The basic premise may be disruptive in a "Big Bang" move but could be accomplished gradually by building new facilities and shifting project flow over time.

Also, the DoD makes fast changes like this all the time as the result of BRAC. Government employees don't tend to just up and change jobs - they are career workers who like the stability and promise of a pension.

Would the German experience of transitioning from Bonn to Berlin be of much relevance here?

It's STILL not completed, over two and a half decades after the wall fell. The amount of money wasted is incredible (7.5M € in 2016 in direct costs, http://www.merkur.de/politik/hendricks-stellt-bericht-zum-bo...), not to mention wasted time and the loss of efficiency because teams and management are split across Germany.

Really! I had no idea. I barely ever see a reference to Bonn in anything I read about Germany these days; I'd formed the impression that everyone had moved in the 90s.

(a) The difference between moving civilians and moving military personnel is that if a civilian doesn't want to go they can just resign, but if the military person doesn't want to go they have to suck it up and go anyway. (b) The "good" government pension hasn't been available since the 80s, (b') uprooting your family and moving hundreds of miles away is a pretty big blow to stability.

> ...the DoD makes fast changes like this all the time as the result of BRAC.

Nothing fast results from a BRAC decision.

The author also doesn't realize how intertwined many agencies are, including the NIH.

It's not uncommon to have meetings that have NSF, DoE, DoD, NIH and HHS employees all in the same room. This was especially valuable during public health emergencies.

Good thing we have video conferencing now.

Really not the same.

He also assumes that should those people not move, that Cleveland has enough people with the right skillsets to fill the gap.

The more relevant question is this: are there enough people with right skillsets willing to relocate to Cleveland?

Money talks, and the same salary goes a lot farther in Cleveland than DC. It's really dumb that we compress all of our workforce into a few cities, especially in an age when 90% of office jobs can be done just as efficiently anywhere with a high-speed internet connection, rather than face-to-face in a cube farm.

> the same salary goes a lot farther in Cleveland than DC

It's not the same salary, DC's locality pay is higher than Cleveland's : https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries... vs https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries...