 2007
Parry O'Brien, R.I.P.
Now, I guess, rather than seeing "barriers" we see statistical distributions. Such thinking doesn't allow for or create individual heroes to the extent that Bannister and O'Brien were. I'm sure it's more realistic, but I'll be an old fogey and mourn the loss of heroism for a minute.
(There, now I'm over it.)
About Time--Ronald Reagan Gets Modernized
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Pollan's Back, and Can't Count
This time, he can't count:
"Like most processed foods, the Twinkie is basically a clever arrangement of carbohydrates and fats teased out of corn, soybeans and wheat — three of the five commodity crops that the farm bill supports, to the tune of some $25 billion a year. (Rice and cotton are the others.)"Pollan has, I'm sure, mentally conflated "corn" and "feed grains" and "upland cotton" and "extra long staple cotton" to get his "five crops". Actually, the farm bill affects barley, grain sorghum, and oats as well as the two cottons.
Oh, one other thing. I'm talking about the "farm bill" of 1981, not the 2002 version. Currently direct and counter-cyclical payments are also made for canola, crambe, flax, mustard, rapeseed, safflower, sesame and sunflower, including oil and non-oil varieties and peanuts. See this fact sheet.
Saturday, April 21, 2007
Brits and GIS
"Investigations by the National Audit Office and the House of Commons rural affairs committee found that implementation was rushed, partly for political reasons, and reforms were introduced at the same time as a £130m "change programme" involving cutting the Rural Payment Agency's staff numbers by half.
The agency's confidence was based on its appointment of a high-profile director of information systems on a salary of £225,000, and the contracting of a leading IT services firm, Accenture, to supply the claim processing system.
Sheer volume
Accenture executives told subsequent investigations that the IT worked as specified. But the system could not cope with the volume of inquiries from farmers - at least 10 times greater than expected. One reason was that, unlike in countries such as Germany, there was no minimum payout. The agency had to handle 14,000 claims for less than €100 each.
However the biggest reason for the overwhelming traffic was to do with mapping. The system set the minimum size of a parcel of land as 0.1 hectare, three times smaller than that permitted by the European Union. In all, there were 1.7m parcels of land on more than 75,000 farms. Calculating payments on these parcels required a sophisticated mapping system, involving digitised satellite images and aerial photography aligned up with conventional mapping data. The geographical data came from private sources, including the specialist firm Infoterra, as well as the state-owned Ordnance Survey."
USDA Releases SSN
Whatever--it's another argument for doing away with SSN's.
Friday, April 20, 2007
The Dean Isn't a Faceless Bureaucrat
"For a week or two after a visit, I notice that the folks who saw me with them talk to me differently. It's like they suddenly stop seeing The Dean and start seeing an actual person. It fades quickly, and I go back to faceless-bureaucrat status, but for a brief window there's almost something like rapport."For something which seems related to me, see John Tierney on prejudice in dating situations.
Farm Service Agency Morale Declines
It's still a better place to work than USDA Administration, which is less than 50. It looks as if those components with broad and vague missions, like administration, tend to score lower than those with more defined missions. However, Immigration and FEMA are both low.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
More on Closing FSA Offices
But both Johanns and Lasseter said they are convinced those closures would ultimately result in better service for farmers and ranchers. Johanns suggested today's tech-savvy farmers are nearly as used to doing business via phone, fax and Internet as they are face-to-face.They're right--if offices are to be closed, they need to get it done in 2007. But I wonder whether they've talked to the administrative people. Once you have a plan to close offices, and approval to do so, it still will take some time. I haven't seen any reference to closing National Resource Conservation service offices or Rural Development. I think FSA has had more offices than NRSC, so probably many of the closures are at sites where FSA is the only one there. But if that's not always the case, trying to get two or three agencies to agree on a move and coordinating the logistics is a hassle.
"For them, doing stuff on the computer is as natural as the work that they would do during the day on their crops," Johanns asserted. "I just think we have to move this whole system forward, and it really is time."
