To understand how Gov. Jerry Brown wants to reorganize government, just look at an iPhone.

The gadgets allow users to shuffle applications, add ones, group them and rename those groups. Want to put your ESPN Radio app with a subscription to an online legal magazine and call the group "Sports and Torts"? You can do it.

Which brings us to Brown's 2012-13 budget plan. It includes an 11-page outline of about 50 departments, offices, agencies, programs and commissions that he wants to move around, consolidate or delete. It creates a couple of new ones, too.

Brown says his plan would streamline government, sort of like shuffling, deleting and buying iPhone apps can make the device more user-friendly.

Brown's plan "isn't unreasonable," said Michael Shires, a Pepperdine University political scientist, "but the question is whether you're going to get savings out of it and whether it survives the process."

Much of Brown's plan makes sense, like whacking a state task force whose mission to implement an electronic funds transfer system wrapped up in 2008.

Or dumping the Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board. The seven-member panel has become a six-figure haven for termed-out lawmakers. Brown isn't the first person to suggest it should go away.

"But there's a reason that these organizations survive," Shires said. "They have constituents: business, labor and even the Legislature itself."

Some reorganizations must go through the legislative process. For others, governors may use their executive powers to set things in motion. When that happens, the plan gets an independent review and takes effect unless the Assembly or the Senate veto it.

Gov. Ronald Reagan used that authority in 1968 to add four agencies to the executive branch. A year later he axed 32 boards, commissions, advisory councils and renamed one department and one commission.

Since then, 23 of the 36 "reorgs" proposed by governors have gone into effect.

Usually, smaller is better. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger floated a 2005 plan to whack 88 boards and commissions. It drew such harsh criticism as an executive power grab that he withdrew it mid-review. Brown's Republican predecessor subsequently proposed four less-ambitious reorgs. Three of them went through.

The Brown administration hasn't yet estimated how much money reorganization would save. Probably not much, Shires said, compared to cutting major programs.

The real value of changing government's structure is efficiency, Shires said, "if you measure it as more output for less input."

But where state workers sit on the government organizational chart often matters less than their mindset.

Defense of the status quo, turf battles, cronyism and poor management can thwart the best reorg plans.

When that happens, there's no app for fixing it.

© Copyright The Sacramento Bee. All rights reserved.

Call The Bee's Jon Ortiz, (916) 321-1043. Read his blog, The State Worker, at sacbee.com/blogs.

• Read more articles by Jon Ortiz