Throughout this week, the Washington Examiner’s Restoring America project will feature its latest series titled “Reforming the Deep State: Reining in the Federal Bureaucracy.” We invited some of the best policy minds in the conservative movement to speak to the issues of what waste, fraud, abuse, and unaccountability exist throughout the federal government and what still needs to be done. To read more from this series, click here.

In July, Secretary Brooke Rollins announced plans for the reorganization of the Agriculture Department and the relocation of over 40% of its Washington-based workforce to five distributed hubs across America — closer to home for our farmers.

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Federal agency reorganizations are fairly standard in Washington following changes in presidential administrations, but the last part of Rollins’s announcement really got the swamp howling. Namely, the plan to reduce the Washington-based USDA staff presence from 4,600 strong down to 2,000 and to send functions to the hinterlands was an affront to the managerial class.

As a veteran of five different federal and state government agencies (Matt), the outcry came as no surprise. What did, however, was the boldness of the proposal and Rollins’s willingness to enact what political scientists have discussed for decades, namely, working to reconcile bureaucratic governance and democratic theory.

Hear me out:

The core coursework in any public administration graduate degree program includes studying representative bureaucracy. This program prepares future government managers — I am guilty of completing it. Government agencies should have a diverse plurality of personnel that share the same values as the population they serve, to keep the agency accountable and legitimate as a democratic institution.

The 2024 presidential election results showed the blatant discrepancy between Washington and the rest of the nation, with over 90% of the District of Columbia voting for Vice President Kamala Harris while less than 50% of the broader country did. This lack of national representation within the bureaucracy is a major reason that the public has lost trust in government. The Washington bubble is real. It has affected democratic legitimacy and made government employees believe they have a mandate to impose their will on their positions instead of serving the wants and needs of the people.

Rollins’s relocation plan is a bold move to place government decision-makers among those whom they serve and to restore trust in our democratic institutions. This is a key reason that agency relocation was included as part of America First Policy Institute’s “America First” agenda to drain the swamp.

At the same time, Rollins’s move is also good management science. In Lean manufacturing, the management philosophy created by Toyota, there is a maxim that helps explain the company’s dynamism of the 1990s: “Go to the Gemba.” This phrase refers to the importance of managers visiting the places where the work takes place to ensure they understand and are enabling those doing the work.

When I (Kip) was the ambassador to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Agencies in Rome, I had the opportunity to travel the continent to see exactly how American agricultural exports were treated in Europe. I witnessed firsthand how unfair trade practices were for American farmers. The experience of being in those countries and in the room as part of those conversations among my international colleagues was invaluable, and the lessons learned could not have been gleaned from a U.S.-based office.

The same is true for the USDA. Being located among the farmers, ranchers, and rural communities will allow government staffers to gain knowledge and wisdom from the folks who use the programs they manage.

Imagine an agricultural researcher being able to easily and routinely visit commercial farms where innovative production practices are being used, return to the office, and brief actual decision-makers in person without typing memorandums to Washington that might never be read.

Or, imagine program managers being able to gain insights into the impacts of their work through daily conversations with their rural neighbors and how that would improve the speed of feedback to enable beneficial program pivots. These are the benefits of “going to the Gemba,” and when the farm is your Gemba, an office in Washington simply won’t do.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE “REFORMING THE DEEP STATE” SERIES

During the last election, voters made clear that the federal government had grown unaccountable and that they did not trust the direction that the decision-makers in Washington were taking the country. The USDA’s proposed reorganization and relocation plan is a bold effort to change that dynamic and redemocratize our government.

In an era where bureaucracy wields immense power, this proposal demonstrates a true commitment to representative government and to a smarter, leaner executive branch.

Kip E. Tom served as the United States ambassador to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Agencies in Rome from 2019 to 2021. He is the vice chairman for rural policy at the America First Policy Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization.

Matthew Schmid is the director of the Health and Harvest campaign at the America First Policy Institute.