Perhaps in some of the moves, the receiving site already has office space vacant, so people can move in. Or, perhaps, there won't be any people and equipment to move--the people will have retired or resigned instead of moving.
Monday, April 16, 2007
Cash Lease/Share Lease
"An unprecedented raise in corn prices last fall brought with it gross revenue increases for Iowa farmers that in many cases were double from the year before. For landowners who cash rent their land, revenues were unchanged.The article goes on to point out that Farm Service Agency has concerns whenever a lease is changed, because it can impact eligibility for payments. A larger point is that any dramatic change in economic conditions causes people to try to adjust, which can then undermine the assumptions upon which a given piece of legislation was written.
‘‘We have had a lot of calls from landowners and farmers, especially when they see prices this high for corn,’’ said William Edwards, Iowa State University Extension economist. ‘‘They want to know how they can make the cash rent scenario more equitable on both sides.’’"
Sunday, April 15, 2007
Back
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Who Measures the Measurers?
The Farm Service Agency and its predecessor have long had a system for measuring the work done in each office (mostly in terms of numbers of forms pushed) in order to allocate dollars and staff among the States and counties. (My impression, for what's it's worth, is that the system worked relatively well. This may be a slur on the old Soil Conservation service but I believe they used to lack such a system, perhaps partially because some of their funds come from local soil and water conservation districts and part from the Feds.) But it's never had a true system for measuring work at the national level. So there's always a tension: an operative in the local county office sees the instructions and systems coming into the office that were created by some faceless bureaucrats in DC. If they're defective the operative is caught between an upset farmer and obedience to instructions. Comes a proposed reduction in staffing and offices and there's the entirely reasonable suspicion that the field comes out on the short end of the stick.
It all goes back to the Bible: it's so much easier to measure the beam in the other's eye than the mote in yours (or is it vice versa).
Someday I may write about the Government Performance Results Act of 1993 but today I close down blogging for the rest of the week. I'll be back Sunday or Monday.
Sunday, April 08, 2007
Vue-Graphs, Powerpoint, and Progress
Margaret Soltan at University Diaries reports the possible death of the Powerpoint presentation. But even better is a link in the comments, showing Abraham Lincoln in modern dress.
Saturday, April 07, 2007
Give George His Due
More Opposition to Closing Offices
Interview--Marjorie Harshaw Robie
One piece of wisdom:
"You understand very quickly there were lots of voices never heard or long since forgotten. England wasn't a single monolithic point of view any more than the Presbyterians were."
Thursday, April 05, 2007
Is E-Government Simpler?
Background: Ken Cook links to a report about a change in standards for organic coffee. The blog he cites includes a post asking where the old policy is. Coffee is always interesting to me, almost as much as bureaucracy, so I go off to try to find the change. From the Salon article I go to the AMS publication (required under FOIA) of the appeal decisions under the national organic program during the most recent period. It contains a (poor) Code of Federal regulations cite (poor in that it omits the "7 CFR " portion) of §205 .403(a)(1). There's no indication of a change.
Now, in researching further, I come across the "E-Regulation" site, http://www.regulations.gov,
which was developed as part of Bush's e-government initiative. But this is the point where bureaucracy comes in: the regulations site is only for the documents published in the Federal Register; the site for the Code of Federal Regulations is the Government Printing Office's CFR access site. I pity the poor civilian who has to follow this.
It's worthy of note that the GPO is not an executive branch agency under the President. They've had initiatives to make government documents available to the public (like depositing copies in "federal depositary libraries") for a long time. Their Access program was around in the 1990's. (What follows is speculation.) Naturally they were in no mode to cooperate with Bush's people, who were johnny-come-latelies. That's if the Bush people even thought of asking GPO to cooperate--they may not have had the knowledge. The Bush people were focused on improving the process of developing regulations and managing the floods of public comments that they very occasionally attract. They were looking at regulations as writers, not as readers.
