Shared Services and Government as a Platform

GovExec has a piece on this subject by an IBM type.

By the nature of our government (weak executive, decentralized, federal system) we're fated to build such systems incrementally and from the ground up.  For example, the National Finance Center in New Orleans is one of the providers of shared services. Back in the day (i.e., 1968 when I joined ASCS) the agency had several ADP (automated data processing, for you whippersnappers) centers. I assume they were initial steps in the process of using computers to support operations.  Over time, ASCS closed some centers and consolidated in New Orleans and Kansas City.  Over the same time, other USDA agencies were going through the same process, leading finally to USDA taking over the NODPC.  So it came to support Federal personnel salaries and benefits for the whole department, and then to provide similar services for other units of the government.

In a way the process reminds me of the way our planetary system evolved, as I understand it, by the gradual accretion of material.

Because this is a slow process I get very envious of Estonia (as I've previously blogged) which apparently was able to do a top-down implementation.  To use another metaphor, it's rather the difference between a city like Rome, with an ancient history, and a city like Reston, planned and implemented from scratch within one man's lifetime.

On Blurring Distinctions: Terrorists and Ethnicity

It seems to me a lot of the discussion following the San Bernadino shootings has talked of Muslim terrorists using the assumption that such terrorists are aliens to the U.S., ignoring the fact that one of the shooters was a native-born American. 

On another subject, I'm struck by the growth of Asian Americans in the U.S.  Back in the day we had Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans, Korean Americans, and the original Filipino Americans.  Then we added Vietnamese Americans, Indian Americans, Cambodian Americans, Nepalese Americans, Bangladeshi Americans, Pakistani Americans, etc. etc.  Now the great American blending machine is making them all "Asian Americans", whether they like it or not, ignoring not only the differences among the nationalities but also the differences within the nationalities.

Terminology and Discussion

Some years ago the right labeled the estate tax as the "death tax".

In the fight over abortion, the terms are "pro-life" and "pro-choice".

Some years ago the left came up with the term "gun violence" to cover both homicides and suicides. Putting both scenarios (as well I assume as accidental shootings) under one label can work in some discussions, but not all

I'm not sure who came up with "gun control".  According Google ngram it doesn't really come into heavy usage until the 60's, as one might expect (there were 7 assassinations/attempted assassinations of political leaders from 1963-81).

I'd resist it--we don't talk of "automobile control" when discussing the system of registering cars and testing and licensing drivers.  We don't talk of "drone control", when discussing what we're doing about drones.  We don't talk of "drug control".  "Regulation" might be the more neutral term.

Directives and Policing: the Baltimore Case

Peter Moskos does the Cop in the Hood blog (he was po-lice in Baltimore for a few years before becoming a sociologist).  In this post he writes about the "General Orders", the directives applicable to the Baltimore police.  I doubt there are many in the world who share my interest in directives, so I'll excerpt a part of his post, talking about the rules of ethical conduct included in the General Orders, which he checked of when he violated one.

I may have missed a few, but of the first 31 rules of conduct, I checked off all but 12 as violated. And I was a good cop, an honest cop. And yet in less than two years on the job I managed to violate the majority of good conduct rules. My favorite was "Section 7: Members of the department, while riding gratis on any type of public conveyance, are not permitted to be seated while other passengers are standing." This is off duty, mind you. And it doesn't say "give up your seat if the bus is full." Nope. If anybody is standing, you must stand.

 He has complaints similar to those I heard from ASCS employees back in the 60's and 70's: hard to find the relevant material.

Apparently according to the trial of Porter in Baltimore in the Freddie Gray, there was a change to the General Orders on seat belting prisoners issued 3 days before the Gray incident, included in an 80 page attachment to an email (and perhaps the Baltimore police department did not have good email).  You'd think with modern technology there'd be a better way, but no one is interested in directives.
 

Seedtime of the USDA

"Agriculture, confessedly the largest interest of the nation, has not a department nor a bureau, but a clerkship only, assigned to it in the Government. While it is fortunate that this great interest is so independent in its nature as to not have demanded and extorted more from the Government, I respectfully ask Congress to consider whether something more can not be given voluntarily with general advantage. Annual reports exhibiting the condition of our agriculture, commerce, and manufactures would present a fund of information of great practical value to the country. While I make no suggestion as to details, I venture the opinion that an agricultural and statistical bureau might profitably be organized."

Lincoln's message to Congress, Dec. 1861   from Brad DeLong.

