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Project Goal
The Agricultural Risk Protection Act of 2000 (ARPA) required the USDA Risk Management Agency (RMA) to improve program compliance and integrity. Supporting this effort and providing analytics resources to the Agency for the identification and minimization of fraud, waste, and abuse, ensuring program integrity, and the detection of disparate performance -- RMA developed the RMA Compliance Data Warehouse (CDW) for use by Agency and contract data scientists, Agency compliance investigators, and Federal Crop Insurance Program (FCIP) private-sector delivery partners. In the twenty years since the enactment of ARPA, RMA has made great strides in building a complex data analytics program and platform to meet the Agency’s obligations enabling it to ingest, reconcile, and analyze a wide range of geospatial and programmatic data. We could have not accomplished this without our over 20-year partner, Tarleton State University’s Center for Agribusiness Excellence (CAE).Business Problem Solved
The FCIP exceeds $206B in program expenditures with more than 1.2M crop insurance policies. RMA, a small and agile USDA agency of 400, is charged with overseeing payments and business practices across a highly specialized insurance market. The RMA CDW, the analytics it supports, and the geospatial toolsets used by more than 100 specialized investigators is a vital force multiplier amplifying the oversight capabilities of the agency and enhance the quality control systems of our industry partners. The creative application of data analytics forms the core of our program integrity efforts enabling leaders at all levels to better direct resources to areas of greatest need. Leveraging integrated analytics tool suites enables faster execution of investigations and improves outcomes by transforming data into information - expertly identifying anomalies that pose significant actuarial risk. Without these tools, 100 investigators could not effectively manage a program of this magnitude.
Technology Implemented
The RMA Compliance Data Warehouse was recently modernized into the USDA Enterprise Data and Analytics Platform and Tools (EDAPT). RMA and CAE consulted with ESRI on both system and data architecture design in developing its recently modernized geospatial platform within EDAPT. This modernization gives RMA & and CAE a ‘full stack’ ESRI ArcEnterprise solution that will enhance our abilities to service the analytic needs of our customers. The analytics RMA Compliance Data Warehouse is a fully geo-enabled platform both within the multi-parallel processing environment (MPP) and the geospatial stack. This includes custom tools developed by CAE -- geospatial tools (HyDRA Maps), tabular data marts (HyDRA), visualization, and link analysis tools.
Development Team Biography
USDA RMA, Deputy Administrator for Compliance, Business Analytics Division Team consists of Charles Cornelius (Director), Jared Burnett, Jim Hipple, Jeff Bloomquist, Brenda Zachman, Allan Johnson, Michael Whitefield & Sylvia Guizar.
Tarleton State University, Center for Agribusiness Excellence (CAE) Team consists of Troy Thorne (Director) and the Geospatial team of Jennifer Ireland, Indumathi Srinath, Charles Ashton, Cameron McKenzie, and Matt Paulsen, with assistance and support from Brandi VanBibber, Helen Agapie, Greg Bodovsky, Tom Carlile, Andy Cogdill, Paul Dyas, Justin Eiland, Kim John, Showe Liou, Joe McLatchy, Matt Paulsen, Sean Perry, Micha Roberson, Micah Russell, Andy Russell, Rian Simon, Elaine Smith , and Greg Weatherley.