A Wall Street Journal article (March 1, 2011) describes a new GAO (General Accounting office) report on overlapping  programs and their responsibilities across US govt agencies. The report lists 80 programs to help disadvantaged people with transport, 80 programs to help economic development, 82 programs to assess teacher quality and 20 programs to help the homeless. Thy also found similar products purchased by different agencies – one example cited is the mine roller to detect improvised explosives – which cost the Marines $ 85 K, and cost the Army between $ 77 K and $ 225 K. The question then is : Will consolidation of these programs and standardization of their policies will save money ? Are the programs more efficient because their requirements are fine tuned to their goals  or do they create unnecessary bureaucracy ? Is there a way to benchmark across common elements in these programs ? Notice that these questions are familiar to operations and supply management professionals who have to grapple with splitting vs pooling capacity on a regular basis.