It's a Big Country

The question is whether central or regional offices are the best way to run programs in the field.

The Rehabilitation Services Administration, part of the Education Department, is closing its regional offices and consolidating operations in Washington. Meanwhile, the independent Office of Special Counsel is opening a regional office and, as the office notes, "powering down from a D.C.-centric based operation."

Education officials say the rehabilitation agency's oversight is uneven and inconsistent, so centralizing will create more uniform enforcement of federal rules over state programs. Office of Special Counsel leaders say decentralizing operations will allow more flexibility in dealing with problems on the ground and even foster healthy competition among offices to keep cases moving.

Education says centralization will make operations more efficient. Savings could reach $7 million a year by reducing overhead. OSC says decentralization will make operations more efficient by easing the backlog of cases.

The question of geographic centralization versus decentralization has long posed a dilemma for federal managers. On the one hand, it's a big country, and it's useful to have employees out in the field, whether they are providing services or enforcing federal laws and rules through monitoring and inspections. Regional offices can keep agencies from developing inside-the-Beltway, Washington-knows-best mentalities. On the other hand, regional offices can become mini-fiefdoms, doing their own thing. Centralization can ensure that everyone in the country is treated the same.

As the Education Department and the Office of Special Counsel examples show, the decision can go either way using the same rationale. There's no clear answer. It can sometimes feel to longtime employees that the pendulum of centralization and decentralization is always swinging and that such decisions have more to do with the disposition of the boss than with any objective criteria that might be applied to decision-making.

Communications technologies-including telephone, e-mail, the Web, fax, videoconferencing-don't make the decision easier. Yes, people can communicate in real time over distance, so it's easier than ever to provide national services from a single location. What's the difference if a state official in Sacramento, Calif., picks up the phone and calls a federal overseer in San Francisco or in Washington? But a boss in Washington is just as likely to e-mail his subordinate down the hall as he is to e-mail his subordinate in Boise, Idaho. So the argument can be made that communications technologies makes it easier than ever to decentralize. If you're communicating electronically, does it matter where your employees are?

Mao Zedong often is quoted as saying that a leader should "centralize strategically, but decentralize tactically." His exhortation is more about assigning power up and down the chain of command, rather than about assigning power geographically. But it suggests that the question is a balancing act, not an either/or action.

Indeed, it is helpful to think in the extreme. Would we want a country in which the federal workforce is scattered without a central set of leaders coordinating it? Would we want a country with the entire workforce inside the Beltway, with no federal presence in New York or Anchorage, Alaska? The answer to both is no. But figuring out where to fall in between is no easy task.