The result is that there's two overlapping databases--the Federal Register portion of GPO and the regulations.gov site, and no integration between code and changes.
(What about AMS's change--I can't tell, it looks as if their regulations have always required 100 percent inspection, so the "change" may have been a change in implementation, not policy.
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
John Phipps Again
It's funny, I started writing this post saying I disagreed with the ending, but now I've almost changed my mind. It's terrible to get old and not be consistent.
Our Wimpy Soldiers?
Colonel Sutherland, 45, broke down after the 20th brigade soldier was killed earlier this year. “I went into a deep sorrow,” he said. “I was wallowing about in self-pity, worrying about the dead, worrying about those who have no worries. I was overwhelmed. At no point did I doubt our mission, but I couldn’t sleep that night.”My early attraction to history was military--Bruce Catton's books on the Civil War were favorites. I compare this colonel to the reactions of military leaders of the past, like Grant in the absolutely brutal slogging in Northern Virginia. His colonels could lose 20 men in one day, one hour of fighting. It would be easy to mock Sutherland and the modern military, but, as an illustrious President used to say, it would be wrong. War has changed, just as people have changed.
I was waiting in the bank today to talk to an account manager, reading a magazine on Virginia business. One article was on investments in condos near college campuses, bought by parents so they can visit students and by alumni so they can really enjoy the football games. One set of parents had visited their freshman child eight times, by January! Life today seems so much more valuable, we've got so much more invested in each life, and it makes sense that the colonels reflect this as well.
But what my mind says doesn't keep me from thinking: "in my day, people weren't wimps and we walked to school uphill both ways".
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Hearing Past the Rage
Monday, April 02, 2007
Saturday, March 31, 2007
Cross Department Programs Don't Work
A partnership begun in 2004 by the Justice, Homeland Security and Treasury departments to create an Integrated Wireless Network has "fractured" and is at a "high risk for failure," according to a government report issued yesterday.
Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine said that despite years of development and more than $195 million in funding, the project "does not appear to be on the path" to providing the seamless interoperable communications system envisioned.
"The causes for the high risk of project failure include uncertain and disparate funding mechanisms for IWN, the fractured IWN partnership and the lack of an effective governing structure for the project," Mr. Fine said.
Reminds me of the abortive USDA projects for cross-agency computerization. Same sort of problems, even though the issues were at the agency level and not the department level. Things like OMB and GSA were developed as cross-governmental institutions, but they took a long time to get going.
Friday, March 30, 2007
Hobby Farmers
Hobby farmers — loosely defined as those whose incomes are derived not solely from farming — often bring little or no hands-on experience to their new avocation. Their business acumen and marketing skills from previous jobs, however, can turn their pastimes into gainful enterprises, said Karen K. Acevedo, editor in chief of 6-year-old Hobby Farms magazine, which has a circulation of about 81,000.Based on the prices at the end of the piece, I'd define their hobby farmers as people able to afford $100,000 per acre. It's also true, I think, that most farmers rely on off-farm income of some sort.
These "ruralpolitans" are willing to invest beaucoup bucks to pay for equipment to reap and sow organic vegetables; raise niche crops, such as herbs, grass-fed beef or organic pork; shear sheep or llamas for wool production; or harvest grapes for wine.
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Northern Ireland and Northern Iraq
But we know that the peace process in the Middle East (Palestine/Israel) has repeatedly been derailed by violence (intifadas, the killings of militants, the killing of Rabin, etc.). And we can see that even in Tall Afar, which was held up as a model by President Bush, spectacular violence leads to more violence. With this in mind, even if the "surge" succeeds in subduing violence in and around Baghdad, my guess is the result will be closer to the Palestine/Israel situation than Northern Ireland. In other words, the best Bush and we can hope for is "simmering" violence in Iraq, as opposed to "boiling".
