This piece originally appeared at State Capacitance.
State Capacitance launched two months ago. Since then, I’ve written some articles and gained some readers. You are, presumably, one of them – thank you! For my part, what have I written so far? And what comes next?
2024 in review
The first pieces were deep dives into the history of government reorganization. In particular, I told a tale of two reorganizations: the midcentury reorganizations of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), and of the Treasury Department.
Each reorganization began with an idea – reformers had some theory about how bureaucracies should be organized, which they then applied to reorganize an executive department. Accordingly, the story of each reorganization is told in two parts: the idea behind the reforms, and then the reorganization itself. What were these pairs of articles?
- First, a bad idea – functional reorganization. This principle held that agencies ought to correspond to functions (like research and regulation), rather than to subjects (like entomology, or forests). The USDA reorganizations of the 30s-50s applied this idea dogmatically, with minimal planning or feedback, and indeed with a poor conception of what problem they were trying to solve.
The reorganization cleaned up the department’s org charts, but at the cost of the department’s independence and competence. After the rationalistic reorganization, the farm lobby had wrested control over agricultural policymaking from the previously quite independent department. - Second, a good idea – work simplification. This method was developed in WWII, and held that managers ought to be trained to simplify department procedure and cut red tape. The Treasury Department reorganizations of the 1940s applied work simplification in a series of steps: they began with small teams that made minor improvements, and built up to major departmental reorganization.
Through applying work simplification, the IRS brought its work up-to-date, cracked down on corruption, and modernized its archaic IT. Eventually, Treasury used these successes to build up support for abolishing Congressional patronage in the department.
