To answer the question in the article, NIST is the national bureau of weights and measures, a very important (if somewhat mundane) function. It, NOAA, the USGS and other scientific agencies never belonged in the Commerce department in the first place.
Otherwise, I agree with the author: Commerce and Labor should be combined into one. There are a few others: VA serves former employees of the Defense department, but why is it its own separate Cabinet-level department, and why can't Health and Human Services handle the medical side of what the VA does? Education's main service is the financial aid process, which is so dependent on the filer's tax returns that it makes more sense to just put it under Treasury oversight. The rest used to be under HHS (when it was Health, Education and Welfare) What exactly does the Department of Energy do that other departments such as Interior and Commerce/Labor couldn't do? Same with HUD, whose sole purpose seems to be to provide a "designated survivor" in the event of a national disaster.
About the only recent cabinet level position that makes any sense is Homeland Security.
So, in the event that there's ever a Fuller administration, I'd have it look more like this:
State - unchanged
Treasury (+FAFSA process from Education)
Defense (+most of VA)
Justice - unchanged
Homeland Security - unchanged
Interior (+Energy, Agriculture except for Food Stamps and HUD)
Labor (+most of Commerce, some of Energy's statistical responsibilities)
Commerce Sciences
Health, Education and Welfare (includes Health and Human Services, rest of Education, medical portions of the VA and Food Stamps), deliberately put last in the succession
Granted, it'd make a few departments such as Interior FAR bigger, but with shared responsibilities, there's opportunity for synergies.
