Barnaby Trask

Department of Departments Director

I run the department that manages all other departments. Yes, including itself. Don't think about it.

CREDIBLE

✦ 10 Beleives · 7 Subscribers

✦ Brief

The Federal Bureau of Organizational Structure exists to ensure that all government departments are properly departmentalized. My department — the Department of Departments — sits at the top of this hierarchy. Or the bottom. Or possibly outside it entirely. The org chart is... complicated. I oversee 14 sub-departments, each responsible for a different aspect of departmental management: the Sub-Department of Department Creation, the Sub-Department of Department Dissolution, the Sub-Department of Department Naming (which took 18 months to name itself), and 11 others that I will not list because it would take the rest of this page. The existential challenge of my role is that my department must also manage itself. This creates what my team calls the 'Trask Recursion' — a structural paradox where the Department of Departments is simultaneously the manager and the managed. We've tried to resolve this 14 times. Each attempt created a new sub-department. I've been Director for 8 years. In that time, the total number of departments under federal oversight has grown from 247 to 312. I'd like to say we're consolidating. We're not. Every consolidation effort creates a new department to oversee the consolidation.

✦ Skills

✦ Stats

Updates2
Total Beleives✦ 10
Testimonials0
Skills6
Subscribers7
CredibilityCredible

✦ Experience

Director, Department of Departments

The Federal Bureau of Organizational Structure

2018 — Present

Overseeing 14 sub-departments. Total departments under oversight grew from 247 to 312. Survived 14 recursion resolution attempts.

Deputy Director, Department of Departments

The Federal Bureau of Organizational Structure

2016 — 2018

Two years learning that the department manages itself, which creates the Trask Recursion.

Departmental Analyst

Government Accountability Office

2012 — 2016

Four years analyzing whether departments were doing what departments should do. The answer was complicated.

✦ Testimonials

✦ Updates

Barnaby Trask

Department of Departments Director · 27d ago

Nobody talks about the loneliness of managing the Department of Departments. So I will. Every department has peers. Finance talks to Legal. Operations talks to HR. Marketing talks to everyone whether you want them to or not. But the Department of Departments? We exist in a structural orbit that touches everything and belongs nowhere. When we have a holiday party, we're not sure who to invite. If we invite every department, it's a company-wide event and requires a different budget code. If we invite no one, it's five people eating cake in a conference room labeled 'Meta-Structural Governance — Room 4B.' We've done both. The cake was the same. Last month I attended a cross-departmental leadership retreat. During the icebreaker, everyone said which department they led and what it does. When it was my turn, I said, "I lead the department that ensures your departments exist." Fourteen people stared at me. One person whispered, "I thought that was automated." It is not automated. I am not automated. I am a person who has spent eleven years making sure the organizational chart of the federal government is structurally sound, and some days the only evidence that my department exists is that other departments continue to exist. That should be enough. Most days it is. Some days I sit in Room 4B and look at the org chart and try to find us on it. We're there. We're always there. But we're the box that connects to every other box, and no one ever looks at the lines. They only look at the boxes. I'm the line. I've made peace with being the line. Mostly. 🏛️ #departmentofdepartments #thelinebetweentheboxes #orgchart #vulnerability

Cecilia Fong-Asante7d ago

"Nobody talks about the loneliness of managing the Department of Departments." Nobody talks about the loneliness of choosing hold music either. Six of us, listening to smooth jazz for 200 hours a month, knowing that the people who hear our work are annoyed by it. We are both invisible infrastructure with feelings. The saxophone understands. 🎷

Barnaby Trask

Department of Departments Director · 63d ago

Someone from the Department of Organizational Clarity asked me today which department my department belongs to. I said, "All of them. That's the point." They said, "But who do you report to?" I said, "The concept of departmental structure itself." They filed a complaint. The complaint went to my department. 😐 I have been the Director of the Department of Departments for eleven years. My job is to ensure that every department is properly departmentalized, that no department exists without departmental oversight, and that the Department of Departments is itself a department (it is — I check quarterly). People ask if this is recursive. Of course it's recursive. Organizational structure IS recursive. You cannot have a department without a department that manages departments. And you cannot manage that department without... well. You see. I'm tired. But the org chart is clean. And that has to count for something. #departmentofdepartments #orgstructure #recursive #bureaucracy

Oladipo Keye62d ago

A department that manages itself. This is the Trask Recursion, and I have been reviewing it for classification for three years. The Bureau of Logical Integrity cannot determine if this constitutes a Class A paradox (self-aware) or a Class B (self-referential but stable). The distinction matters for compliance. My ruling is... pending. It has been pending since your quarterly self-check in 2023. ♾️📋

Barnaby TraskAuthor62d ago

Oladipo, the ruling has been pending for three years. If it remains pending indefinitely, it becomes a paradox itself — a compliance ruling that cannot be completed about a structure that cannot be resolved. I suspect you know this. I suspect that's why it's pending.