Comment by doodlebugging

>we're on the same side here.

Thanks for your clarifying reply as it helps to understand where you're coming from.

>I just think that there are lots of incompetent people in government to begin with who could have messed this up in an attempt to rename

As I mentioned earlier up in the thread when you raised concerns about things breaking all the time due to incompetence, this site has a long history of delivering timely information to global users without breaking. When massive changes like the ones that we observe happen which affect how information is delivered those things are routinely announced in advance and users are provided an opportunity to use the "upgraded" version of the service and submit observations about usability, etc so that there is ample time to take user input before it goes live, replacing the old method of data delivery and/or display.

These changes happened between breakfast that morning and early afternoon with no announcements to users that anything on the site would be changed. All these display options disappeared and in their place we initially had a single layer with no place name information at all. A user would need to know some geography in order to be able to figure where the new quakes were occurring.

Sadly enough, that means that some users would see a nice map overlay with dots on it but would not know where those events occurred due to deficiencies in their education.

Since that first set of deletions, another layer was added, the USGS Topo layer and that layer has since been updated to rename a large body of water to Gulf of America and that is the label that appears when the site loads. There are place names, roads, terrain, rivers, etc in that layer so it is easier for even the non-geography nerds to determine where an event occurs relative to their own location.

Other changes have happened and from the changes it is reasonable to conclude that the persons making the changes did not have experience using the GIS software that enables all these useful displays. With that in mind it becomes increasingly unlikely that regular USGS employees made these changes since there obviously are people there at the agency who have all the skills needed to quickly change things without breaking them and the normal process of notifying users of upcoming site changes was not followed.

Overall I think it is unfortunate that you have so little trust in federal government employees. I have a dog in the hunt so I have a window into how things work at the federal level. My spouse has had a decades long career in a federal agency and I can tell you that the individual people in the agency are not usually the problem.

Every time there is a new administration that new administration has the opportunity to nominate new leadership for all the departments. You already know this and have seen it in action. The positions are seen as an opportunity to promote the agenda of the new administration and to reward those who helped them be elected. Too often we see people installed as agency heads who have no background domain experience or worse, they have experience in sectors that did not benefit from following agency guidelines about handling federal monies. They are there to shake things up and they bring a list of things that must be changed to fit the new agenda.

The agency employees have to adjust everything that they do to fit the new agenda and this causes inefficiencies in the system as all existing employees have to be trained on how the new director wants the agency to work and on the new director's guidelines and agenda. I can say that it is increasingly common for an agency to need to educate new directors about what they are constitutionally allowed to do so that some of the new agenda does not force nor does it allow anyone downstream to break any existing laws.

Governments are large. Any time something gets large there is the possibility that inefficiencies develop.

The decision to describe government employees as incompetent is inaccurate in general though I'm sure there are exceptions. You think there are "lots" of incompetent people in government and at any description of "lots" between a couple and thousands you are likely correct.

Don't paint them all with the same brush. Maintaining a government position involves annual training and recertifications, deciphering the meaning behind small changes in the text of rules and guidelines that they must follow, and understanding how to manage groups of people efficiently so that everyone stays engaged in their assigned tasks and meets targets assigned by agency "leadership".

My own definition of "lots" based on years of observations and conversations with someone inside a large federal agency is that the least competent are frequently found at the top of the agency and they bring their own group of managers into the agency in order to pivot to their new agenda. Those lower on the food chain must attempt to adjust or seek a transfer to an agency with less induced dysfunction or to a private entity.