The Problem of Bureaucratic Reorganization

The Washington Post starts a series on the DHS reorganization today: Department's Mission Was Undermined From Start:

This quote represents part of the problem of doing reorganizations:

"The lesson his [Secretary Ridge's] staff took away was the need for secrecy: When bureaucracies were informed of potential threats to their empires, they tended to resist. 'Everybody realized the agencies were not going to look at mission first, they were going to look at turf first,' recalled Bruce M. Lawlor, a National Guard major general working for Ridge."

It also describes another part of the problem: lack of knowledge by the reorganizers. The reorganization was mapped out by a "Group of Five" bureaucrats, 2 aides to Ridge and 3 OMB men, none of whom had detailed knowledge of all the government entities being reorganized.

"Some of the decisions were almost random. Falkenrath thought it would be nice to give the new department a research lab that could bring cutting-edge research to homeland security problems. He called up a friend and asked which of the three Department of Energy labs would work. "He goes, 'Livermore.' And I'm like, 'All right. See you later.' Click," Falkenrath told historians from the Naval Postgraduate School. He did not realize that he had just decided to give the new department a thermonuclear weapon simulator, among other highly sensitive assets of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory."

So the dilemma is: if you involve senior people from the agencies early, they undermine the effort (they've the links to the media, the hill, and the interest groups to do it). But if you don't involve knowledgeable people, the effort fails from lack of realism.