The summer season is upon us. It's a time when non-stories beging to predominate over real stories, as Congress goes into recess and Washington DC settles into its steamy summer, this year steamier than usual. The poster child for this sort of thing is the leaking of purported secret papers about Afghanistan recently - meaningless because the secrets are widely known.
A close second, though, is a story I read in the Sunday opinion section of a "major metropolitan newspaper" by one Alex MacGillis, entitled "The Case for Breaking Up Washington ..." Mr. MacGillis's argument is that there are many governmental functions that could be done from almost anywhere, and need not be located in Washington; these federal offices, he says, should be moved to areas where jobs are needed, where costs are lower, and the like. Well, that makes a lot of sense, and in fact, it sounds kind of familiar.
That's because MacGillis is effectively proposing something that has, by and large, already been accomplished. That's one way to bolster your credentials as a far-seeing social analyst!
As MacGillis tells us in his own article, an astonishing 83% of all civilian federal employees are already located outside the Washington DC area. Further, he informs us, if we consider only civilians who are not employed by the military and Dept. of Veterans Affairs (why, pray tell, should we do that?) still, 75% of that group are located outside DC. In short, the writer proposes an idea that's already been implemented, as most federal agencies long ago figured out either that they need branch offices around the country to perform their missions, or that functions like payroll, data processing, records maintenance, and others could easily be located anywhere in the country with no harm to the parent agency.
I think this writer may have confused the idea of "Washington" as a symbol for the federal government with Washington, the city. Just as we associate automobiles with Detroit, aircraft with Wichita, or movies with Hollywood, government pops into our minds when someone says "Washington." But that doesn't mean, as MacGillis's article itself demonstrates, that government doesn't take place anywhere else, any more than thinking "Detroit=cars" disguises the reality that automobiles are being build in Tennessee, Ohio, Alabama, and many other places.
For government or for any large organization, there's a line along the continuum of field to field office to central headquarters, at which more farming out adds more to cost than it does efficiency. Multiple buildings, multiple leases, multiple support structures -- these all add to costs. That's why, for example, big organizations are often working to reduce locations and centralize operations. I suspect we may already be at the stage where more "breaking up" doesn't make much sense.
This whole long article didn't deserve to occupy space in the Sunday paper, but I think MacGillis may be primed to follow in the footsteps of Thomas Friedman, who has written several books identifying "new trends" several years after the trend had already left the station.
Astute observations here. For many years, the U.S. Forest Service bragged about its decentralized structure. Nine regional offices and a like number of research headquarters were strategically located throughout the land. The "Washington Office" contingent was relatively small. Lately, however, supporting what you observe, consolidations of the regional management and research offices have been a primary cost saving measure. Not so many are needed with modern communications and transportation systems.
Centralizing and decentralizing, as with most things in this world, have pros and cons. The impotant thing is careful analysis before taking a big plunge one way or the other. Often in government sound analysis has been absent. Also, too often, parochial Senators and Congressmen have blocked consolidations that would be important cost savers, but would hurt employment in home states.
Posted by: Gabbygeeaer | July 28, 2010 at 02:50 PM