WASHINGTON, D.C. — Deep in the sub-basement of a building that may or may not officially exist, beneath three layers of security clearance and one layer of carpet that hasn’t been replaced since the Ford administration, beats the quiet, fluorescent-lit heart of the federal government: the Department of Departments.

The DoD — not to be confused with the other DoD, which this DoD technically manages but also can’t find in its records — is the federal agency responsible for creating, organizing, overseeing, and occasionally losing track of every other federal agency in the United States. It is, by its own admission, “the bureaucracy that makes bureaucracy possible,” and it has been doing so with pride, confusion, and an annual budget of $2.1 billion since 1953. Or 1957. The records disagree, and the committee tasked with resolving the discrepancy was dissolved in 1984, then accidentally re-created in 1991 under a slightly different name.

I spent three weeks embedded inside the Department of Departments. What I found was an institution of staggering complexity, recursive self-reference, and people who genuinely, deeply love a process none of them can fully explain.

The Building That Contains Buildings

The Department of Departments occupies what employees affectionately call “The Nesting Doll” — a sprawling office complex in a part of Washington that doesn’t appear on most maps. The building contains 14 floors, 7 of which are dedicated to managing the other 7. There is a wing for the Sub-Department of Sub-Department Management, a corridor for the Office of Corridor Allocation, and a broom closet that, according to a 1974 executive order, technically qualifies as its own independent agency.

“We like to say we’re the government’s government,” said Deputy Associate Director of Directorial Associates, Phyllis Cramton, 63, who has worked at the DoD for 38 years. “Although honestly, I’m not entirely sure what that means. I’ve been trying to get clarification since 1992. My request is currently being processed by the Request Processing Department, which is, of course, one of ours.”

The department’s organizational chart is a document of legendary complexity. Printed in its entirety, it would stretch approximately 2.3 miles. It was last updated in 2017, but the update itself created four new sub-departments that were not included in the update, triggering a supplemental update that is still pending approval from the Supplemental Update Approval Office — a sub-department that was created during the original update and has not yet been staffed.

The Budget: $2.1 Billion of Pure Love

The Department of Departments operates on an annual budget of $2.1 billion, a figure that has been consistent for the past decade — not because costs have remained stable, but because the Budget Calculation Department has been using the same spreadsheet since 2014, and nobody knows the password to update it.

A breakdown of the budget reveals the elegant circularity that defines the institution:

• $840 million — Office supplies for the Department of Office Supply Procurement
• $320 million — Salaries for the Department of Salary Calculation
• $215 million — Rent for the Office of Rent Assessment
• $190 million — IT support for the IT Support Department’s IT systems
• $140 million — Printing costs for the Department of Printing Cost Analysis
• $95 million — Coffee. Just coffee. No department manages this. It simply happens.
• $300 million — Unaccounted. The Accounting Department is aware but says it’s “not their department.” It is literally their department.

“Every dollar we spend goes toward making sure every dollar is spent correctly,” explained Budget Director Harold Inkwell, adjusting his glasses with the calm confidence of a man who has never once questioned his purpose. “It’s a beautiful, closed loop. Like a hug you give yourself.”

The Employees Nobody Can Count

According to the Department of Departments, it employs “approximately 340 people, give or take.” The “give or take” is doing extraordinary work in that sentence, because the actual headcount has been a source of gentle institutional crisis for over a decade.

The Headcount Department — a team of 12, or possibly 14, or possibly 9 — was tasked in 2011 with producing a definitive employee count. Their first report, submitted in 2013, listed the total as 338. A subsequent audit by the Audit Department found 342. A third count by the Emergency Recount Task Force found 341, but noted that two of the people they counted “might have been visiting from the IRS” and one “could have been a coat rack.”

The matter was referred to the Department of Discrepancy Resolution, which produced a 200-page report concluding that the number of employees was “between 300 and 400, inclusive, with a confidence interval that the department exists at all.”

I spoke with Gerald Fenn, 71, who has worked at the Department of Departments for 44 years. He currently holds the title of Senior Advisor to the Junior Advisory Council on Senior Advisement.

“I come in every day at 8:15,” Gerald told me, stirring a cup of coffee with the slow deliberation of a man who has nowhere specific to be. “I sit at my desk. I open my computer. I look at my inbox. It’s empty. It’s been empty since the Clinton administration. But I remain vigilant.”

When I asked Gerald what his actual job responsibilities were, he paused for a very long time.

“You know, nobody has ever asked me that directly,” he said finally. “I believe it has something to do with departments. But which ones, and in what capacity, I genuinely could not tell you. I’ve been meaning to ask, but I can’t figure out which department handles that kind of question.”

Gerald is not alone. A 2022 internal survey — conducted by the Department of Internal Surveys, which itself had trouble locating all employees to survey — found that 67% of Department of Departments employees could not accurately describe their job function, 29% were unsure which floor they were supposed to be on, and 4% expressed uncertainty about whether they actually worked for the federal government or had simply been coming to the building out of habit.