Lincoln also complains about the number of laws Congress has written and their lack of clarity.

Our Growing Economy: GDP Per Capita

Calculated Risk often emphasizes the importance of demographic changes: the decline in participation rate due to the aging of the baby boomers, the decline in immigration.

I thought I'd check the the GDP per capita.  This is what I got through a Google search (the image is a bit scrunched here--google it yourself.




What it seems to say is, after the dip of the Great Recession, we're growing the economy on a per person basis quite steadily.   Because the level of activity of the overall economy varies with the change in population, particularly net immigration, we see more variance in the economy than at the person level.

Of course, this says nothing about the distribution of economic benefits among the population.

Socializing Employees: Then and Now

JSTOR is an online database of scholarly articles.  They now have a daily blog, essentially summarizing an article. 

This post is on the ways in which companies try to socialize employees:

" Littmann writes that many company executives were convinced that foreign-born workers, whose numbers were growing, lacked American thrift, honestly, and industriousness. They responded by introducing measures designed not just to encourage employee loyalty but to transform workers’ values. These “welfare capitalism” measures ranged from toilets and new drinking water wells to profit sharing plans and education programs. By 1926, Littman writes, nearly two thirds of large industrial firms had recreational facilities for employees

That sounds familiar: in the Triple Cities of southern NY we had IBM, which ran the IBM country club and Endicott-Johnson Shoes, the reason for two of the three cities (Endicott and Johnson City) with the En-Joie golf course.  Neither were unionized; EJ had foreign-born employees (East Europeans).

I wonder though, how will a future historian deal with all the benefits which Silicon Valley employees get from their employers.  I assume the benefits also encourage loyalty and discourage unions.  The open space buildings, like Facebook's new headquarters, definitely encourages certain behaviors in their employees, certain transformations of workers' values. 90 years from now will the historian view such designs with some suspicion?

Good Movies: The Spotlight

Just saw Spotlight, an account of the Boston Globe's investigation into pedophile priests and the cover-up. It's very good, so far and as best I can remember, my best movie of 2015. It's the story of getting the story, without being overly maudlin about the subject matter. For anyone who's worked in a bureaucracy, the beginning is a surefire hook (nerves in the office as a new editor arrives), but the movie is always good on the minutiae/

Other good movies which I expect to get Oscar nominations:

• The Martian.  
• Bridge of Spies

Our German Inheritance--Vampires

It seems that the concept of vampires was imported during the American Revolution by Hessian doctors serving with the Brits. They used vampires to explain tuberculosis, specifically the wasting away.  That's from Boston 1775

Racism and Rhetoric

Some ironies:

Some on the left talk of racism in ways which strongly imply whites are bad people. Some on the right talk of a culture of poverty in ways which strongly imply the poor (blacks) are bad people.  Neither focus on class or structural causes.

Some on the left dismiss talk of a "Ferguson effect", denying that verbal attacks on policy might lead to violent attacks. Some on the right dismiss the idea that rhetoric attacking Planned Parenthood might lead to violent attacks.  (To be honest, Peter Moskos at Cop in the Hood) this idea published first.

Why Didn't We Do a Joint Legacy Viewer

DOD and VA have had problems integrating their health care IT systems.  Now they've focused on a "Joint Legacy Viewer", which uses the principle of "write locally, read globally".

As is often the case, I think back to the 1990's (old geezers live in the past, you know) and the idea of integrating the USDA farmer  service agencies, at least in their IT.  At that time our (my) focus was always creating one database to serve the agencies.  In retrospect that was wrong. 

In 1992 we were demoing a mocked-up viewer of ASCS data.  Maybe we should have tried to build on that, rather than going for the big top-down solution.

Poor History

John McWhorter writes for the Wall Street Journal, being generally critical of campus activity on racism (hat tip: Althouse).

While it's okay, I want to challenge his history, specifically:

"What changed the game [to make civil right advances possible] in the Eisenhower era was a combination of television broadcasts of hideous images and the federal government’s publicity concerns during the Cold War."

I'd say what changed the game in the 50's was the culmination of the NAACP's litigation campaign establishing equal rights, which led to the activation of idealism among the political elite. As you move into the 60's civil disobedience and the violent reactions to it came to the forefront, 

Collective Action Problem: Who Will Bell the Don

The saying goes, " who will bell the cat", which turns out to be based on a fable from the Middle Ages. Dana Milbank wrote about the Republican problem with Donald Trump.  It would likely be to the benefit of all the other candidates if he lost support, but if only one candidate attacks him he or she might not attract Trump's former supporters.  For some reason I was reminded of this old saying.

