(Roughly) Daily

The last U. S. election was fueled, in some large measure, by dissatisfaction with government bureaucracies. Indeed, public trust in government has been low– among Democrats and Republicans alike– for decades; there is a wide-spread constituency for reform.

The pending answer at the federal level is an Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy-led effort, DOGE, which their comments suggest will be an accelerationist application of “business principles” and slash-and-burn reduction.

But as Kevin Hawickhorst reminds us, there is another way, one that the U.S. has successfully pursued before– one that doesn’t throw the baby out with the bath water…

For the federal bureaucracy, the 1940s through the 1960s are a nostalgic time. The era saw one spectacular achievement after another: from winning World War II, to building the interstate highway system, to landing on the moon. At its high point, trust in the federal government reached almost 80% in the 1950’s, as opposed to only 20% today.

Trust in the federal government has plummeted alongside the federal government’s ability to accomplish anything – which is no coincidence. Although government competence has changed for many reasons, there is one forgotten reason: after the second World War, the government was competent because it taught its managers to be competent.

During World War II, the poor management in the federal government was keenly felt. Although federal management had never been especially good, it reached a boiling point when it began noticeably impeding the war effort. The Bureau of the Budget (now OMB) responded by creating a new management unit tasked with training federal managers.

They termed their newly-developed management approach work simplification, which held that implementation and policy went hand-in-hand, and therefore managers had to be trained to streamline procedure in order to achieve policy goals. Moreover, the Bureau of the Budget felt that this viewpoint could be systematically taught to federal managers of average competence, and developed a training program to do so.

During the war, the civilian agencies were incredibly short staffed due to the draft, so any procedural red tape or poor distribution of work created instant bottlenecks. Many of these bottlenecks directly impacted the war effort, as (for example) with slow approvals for important construction projects. The Bureau of the Budget therefore began an initiative to improve management around 1942.

They conducted user research with several agencies and eventually felt they had a management system that could scale, which they termed Work Simplification. They taught managers Work Simplification at training seminars, and also created guides and pamphlets to distribute across the government. I quote from one of their guides1 that sets out the problem, the audience, and their goal:

Thinking of this sort has been going on in the United States Bureau of the Budget for some time. It has culminated in the decision to make a concerted drive to capture the best available means for exposing and disposing of common management problems, set it forth in clear, simple language, and put it in the hands of those who can use it to best advantage. And who are they? They are the operating managers of government: middle management people and first line supervisors. […]

From the standpoint of the Bureau of the Budget, Work Simplification is a method of attacking the procedural problems of large organizations by equipping first line supervisors with the skill to analyze and improve procedures. It provides a way of tapping the great reservoir of unused practical knowledge represented by this group.

… Their management agenda developed a training program for the managers closest to the ground, rather than (as is common today) focusing on top leadership…

… Although Work Simplification was developed during World War II, it was still the common approach for training federal managers into the 1960s. These were the stodgy managers of the Eisenhower era who oversaw the building of the interstate highway system, or the administration of the GI bill.

This is not how the federal government approaches management today. It would be, obviously, unreasonable to claim that earlier success was entirely due to training managers differently. But it clearly contributed – their methods explicitly aimed to solve issues that today’s processes aggravate.

In particular, the Bureau of the Budget’s work almost remarkably anticipated current conversations on government efficiency. Reformers note that the bureaucracy piles up layers of procedure without ever rethinking them – process charting taught managers to reduce procedural burden. Reformers note that government IT piles up layers of software from different eras, with nobody understanding how it fits together – process charting taught managers the start-to-finish viewpoint. Reformers note that bureaucrats rarely consider what it’s like to actually apply for benefits – once again, a failure that process charting aimed to correct.

Process charting is clearly not a perfect solution to any of these issues. But it is proof that the government can train bureaucrats to tackle these issues head-on!

The overall lessons of Work Simplification are even more important. Work Simplification’s success did not last forever, but it did last for several decades. And it achieved its success because the Bureau of the Budget created free training for low-level managers, while nobody else particularly cared.

So would-be bureaucratic streamliners today – proponents of product management thinking, agile IT development, or what have you – might imitate Eisenhower’s bureaucrats. Above all, they should prove that their proposals are a rational method that can be systematically taught to low-level managers, in order to put their “great reservoir of unused practical knowledge” to use…

How the federal government taught its managers to cut red tape: “Eisenhower’s Bureaucrats,” from @KHawickhorst.

Via Jennifer Pahlka, whose own Recoding America (and her continuing work) are powerful contributions to this critically-important dialogue.

By way of context, a piece from Venkatesh Rao explicitly about “self-help” but very useful in this broader/more systemic context: “How to Fall Off of the Wagon.” (Per the diagram below, from that post, the approach suggested above is “clockwise”; the Musk/Ramaswamy m.o., “counterclockwise”… which will make clarifying sense after you’ve read the short essay. While I can’t attribute the significance that I draw from it [for the issue of reengineering the government bureaucracies that are not serving Americans as they should] to Rao, I’d note that the clockwise direction is green; the counterclockwise, red.)

* G. K. Chesterton, The Thing

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As we fix it instead of throwing it away, we might recall that it was on this date in 1957 that President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave his sixth State of the Union Address to the joint houses of Congress. Eisenhower focused on three themes: a vigilant regard for human liberty, a wise concern for human welfare, and a ceaseless effort for human progress. His speech addressed the threats posed by the Soviet Union (and communism more generally around the world); urged efficient, effective government (as the government’s duty to citizens); and raised the issue of civil rights, calling for the enactment of what later became the Civil Rights Act of 1957.

Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson called Eisenhower’s speech “a comprehensive and thoughtful analysis of the problems which confront our people.”

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