The story of merging and splitting ministries is nothing new; moreover, it has already ended in complete failure. The first to attempt this was the unfortunate Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk. The merged ministries were so large, and the ministers’ competence so low, that they couldn’t even handle basic issues, let alone bigger ones. This led to a disaster that the Denys Shmyhal government has been cleaning up for a couple of years.Why do DOGE initiatives fail both in the U.S. and here? It’s simple.Fans of easy solutions come and say: you have too many officials here, you’re spending too much money there — we’ll eliminate this. After some time, these same people realize that all this activity was necessary and begin to reverse those decisions. In fact, expenses may even increase further.Here’s an example. The Ministry of Internal Affairs handles issuing passports. You can abolish the migration service or reduce its funding. But the need to issue passports will not go away! That’s the problem. To truly reduce the size of the government, you have to eliminate many state functions. And to do that, laws need to be changed. And no, this isn’t done in three minutes.The state really has too many functions. Digitization and delegation of powers can help. But the focus should start with functions, not ministry names.SourceAbout the author. Viktor Andrusiv, political and public figure, analyst, and publicist.The editorial team does not always share the opinions expressed by blog or column authors.