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Mismanagement and Agency Culture
The problem at agriculture was that people lacked the background, mission, and authority to look across the board at what was happening in different offices and different programs and direct a rational approach to problems. This statement is true everywhere you look in government, whether it's the military or law enforcement. (Look at the recent news of the problems the wireless communication system that is to be shared by DHS, DOJ, and Treasury.)
I don't have any solutions. I wonder whether big corporations are any better at this. (My impression of GE is that separate units operate pretty separately.)
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Surprising Tidbit on Women
"In 1870, the first year a national survey was conducted, 7,993 men and 1,378 women received bachelor's degrees."My grandmother graduated from Monmouth College in Illinois around 1884 but I was still surprised by the number.
Monday, March 26, 2007
Getting Privacy for Farm Payment Data
(A personal note--I well remember Gerry Diebert being concerned about the prospect of losing the case. He was the liaison with our data processing people who had to figure out how to give EWG what they'd won. I also remember that I was, although not directly involved, rather aggravated. During my career I'd had some responsibility for implementing the Privacy Act of 1974. Effectively the court threw out a bunch of the work we'd done in the initial implementation--it was almost a catch-22 situation: farmers were covered by the Privacy Act until we'd done all the work; then they weren't covered by the Privacy act and FOIA required giving out the data. Make up your damn minds, policymakers.
In this context "policymakers" means those faceless bureaucrats in Congress and the courts who could tell us good guys what to do. :-) )
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Office Closing and Pandering
I've no doubt there's costs that could be saved at headquarters, but it's not a logical stand, it's pandering to the voters. (Of course, it's easy for a retired bureaucrat living in a thriving county outside of DC to mock, quite another matter for the people in the small towns who are affected, particularly those who have taken risks or invested heavily in staying in their particular town.)Sen. John Thune has introduced legislation that would stop any potential Farm Service Agency county office closures until the Secretary of Agriculture conducts a study on cost savings and/or efficiencies at the three FSA headquarters locations and all state FSA offices.
The legislation also requires that the report recommendations must be implemented at all FSA headquarters and state offices before any county FSA offices may be closed.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Why It's Hard to Cut Offices
Or read this account from the Emporia Gazette.
[Note: I've set up a Google Alert for Farm Service Agency items. From that haphazard sampling, it appears that Kansans raise the most hell about closings. Maybe they're all descended from Mary Elizabeth Lease, who famously talked about raising less corn and more hell.]
To govern is to choose, but mostly humans would prefer not to.
Structure and Systems Make a Difference
The Long Island Index, which is financed by the Rauch Foundation, a nonprofit group, compared per capita spending in Nassau and Suffolk Counties with that in Fairfax and Loudoun Counties in northern Virginia.It's inconvenient for libertarians, who believe the smallest and most local government is the least worst government.While the regions have similar demographics, housing prices and population densities, Long Island has a total of 239 counties, cities, towns, villages and school districts (and another 200 special districts), compared with the two northern Virginia counties, which have 17.
The extra layers, as well as more higher personnel costs, are a big reason local governments on Long Island spent $15.5 billion in 2002, more than triple what the two counties in Virginia spent.
Long Island residents spent $5,562 per capita for public services, 45 percent more than in the two Virginia counties.
But to the surprise of the study’s authors, 88 percent of those surveyed in Fairfax and Loudoun Counties said, for example, that services provided by police officers, firefighters and teachers were good or excellent, while on Long Island the figure was 75 percent."
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Pet Peeve Time, or, Why Kyle Sampson Shouldn't Have Been Hired
Based on the excerpts from the e-mails released by DOJ in the dispute over firing attorneys, it looks as if Kyle Sampson, the now ex-chief of staff, falls into that category.
