the challenge of government reform

 What should be done when a government agency does a poor job on one of its key missions? Cutting funds sends a strong message but may also feed a spiral of decline. Adding money may be wasteful. Imposing more oversight and regulation may expose problems earlier, but it may also stultify its operations. Good governance is filled with trade offs and dilemmas.

The New York Times magazine has an excellent article on the Centers for Disease Control, "Can the CDC Be Fixed?" It recounts many of the missteps CDC made in responding to the pandemic, but also makes these points:

• The C.D.C. we have is hardly a monolith: Some of its many pockets are bursting with innovation; others are plagued by inertia. But scientists and administrators who have spent decades working with and for the agency say that three problems in particular affect the whole institution: a lack of funding, a lack of authority and a culture that has been warped by both. Some of these problems come down to politics, but most are a result of flaws in the agency’s very foundation.
• Today the C.D.C. is both sprawling in its reach and extremely constrained in what it can do. It consists of more than a dozen centers, institutes and offices and employs more than 11,000 people in all, in a gargantuan roster of public-health initiatives — not just infectious-disease control but also chronic-disease prevention, workplace safety, health equity and more.
• The C.D.C.’s multibillion-dollar annual budget is both too small — it has barely kept pace with inflation in the last two decades — and subject to too many restrictions. Around half of the agency’s domestic budget is funneled to the states, but only after passing through a bureaucratic thicket. There are nearly 200 separate line items in the C.D.C.’s budget. Neither the agency’s director nor any state official has the power to consolidate those line items or shift funds among them.
• The C.D.C. is resistant to change, slow to act and reluctant to innovate, according to critics. The agency’s officers are overly reliant on published studies, which take time to produce; and are incapable of making necessary judgment calls. Agency departments are also deeply siloed. “We are really good at drilling down,” Darrow says. “But terrible at looking up and reaching across.”

Sadly,  similar complaints could be made of several U.S. government agencies, including DHS and DOD. My advice is to acknowledge the conflicting pressures and try to balance between extreme remedies.