So a lot of potential here with Obama looking for reorganizational authority to be restored to the White House. It will be interesting to see whether his main opposition comes from the GOP (who don't actually want the Obama Administration to get any credit for improved efficiencies) or the congresscritters of either party who are concerned their particular oxen might be gored.
While this all sounds good, having been through more than a few reorgs in my day it's important to realize that this sort of overlapping and conflicting portfolio occurs for reasons, and they're not always bad lawmaking or adminstrative sprawl. Obama's example is an interesting one — salmon are covered by Interior while in fresh water because Interior covers fresh water resources as a whole; it changes to Commerce once in salt water because that's not a managed resource in the same fashion. So would the theoretical proposal to be to leave Interior in charge of wildlife and game … except for salmon?
Part of the problem is that government agencies (like corporate departments) hierarchical. Every department has a boss department, and so on up to the cabinet Departments and the President. So when you have to decide which box you put a given function into, you are inevitably going to end up with conflicting interests. Maybe if we used tags instead of categories … #ddtb
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APNewsBreak: Obama seeks power to merge agencies – The Denver Post
WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama will ask Congress on Friday for greater power to shrink the federal government, and his first idea is merging six sprawling trade and commerce agencies whose overlapp…