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[edit] Center for Agribusiness Excellence
Box T-0055, Stephenville, Texas 76402 254/918-7676 FAX 254/918-7686 cae@tarleton.edu [1]
A Member of the Texas A&M University System and Its Statewide Agriculture Program
Center for Agribusiness Excellence
Mission: The mission of the Center of Agribusiness Excellence (CAE) is to provide research, training, and resources for data warehousing and data mining of agribusiness and agriculture data. The CAE provides facilities and staff to make full use of data warehousing and data mining technologies for development of Agribusiness Decision Support Systems and Agricultural Risk Management Products.
Objective: The objective is to conduct research that satisfies the requirements of H.R. 2559, Section 121 as amended in Section 515 (j) (2) for improvement of program compliance and integrity. To improve crop insurance, the project includes the following: (1) Provide tools, information, and analysis proven to be effective in the private sector in reducing insurance waste, fraud, and abuse, and (2) Analyze incentives created by existing contracts, contract approval guidelines, and other elements of the federal crop insurance program that contribute to fraud, waste, and abuse, and to develop and assist in implementing key strategies for managing them. Through the CAE, this project is to assist USDA’s Risk Management Agency in strengthening the Federal Crop Insurance Program and reducing needless taxpayer costs. CAE's focus is on identifying the most economically important sources of moral hazard, waste, fraud and abuse. The initial cooperative agreement with the Risk Management Agency, USDA to fund the CAE was approved in December 2000. Current funding is through a contract with the Risk Management Agency, awarded through competitive bid that is expected to extend for the next several years.
Goals: Four fundamental goals must be accomplished to achieve the program objective: 1) Provide information, tools, and analysis; (2) analyze program components that contribute to moral hazard, waste, fraud and abuse; (3) develop strategies to manage them; and (4) determine the impact of factors external to the Risk Compliance area and their influence on future efforts to reduce moral hazard, fraud, waste and abuse. Achievement of these goals will provide a system for the USDA Risk Management Agency to effectively mitigate crop insurance moral hazard, waste, fraud and abuse and thus, to improve the crop insurance program.
Collaboration: Tarleton State University is the lead institution, possessing important expertise in Agricultural Sciences and Computer Information Systems. Tarleton's partner is Planning Systems Incorporated, Reston, VA. PSI is a leader in computing technology, with extensive experience in building and maintaining data warehouses in the public and private sectors and in database analysis. In addition, PSI offers a diversity of services. For example, with the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Space Vehicles Directorate, PSI built the first experiment that was conducted aboard the International Space Station in November 2000. It was aboard the NASA space shuttle launched September 8, 2000.
Governance and Management Structure: The CAE is located administratively at Tarleton State University under the supervision of the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs. The CAE management team reports to the Executive Director of the CAE, providing advice affecting the operation and growth of the CAE and recommends research priorities. The Center interacts with Tarleton’s College of Agriculture and Human Science and the College of Business and other members of the Texas A&M University System 's Statewide Agriculture Program.
Personnel: Dr. Bert Little, Executive Director and Associate Vice President for Academic Research (little@tarleton.edu).
Michael Schucking, Director of Data Mining (schucking@tarleton.edu), of Planning Systems Incorporated.
