Farm Service to seek additional $200 million to fund modernization

The Farm Service Agency received $50 million in the economic stimulus package, an amount officials say will stabilize an aging system used to process loans and subsidy payments to farmers but well short of securing what is really needed -- a new network.

The 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and signed by President Obama, includes $50 million "for the purpose of maintaining and modernizing the information technology system" at Farm Service Agency. The amount is about 20 percent of the $245 million the House set aside for the network in its version of the bill, which was earmarked to replace the system.

The Obama administration stipulated the $50 million figure and the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture had little influence in the final amount, according to a source with the subcommittee. The source said, however, that many congressional members believe the Farm Service's network is at significant risk of failure and must be replaced.

Nevertheless, Farm Service officials welcomed the funding, despite operating a system that runs on 1980s technology. The agency told Nextgov this month that if the system is not replaced soon, it could crash, putting the financial well-being of farmers at risk. The network suffered an outage lasting 30 days in January 2007, resulting in payments to farmers being sent out late or not at all.

"No, it's not enough money," said Jim Gwinn, the agency's chief information officer. "That's why the original dollars were in there as they were. [The stimulus money] certainly helps us move along the track for 2009 and 2010 to where we need to be, but it doesn't cover everything we need to get us to that point."

The lion's share of the $50 million will be used to stabilize the system so the agency can continue to process payments to farmers and implement new programs under the 2008 Farm Bill. "The complexity of the legislation has increased considerably with the latest farm bill," Gwinn said. "Calculating payments is far more complex. Building that on top of the legacy environment becomes far more difficult, so we have to put in place a Web-based service in a way that can make payments."

The agency's already strained computing resources likely will increase the workload at the Farm Service because as the economy worsens, the agency expects more farmers to file for assistance, said Dennis Taitano, the acting administrator at the Farm Service.

"When prices are high for commodities, government assistance is low," but prices for dairy, cotton and rice have begun to fall from last year's record levels, he said. "Our government programs actually have triggers. Once the market goes below the triggers, assistance starts increasing. We're seeing more activity based on the commodity pricing and know demand [for assistance] will be greater."

The Farm Service relies on outdated IBM mainframe AS400 servers, which run on a COBOL software program. The programming language became widely used in the federal government in the 1960s and 1970s. The agency is trying to move much of its services to a Web-based portal. To receive payments, most farmers now must travel to one of 2,300 county offices and file paper documents that are then keyed into the network.

A Web portal will allow the Farm Service to provide better service to farmers, but only if the system is stable and reliable, Taitano said. The agency's primary focus is to maintain the current systems with no degradation of service in the face of increased activity, he added.

Taitano said 60 percent of the stimulus funds will be used to stabilize the current systems and 40 percent will go toward the agency's modernization efforts. Farm Service is planning to pursue the rest of the modernization funds, about $200 million, through the appropriations process. Several lawmakers have expressed support for the additional funds.