The Pilot Program That Never Landed
In a modest office building in Rockville, Maryland, 200 federal employees arrive each morning to continue what may be the longest-running pilot program in government history. The Inter-Departmental Resource Optimization Initiative (IDROI) began in September 1994 as a six-month experiment to test whether the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Commerce could successfully share a single fax machine.
Photo: Department of Commerce, via c8.alamy.com
Photo: Department of Agriculture, via www.pinclipart.com
Thirty years later, the pilot program shows no signs of concluding.
"We're still very much in the data collection phase," explains Dr. Amanda Richardson, IDROI's current Director of Preliminary Assessment Coordination. "The original parameters called for a thorough evaluation of resource-sharing protocols, and we take that mandate very seriously. These things can't be rushed."
The initiative now operates out of a 40,000-square-foot facility, maintains a fleet of 23 vehicles, and employs specialists in fields ranging from interdepartmental communication theory to advanced fax machine maintenance. Its annual budget has grown from the original $4,200 allocation to $342 million, making it one of the federal government's most expensive ongoing experiments.
The Evolution of Scope
What started as a simple question—can two departments share a fax machine?—has expanded into what IDROI officials describe as "a comprehensive examination of federal resource optimization paradigms."
"The original fax machine is still here," notes Gerald Hutchins, IDROI's Senior Pilot Program Historian, gesturing toward a 1990s-era device displayed in the lobby like a museum piece. "But we quickly realized that truly understanding resource sharing requires a much broader analytical framework."
That framework now includes 47 sub-initiatives examining everything from interdepartmental stapler protocols to the optimal pH levels for shared water coolers. The program has generated over 12,000 pages of preliminary findings, none of which have been formally reviewed because the evaluation methodology is still being finalized.
"We want to make sure we get this right," Richardson emphasizes. "Once we conclude the pilot phase, there's no going back. The implications for federal resource management are enormous."
The Institutional Memory Gap
A significant challenge facing IDROI is that none of its current employees were present during the program's inception. The last remaining original staff member, Margaret Kowalski from the Department of Agriculture, retired in 2019 after 25 years of what her departure memo described as "preliminary data gathering and foundational framework establishment."
"We rely heavily on institutional documentation," explains Thomas Chen, IDROI's Deputy Director of Historical Continuity. "Unfortunately, much of the early documentation was stored on floppy disks, which we're still working to decode. We've allocated $2.3 million for a specialized floppy disk archaeology program."
The original departments that were supposed to share the fax machine have since been reorganized multiple times. The Department of Agriculture's relevant division was transferred to the Department of Energy in 2003, then to the Department of Homeland Security in 2008, and finally disbanded entirely in 2015.
"This actually makes our work more important," Richardson notes. "We're now studying resource sharing between departments that no longer exist. The theoretical implications are groundbreaking."
The Evaluation Framework Framework
IDROI's most significant recent achievement is the completion of its "Evaluation Framework Framework"—a 340-page document outlining how the agency will eventually develop a framework for evaluating the pilot program's framework.
"It's meta-methodology at its finest," explains Dr. Sarah Williams, IDROI's Chief Evaluation Theorist. "Before we can evaluate the pilot program, we need to evaluate our evaluation methods. And before we can evaluate our evaluation methods, we need to establish evaluation criteria for our evaluation criteria."
The Framework Framework identifies 23 distinct phases of evaluation preparation, beginning with "Pre-Assessment Readiness Verification" and culminating in "Post-Evaluation Impact Assessment Planning." Current projections suggest the actual evaluation of the original fax-sharing experiment could begin as early as 2031.
"We're making excellent progress," Williams notes. "We've successfully completed Phase 1 of the Pre-Assessment Readiness Verification, which involved verifying that we were ready to begin verifying our readiness. It's very exciting."
The Stakeholder Engagement Process
Recognizing that any evaluation of the pilot program must include input from affected parties, IDROI has spent the last eight years developing what it calls a "Comprehensive Stakeholder Engagement Strategy."
The strategy identifies 847 potential stakeholders, ranging from current federal employees to "theoretical future users of hypothetical shared resources." Each stakeholder category requires a customized engagement protocol, which must be approved by IDROI's Stakeholder Engagement Protocol Review Board.
"Stakeholder engagement is incredibly complex," explains Jennifer Murphy, IDROI's Director of Engagement Strategy Development. "We can't just ask people what they think. We need to understand the epistemological foundations of their opinions, the cultural context of their feedback, and the potential long-term implications of their input on our evaluation methodology."
So far, IDROI has successfully engaged with 12 stakeholders, though the engagement process revealed that seven of them were IDROI employees who had forgotten they were supposed to be providing external perspective.
The Technology Challenge
A major complication arose in 2019 when IDROI discovered that fax machines were becoming obsolete, potentially invalidating 25 years of research into fax-sharing protocols.
"This was a significant methodological crisis," recalls Richardson. "How do you evaluate a pilot program about sharing technology that no longer exists? We had to completely reconceptualize our approach."
IDROI's solution was to expand the pilot program to include "Legacy Technology Resource Sharing in a Post-Analog Environment"—essentially studying how departments might share equipment that they no longer use.
"It's actually more relevant than ever," argues Dr. Kevin Park, IDROI's Senior Technology Obsolescence Specialist. "Government agencies are constantly dealing with outdated equipment. Understanding how to share obsolete resources could revolutionize federal efficiency."
The Future of the Pilot
As IDROI approaches its fourth decade, officials remain optimistic about eventually reaching some form of conclusion.
"We're definitely in the final preliminary phase," Richardson confirms. "Once we complete our current 15-year strategic planning cycle, we'll be ready to begin the pre-evaluation assessment preparation phase. It's all coming together."
Meanwhile, the original fax machine sits in IDROI's lobby, a monument to bureaucratic permanence. A small plaque reads: "Pilot Program Equipment - Testing in Progress Since 1994."
"Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if we'd just let them share the fax machine," muses Hutchins, the program historian. "But then I remember—we're not just studying fax sharing. We're studying the very nature of federal cooperation itself. That's worth taking our time to get right."
IDROI's latest annual report, released last month, concludes that the pilot program is "proceeding as intended" and that "preliminary indicators suggest positive progress toward eventual assessment readiness." The report's executive summary spans 47 pages and includes a glossary of 200 specialized terms developed specifically for the IDROI evaluation process.
As for when the pilot might actually end, Richardson remains diplomatically vague: "We'll know we're ready to conclude when we're ready to conclude. Until then, we'll keep doing what we do best—making sure we're prepared to be prepared."
