One of the main goals of reinvention was to get government agencies to focus on results rather than on effort. Reorganizing the government would at long last realize the gains promised by reinvention. It could also help to address the growing personnel crisis in the government. Currently, around half of all government managers will be eligible to retire within five years, and about a third are expected to leave. There are very few people around to backfill behind those managers, and since government salaries are not competitive with the private sector, it will be hard to find replacements.
Many government agencies fear a permanent loss of institutional knowledge.
If the government were reorganized, however, reductions in overlap, duplication, and redundancy combined with increases in efficiency from reinvention, could result in a large reduction in the need for managers. That would allow not only reductions in expenditures, but also increases in salary for those positions that remained, thus helping to attract competent people. This would be a wonderful time to undertake such a reform effort. Because the primary blame for this problem lies not with the bureaucracy itself, but with Congress, which means that Congress itself will have to reorganize as part of the reform. With the Democrats in control, there is no hope that they would accept a real restructuring.