By Mary Porter
Mary Porter
MIDAS Business Process Owner
Farm Service Agency
Happy 2013 from Washington, D.C. I hope everyone had a joyous holiday. I was able to spend the holiday in my home state of Georgia. Talk about changing weather. It was like going from winter to summer, overnight.
I’ve been with MIDAS since June, 2010. Before joining the team, I was the CED in Terrell County, Dawson, Ga. I have 33 years of service with FSA and was excited to become a part of ‘modernizing’ and ‘innovating’ the way we do business. When I began with FSA (ASCS back in 1979), we used addressograph machines, stencils, carbon paper, OCR fonts, and paper marketing cards. To be where we are today is quite an accomplishment. To get to where MIDAS will take us will be phenomenal.
I am the business process owner (BPO) of agreement modification. This process will be used when changes are requested to an agreement. For Marketing Assistance Loans (MAL), the MAL must have been disbursed before a change request can be initiated. It will truly simplify the way we process changes like marketing authorizations, succession-in-interest and transfers.
At the Super User Boot Camp in October, the participants were excited about the new processes. They asked a lot of questions and were engaged throughout the sessions. These users, along with the state trainers, will familiarize each user with these new processes and I’m sure everyone will be excited and energized as well. It’s a change from the way we do business today, but change is good; remember the carbon paper. Look for the updated agreement modification process later this year.