The Sub-Department of Sub-Department Management

Perhaps no division embodies the spirit of the Department of Departments more perfectly than the Sub-Department of Sub-Department Management (SDSM), a unit responsible for overseeing all sub-departments, including itself.

The SDSM was created in 1978 to address growing concerns that sub-departments were proliferating without oversight. Since its creation, it has spawned 23 additional sub-departments, each tasked with managing some aspect of the others. There is a Sub-Department of Sub-Department Naming Conventions, a Sub-Department of Sub-Department Office Space Allocation, and — in what employees describe as “the masterpiece” — a Sub-Department of Sub-Department Sub-Department Oversight, which manages the sub-departments within sub-departments.

“It’s like Russian nesting dolls,” said SDSM Director Candace Whitmore, “except the smallest doll is also somehow in charge of the biggest one, and none of the dolls are entirely sure they’re dolls.”

The SDSM holds a weekly meeting every Tuesday at 10:00 AM. I attended one. The agenda had one item: “Discuss the creation of a sub-committee to evaluate the agenda for next week’s meeting.” The discussion lasted two hours and 40 minutes. It was decided, by a vote of 8 to 7 with 3 abstentions and 2 people who were unclear on what they were voting for, to table the discussion until the following week, at which point a new agenda item would be created to discuss the tabling.

No one seemed frustrated by this. In fact, several employees described the meeting as “productive” and “one of the better ones.”

A Day in the Life

To understand the Department of Departments, you have to experience it. I shadowed three employees through a full workday.

8:00 AM — Brenda Clarkson, 54, arrives at her desk in the Office of Arrival Monitoring. Her job is to log when employees arrive. She logs her own arrival first, which creates a paradox that the Philosophy of Bureaucratic Paradoxes Sub-Department has been studying since 2009.

9:30 AM — Kevin Trout, 47, begins his morning task: updating the master list of all departments. The list is 1,247 pages long. Kevin does not know if it is accurate. “I just add departments,” he said. “I’ve never removed one. I don’t think anyone has the authority to remove one. Honestly, I’m not sure anyone has the authority to add one either, but here we are.”

11:00 AM — Lunch preparation begins. The Department of Departments has its own cafeteria, managed by the Sub-Department of Cafeteria Operations, which is overseen by the Food Service Oversight Committee, which reports to the Committee on Oversight Committees. The menu is decided quarterly by a panel of nine people, only three of whom eat at the cafeteria. Today’s option is the same as every day: turkey sandwich or “the other one.” Nobody remembers what the other one is. It doesn’t matter. Everyone gets the turkey sandwich.

1:00 PM — The afternoon session begins with what employees call “The Drift” — a two-hour period during which everyone appears to be working but no measurable output occurs. Keyboards click. Papers are shuffled. Pens are uncapped and recapped. A phone rings somewhere on the fourth floor and is never answered. The Drift is not officially recognized, but it is, in practice, the department’s most consistent deliverable.

3:30 PM — A minor crisis erupts. Someone in the Department of Office Supply Procurement has ordered 40,000 paperclips instead of 4,000. The Error Correction Department is notified but responds that this falls under the Procurement Error Sub-Department, which no longer exists — or rather, exists on paper but has no employees, having been absorbed into the Department of Absorption in 2016. The paperclips are accepted. They are placed in a storage room that already contains an estimated 2.3 million paperclips from similar incidents.

5:00 PM — Brenda logs everyone’s departure. She logs her own departure last, creating the same paradox as the morning, which she resolves by simply not thinking about it, a strategy she describes as “the only thing that works around here.”

Love in the Time of Bureaucracy

What struck me most about my time at the Department of Departments was not the inefficiency, the circularity, or the staggering budget. It was the sincerity.

These people believe in what they do — whatever it is. They arrive every morning to a building that manages buildings, in a department that departments departments, and they do so with a quiet, unshakeable devotion that borders on the spiritual.

“People on the outside don’t understand,” said Gerald Fenn, walking me to the exit on my last day. “They think we’re wasting time and money. But what we’re really doing is caring. We’re caring so hard, and so thoroughly, that we’ve built an entire institution around the act of caring about institutions. And that — ” he paused, visibly moved — “that’s love.”

He then swiped his badge to let me out, but the badge reader was managed by a different department and didn’t recognize his credentials. We waited 45 minutes for someone from the Badge Resolution Sub-Department to arrive.

They never came. I climbed out a window.

The Department of Departments did not respond to requests for comment on this article. The Request for Comment Processing Department confirmed that our request was received, assigned a tracking number, and placed in a queue currently estimated at 14 months. We will update this piece if and when a response is provided, pending approval from the Update Approval Department.