CRISPR, I Knew It

This Technology Review article discusses the use of CRISPR to "engineer babies".

And another article says: "Gene drives are just the latest example of the fantastic power of CRISPR editing to alter the DNA of living things,..."  This is in the context of engineering mosquitoes which stop the transmission of the malaria parasite and ensuring they proliferate, raising the possibility of a victory against malaria. But it raises the ethics of changing the biosphere, permanently.

I first posted about CRISPR back in April, which was pretty good of me, though my post was more about the quandary it poses for opponents of genetic modification.  That quandary becomes more severe as we begin to see the potential uses of the technique.

[Updated: An Atlantic article on understanding our genes.--hat tip  Marginal Revolution.]

Fortran?? Really, Fortran

FCW has a post on supporting Fortran, by "accommodating the legacy code with an open-source Fortran compiler to help integrate the programming language into a larger pool of computer languages in supercomputers."

Fortran was old when I was learning COBOL back in the 70's.  And most of the people in the US have never heard of either, too young.

Appropriating a Cultural Image

Lots of debate over "appropriating" another culture (see Eugene Volokh on yoga).  So I was struck by the image here,
which is entitled "Liberty Triumphant or the Downfall of Oppression". (Image reached from this post at The Junto.) It's a political cartoon published shortly after the Boston Tea Party.  It shows British and Americans as opposing camps, with the Americans represented as Indians. Excerpts from the explanation/text in the cartoon:

12. America represented by a Woman is an Indian queen, with drawn bow about to loose an arrow at Lord North.
Behind her are six Indian warriors. They are:
13. The Sons of Liberty, represented by the Natives of America, in their savage garb. They emerge from the forest, armed with bows and spears, saying “We will secure our freedom, or die in the Attempt”: “ Lead us to Liberty  or Death”; “Lead on, Lead on.”  Above them the shores of America stretch out from Boston to the Delaware. Seated in comfort on these shores, holding a liberty cap on her staff, a tabby cat curled somewhat incongruously at her feet, is:
14. The Goddess of Liberty, addressing herself to Fame and pointing To her Sons, saying proudly “Behold the Ardor of my Sons and let not their brave Actions be buried in Oblivion.”

 Bottom line: much of our history is appropriated imagery.

Maintenance May Be China's Downfall Future Nightmare

Although China's economy has slowed a bit, it's still growing, after 35 years of impressive growth.  But it strikes me that China will face a big problem down the road.  Because their growth has been so rapid, much of their infrastructure is roughly the same age. That means it will be wearing out about the same time, requiring a lot of repairs or replacement.  China has profited by the ability to modernize their agriculture, freeing/driving workers to the cities.  Meanwhile the 1-child policy has meant fewer children to support, so the ratio of workers to dependents has been high, whereas in the future it will be low.

Mr. Trump and Mr. Rogers

My father's ancestors were heavy on Presbyterianism.  I was very surprised to learn that Donald Trump  is a Presbyterian. :-(  My equanimity was restored by this Atlantic piece reminding me that Mr. Rogers was also a Presbyterian. :-(

Refugees

Refugees make good renters, according to this piece from Bloomberg, hat tip Marginal Revolution.  Some of the upstate New York rust belt cities are finding them an asset--Utica, Syracuse.

And the flowchart for the vetting process, (thumbnail below) from the White House.  Makes the old Republican chart on ACA implementation look simple.

Vox, Wikipedia, and Woodrow Wilson

Dylan Mathews has a post at Vox on Woodrow Wilson and race.  IMHO he has two errors:

"Wilson himself was the descendant of Confederate soldiers..."  According to Wikipedia, his father was briefly a chaplain in the Confederate army.

" Wilson lent The Birth of a Nation his approval by screening it at the White House and reportedly telling Griffith that it could "teach history with lightning.""

The bit about the quote is terrible.  Yes, this has been reported, but it's dubious.  Mathews links to the abstract of an article which promises to examine the history of the quote.  The article is behind a paywall so Mathews should give us the article's conclusion, not an abstract.Other sources question the quote.  See Snopes

[updated.  See footnote 25 from this source.[

Three Times Greece or Poland

No, that's not good.  The US maternal mortality rate is three times that of Greece or Poland, according to this piece.