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Love Our British Bureaucratic Cousins
"Changes have been made in the governance of RPA since this review was launched. The Ownership Board has been replaced by a Strategic Advisory Board and a separate, temporary Oversight Group established. The new arrangements are still bedding down but, with other arrangements in place in the agency itself, are aimed at clarifying responsibilities which had become blurred in the 05-06 period. [emphasis added]"Arrangements are bedding down--love it. [I realize only a true-blue bureaucrat would get pleasure from such reading, and only a weirdo would appreciate the idiom, but that's me.]
Monday, March 19, 2007
Rules and Side Effects--Who's a Farmer
Many farm management advisors and university experts have been advising farm operators to look at negotiating “flexible cash rental leases” with their landlords as an alternative to paying very high straight-out cash rental rates on rented land. This strategy seems to make a lot of sense, given the high volatility in the current grain markets, and the high degree of uncertainty relative to future crop revenues.The article goes on to advise that such a strategy may run afoul of the FSA rules on division of payments--very briefly, if you share in the risk, you're eligible for subsidy payments. So any shift from a straight cash lease, where the operator takes all the risk, both of whether the crop will be good and what the price will be, to give some of the risk to the landowner is likely to cause problems, at least if the FSA bureaucrat is doing her job.
Notable Bureaucrats--Milton Friedman
"In the late 1930s he hooked up with the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Simon Kuznets and Arthur Burns, worked for the U.S. Treasury during World War II (where he was one of the designers of our current system of income-tax withholding), earned his Ph. D. from Columbia University in 1946, and finally landed on his feet at the University of Chicago.And Ilya Somin:
Somewhat unfortunately, Friedman (at that time still a left-winger) also invented the idea of income tax withholding while working as an economist for the the Treasury Department during World War II. Although Friedman intended it to be a temporary wartime measure, it soon turned into a permanent expansion of government power - a result that the later, libertarian Friedman would surely have predicted:)It seems Somin may give him too much credit, perhaps because the irony is so great--the great believer in free markets helping to finance government. This detailed (and very hostile) discussion of the advent of withholding only mentions Milton Friedman once, while an Elisha Friedman and Beardsley Ruml get more ink. It also turns out that withholding had been authorized for government employees in the Civil War statute, so it was not a new concept.
I'm now reading the memoirs of Milton and Rose Friedman. He says he was involved in the development of withholding for the U.S., but both the British and Germans were already doing it (i.e., collecting taxes at the source). However, they differed in whether the taxes were on current income or past, but shared the characteristic that the withholding was final. This differs from the U.S. system, which makes the final tax subject to adjustment by April 15.
Bottomline: Milton was one of the designers of the system, and as such qualifies for the notable bureaucrat honor.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Virginia Postrel Meet John Phipps
of do-it-yourself design tools (Adobe Pagemaker, etc.). Similar messages, very different technologies.
Friday, March 16, 2007
Highbrow/Lowbrow
I think this is a limited interpretation. Using a different perspective, one of a growing economy with more ecological niches, after the Civil War the number of people in urban places grew, the number who had the leisure and the dollars to participate in recreational activities also grew. So I'd see more of a process of differentiation of a market. In other words, I suspect a number of different sports and recreations grew--professional baseball I know, horseracing, college sports. From Putnam's work, Bowling Alone, the number of local theater and opera groups also grew. So those people who enjoy participation, booing and cheering, found outlets. Those who liked to focus intently on a performance found their outlets.
(I write this as someone who was raised to treat "culture" with great respect so I'm obviously prejudiced. But I still think my thesis is better than Levine's, by explaining more.)
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Transparency or NOt?
Ken Cook's blog refers to this newspaper article discussing some of the results of this transparency. (The neighbors are jealous.) There are costs, to be sure, but I think transparency is warranted. As the government goes forward in implementing the Coburn/Obama bill calling for the same transparency for all funding, we need to remember what's been learned with this database.
Of course, I've never really figured out why a farmer's payment should be public when my pension amount is not.
Technology Obsoletes Skills
Here's another instance, as John Phipps, a jack of all trades as a farmer must be, discovers that new welding tools make him a better welder.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Culture and Shakespeare
I hope the rest of the book is as good as the first 20 pages.
Monday, March 12, 2007
The Evil Ones
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Owning Land
Friday, March 09, 2007
Walter Reed Problems
The situation seems to be a classical bureaucratic problem--you have a bureaucracy, Walter Reed Hospital, that prides itself on great medical care of the wounded. You have another bureaucracy, the Army, that has rules for able-bodied soldiers. But now you have a growing number of people who don't fit comfortably into either category. So the bureaucrats in power don't take responsibility, the facilities suffer a bit from neglect, the NCO's are overwhelmed, and the soldier/patients don't get what they need.
There's further complications: many soldiers want to remain in the service, so want to minimize their injuries and maximize their chances for recover. The services want to retain soldiers (though I suspect there's some hidden prejudices against soldiers with "disabilities"). On the other hand, if a soldier can't, or doesn't want to, stay in, he or she wants to maximize the injury so as to increase the disability benefits (realizing that not all soldiers fit the economists' "maximizing utility" model).
And still more: some soldiers are Army, some are National Guard, some are Reserve (presumably some may be Navy or Marine and some Air Force). Each one has, I'm sure, a different pay system, a different set of rules and regulations, and separate personnel offices. So Building 18 becomes the focus of a perfect storm, the point where multiple bureaucracies meet, and miscommunicate. And, because the VA services veterans where they live in civilian life, a surge of casualties resulting from the deployment of a Guard unit from a state poses problems for the local staff.
The number of investigations going on reflects the underlying complexity--each bureaucracy and its overseers have to do their own thing.
It's no comfort to the soldiers to know that some of this, as it relates to the Guard, is a direct result of the wisdom of the Founding Fathers.
Thursday, March 08, 2007
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
Great Day for Cats
Saturday, March 03, 2007
More on FSA Computers
(It's interesting that the web page seems defective.) This isn't exactly Catch-22, but in the ideal world farmers face the choice: drive more miles to deal with a bureaucrat with a face, or go online and deal with a faceless one."At the same time that FSA's national web-based program struggles, several state FSA offices have proposed closing selected county offices throughout the High Plains. FSA contends that these office closures will help provide more efficient service to producers. On one hand, FSA wants to jump into the 21st century by offering on-line program sign ups that reduce the need for producers to drive to county offices so often. On the other hand, they want to close marginally performing offices. The fatal flaw in this plan is the fact that the on-line program isn't working efficiently.
It makes sense for USDA to come out with an aggressive plan to fix their nationwide technology problems first or at least at the same time as they propose to close selected county offices. These two issues are not mutually exclusive. FSA has a long history of providing excellent service to producers in the field. Poor timing of reform proposals should not be a reason to tarnish such a laudable record."
Friday, March 02, 2007
History Repeats Itself at FSA
The Associated Press story said that Teresa Lasseter, who heads the agency, complained that computers were so slow it sometimes took 10 to 25 minutes for a screen to come up. In January, the computer system worked sporadically or not at all, she said.Back in 1985-87 when the agency was first given minicomputers in the county offices, they turned out to be vastly underpowered for the stuff we were trying to do. IBM and the agency struggled for what seemed an eternity to try to get ahead of the curve, expanding storage, upgrading processors, etc. In the light of the power of today's PC's, it all seems ridiculous now. I forget what the parameters were then, but I think the biggest system had like 1.5 gigs of storage and maybe a meg of RAM. (These were IBM System/36's, supporting a number of terminals and printers.)
“It’s gotten better, but not as fast as we’d like it to be,” Kiel said.
What seems to have happened today with FSA is that they've migrated applications off the System/36 (actually AS-400's which I believe are running emulations of the System/36) onto the web and their web servers aren't up to the task. Now if you ask me whether it's really FSA or it's the Department's IT people responsible, damned if I know.
There's probably only a handful of old timers there who remember the hammering we took on the Hill over the computer problems. Live and learn.